Archive for the ‘movers and shakers’ Category

Wednesday, March 18th, 2009

Congrats to Library Journal Movers and Shakers

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

Sunday, March 16th, 2008

Moving and Shaking!

I’m excited to say that Library Journal has picked me as one of their 2008 Movers and Shakers, “The People Shaping the Future of Libraries.” Here’s the full list, the intro and the blurb on me. (I’m on bottom right in the photo too!)

The full list makes for interesting reading. Jessamyn has a version of the list that includes names, not just our fanciful titles. (“Metadata Man”? Can’t I be “Spark Plug” or “On a mission?”) Certainly a lot more happens with libraries than I ever think about. Update: Bobbi Newman has a version with blogs too.

Movers and Shakers been going on since 2002, long before LibraryThing thrust me into the library world. A number of my favorite library bloggers and technologists have won it before, including Jessamyn West, Steven Cohen, John Blyberg, Meredith Farkas, Nicole Engard, Emily Lynema and Casey Bisson.

As much as I want to congratulate people, I know few of the current batch, and wouldn’t have much to add. I do know Josh Ferraro of LibLime. LibLime is the driving force behind the open-source library system, Koha, that is suddenly on everyone’s lips. We’re eager to get LibraryThing data into Koha—beyond LibraryThing for Libraries, which already works—but Liblime may be too busy scaling to write the code anytime soon.* Fortunately, unlike all the closed systems, if LibLime can’t do it, we can do it ourselves. That kinds of openness is just one of the many reasons Koha is taking over the world.

Four others caught my eye:

Marshall Shore (“The Man Who Said No to Dewey”). Shore is the guy behind Maricopa’s move from Dewey to a modified BISAC system. I have mixed feelings about BISAC, but Dewey needs to be replaced, and experiments are good. I met with a member of his team at a conference; I’m eager to get their system into LibraryThing and they indicated they were willing.

Maria Redburn, Bedford Public Library. I’ve never met Ms. Redburn, but Bedford, a small-ish town in Texas, was the second library to enhance their catalog with LibraryThing for Libraries. Apparently Redburn took over in rocky times–the town was considering outsourcing library management to a company in Delaware. She turned the library around, winning approval for local control, expanded service and a new focus on customer service. Good stuff!

Darci Hanning, the force behind the Plinkit project, which provides free, low-hassle websites for libraries. I only heard about them two days ago; Casey is a big fan, and has a blog post about it coming up.

Mark Greek, DC Public Library. Greek worked to rescue and preserve rare materials from the Georgetown Neighborhood Library, devastated in a fire. That was my local library when I lived in DC, so a big thumb-up from me!

As for me, I think the blurb hits all the right notes: LibraryThings roots in cataloging, the social aspects, LibraryThing for Libraries and MARCThing (launched, but not yet accessible outside). But the best part is the closing quote by Karen Schneider:

“Tim has ported the fun of reading to the web and in doing so honors the best of our profession and suggests a path for its future.”

As someone outside of the profession, that’s pretty gratifying to hear.**


*I need to dust off my PERL though!
**I’m also the first recipient from Maine, which seems wrong, both because there are a lot of innovative librarians in Maine and because I’m a “blow-in.”

Labels: awards, library journal, movers and shakers