Everything’s Coming Up Roses (and at web scale!)
Posted On Jun 9 2011I readily admit that no one ever called me “Pollyanna” until I came to OCLC. But I can be annoyingly optimistic about the future of library automation and OCLC’s role in that future, so throw a little success our way and look out! A long time ago, my work nickname was “Mr. Crabby” (I still own the mrcrabby@hotmail account that I created as my dummy email address in 1995…don’t expect replies, your messages will be buried amongst various political mailings, retail store sign-ups, and mountains of spam). Later, I dubbed myself “the cynical optimist,” a moniker that stuck for a …
Web-scale Management Services Introduces Gesture-based Library Management
Posted On Apr 1 2011Put down that mouse and keyboard! Twenty-first century, Web-based libray management services now means finding a whole new way to interact with library data and customers. As the team at OCLC working on Web-scale Management Services has been hammering out new functional requirements, we’ve had a lot of leeway in breaking new ground. But we’ve really been looking for a way to take the service beyond the obvious trends of electronic content management and mobile interfaces. That’s when one of our developers hooked up his XBox Kinect sensor to our development environment and the ideas started flying faster than we …
Happy New Year (or how I learned to stop worrying and love that ALA is so early this year)
Posted On Dec 30 2010As much as I love ALA, I have to admit that I am not a big fan of holding it the first week of January. I fretted too much and too often that it would dampen both my holiday spirit and my ALA spirit. Alas, like Christmas for the Grinch, somehow or other ALA came just the same. So time to get ready. This year will be my first ALA in six years without a LITA Board meeting. While liberating at first, I’m sure it will feel weird not to spend so much time with my LITA colleagues. Be sure …