Unique is a Strong Word
Posted On Jan 27 2009I promised a follow-up on the RMG session at ALA, but rather than give a blow-by-blow account (done nicely by Leonard Kniffel already), I thought I would single out one part of the conversation. I am a lover of language, though I am often careless myself. I bite my tongue at grammatical errors or poor language usage. But I am bothered more by the use of words that violates the spirit but not the law of vocabulary and grammar. Repeated superlatives annoy me. More than one exclamation point per page should never survive editing. Given the word’s roots in crucifixion, …
From the Field: RMG
Posted On Jan 23 2009It’s Friday afternoon at ALA, so of course I am at annual RMG session hosted by library consultants Rob McGee and Pat McClintock. I’d be lying if I denied that a big part of me would rather be at the OCLC Symposium where David Weinberger and Nova Spivak are speaking. This has to be an all-time record for number of people on the RMG panel (or any panel for that matter). Ten library automation representatives (including my boss, Robin Murray, Vice President of Global Product Management) and a panel of 5 library innovaters. Forty minutes in and the introductions are …
So what?
Posted On Jan 13 2009Whether or not I had young children, I think my favorite movie line would still be from Mary Poppins, where the father, George Banks says to his wife, “Winnifred, please! Kindly do not cloud the issue with facts.” I’ve been thinking lately about “business intelligence”–the other “BI” that isn’t Bibliographic Instruction (if I start blogging about Bibliographic Instruction, please shoot me). My simplistic version of this is how do libraries turn simple reports in actual business intelligence? From a technical standpoint, I have one answer–include more network effect into the data, e.g. how many libraries have this book? or how …