ALAready?

Posted On Jun 21 2011 by

I don’t know why I feel so surprised every time ALA creeps up on me.  It’s not like we hold it at the same times every year or anything.  This one is proving to be another hectic one, as usual.  I’m not really sure what I would do with myself if ALA weren’t hectic.   Here’s where you’re likely to find me at OCLC events, either at the podium or lurking in the back of the room.   On Friday, I’m finally headed back to the LITA/ALCTS Electronic Resource Management Interest Group.  I’ve spent almost 2 dog years talking about and building ERM, and I’m finally glad to be presenting …


Everything’s Coming Up Roses (and at web scale!)

Posted On Jun 9 2011 by

I 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 …


Plan for Success

Posted On Apr 25 2011 by

I had a great opportunity to travel to the northwest this month to attend the Oregon Library Association meeting (briefly) and the Montana (combined with Mountain Plains) Library Association meeting (slightly less briefly).  I’ve been wanting to highlight one presentation I saw from that trip ever since I got back and this is the first free moment I’ve had to put it all together. In Oregon, I was participating with colleagues Carl Grant from Ex Libris and Neil Block from Innovative Interfaces in a pre-conference on library-vendor relationships.  That sounds like enough fun in and of itself, but it’s actually …