Year in Review
Posted On Dec 16 2010I’m a deadline kind of guy. I think it comes from writing for magazines. I do much better (even at the last minute) if I know I have a deadline. Frankly, it’s one of the reasons I haven’t been blogging as much as I used to. When Hectic Pace was atAmerican Libraries, they were smart enough to contractually obligate me to four posts per month. I should have told OCLC that if they really wanted me to blog, they should have put it in my contract. So my deadline for a year end review of activities is, naturally, the end of the …
Hoping for the Best ALA Ever
Posted On Jun 20 2010Even though everyone else might get tired of me saying it, I make no excuses for loving ALA. And this one coming up this week is no exception. But it’s also special. First, it’s “back home”….I was born in D.C. and grew up in the suburbs of our nation’s capital. Descended from a long line of civil servants, I still sometimes miss our little Disney on the Potomac. Second, this will be my last ALA as a LITA officer. After three years on LITA Board and then three more as an officer, I’ll be attending my last Board and Financial meetings …
Global Web Scale
Posted On Mar 1 2010I just got back from the first ever OCLC EMEA Regional Council meeting in The Netherlands. Much has been written and discussed regarding OCLC’s governance changes, but that is not really what I wanted to address. This meeting was the best I have ever seen for non-US participants and members for OCLC. And I’m not just saying that because OCLC’s Web-scale strategy was a central part of the discussion. OK, that is why I’m saying it. “EMEA”–Europe, Middle East, and Africa–is completely an American invention, used to simplify business dealings across an entire region. OCLC certainly didn’t invent it, but …