Congratulations to the 2009 Library Journal Movers and Shakers.

Andy Warhol said something about enjoying celebrity magazines, because so many celebrities were his friends, and who wouldn’t enjoy reading a magazine about their friends?* Well, that was my feeling about the LJ article.

The honored include Jenica P. Rogers-Urbanek (blog), Jason Griffey and Karen Coombs (blog, blog), honored together for their BIGWIG work, Michael Porter (blog), and the “Dutch Boys”, (Erik Boekesteijn, Jaap Van De Geer, Geert Van Den Boogaard) and Sarah Houghton (blog).

I was particularly happy to see Dave Pattern‘s name on the list. Pattern, who works at the University of Huddersfield and blogs at “Self Plagarism is in Style”, is one of the library technologists I admire most. Offbeat, relentless, funny, open—he’s a goddamned cyclone of library creativity. But I don’t think his work gets noticed as much as it should. Maybe this will help.

If there’s a trend in all of this, it’s the rise of the funny, creative, disruptive ones. That’s a good sign for libraries.

I also enjoyed reading about a number of M&S’s I don’t know well or at all.

• It was interesting to see an OPAC-developer, Matt L. Moran of TLC picked. I look forward to TLC’s “LS2 PAC,” formerly (and better) named Indigo.
• It sounds like Kenning Arlitsch has done good work in digital libraries.
• Joe Murphy set up SMS at the Yale Science Library. His quote “libraries that don’t offer texting are basically invisible to me” makes me want to smoother a teenager, but he’s no doubt doing something important.
• Koren Stembridge sounds like a big asset to the Boston Public Library, and as a chronic late-fee depressive, I heartily applaud fine amnesty!
• Pam Sessoms‘s libraryh3lp is doing good things with IM and reference.
• Lia Friedman and I probably disagree on marginal tax rates, but I’m with her on cataloging metadata.

---

*I can’t tree this quote, despite an enjoyable, wasted hour of looking. And my Twitter-buddies aren’t helping. The internet has failed!

Labels: movers and shakers