putting the rarin back in librarian since 1999
…but thought you might like to see this anyhow. This is how my website looks on an iPhone. Their browser is really interesting looking. I hung out with Casey today as he waited to get an iPhone. As you know, I live in Vermont where they’re not for sale and can’t be activated. Hello digital divide, my old friend.
Big big congrats to Casey Bisson. He has received the prestigious Mellon Award for Technology Collaboration for his WPopac project. Casey is down in DC now getting feted and adulated. Nice work Casey! From the press release:
“For years we’ve been talking about the digital divide in terms of access, and we’ve been working hard to put computers and networks into every school and library,†Bisson said. “But those same libraries, and their communities, are invisible to people online. If libraries are to be more than study halls in the Internet age, if they are to continue their role as centers of knowledge in every community, they need to be findable and available online. They need the tools to represent their collections, their services, and the unique history of their communities online. That’s what WPopac does.â€
Why is it so hard to say that some things simply suck? I’ll quote Casey Bisson, quoting himself.
Please, stand with me now and repeat:
“When something sucks I will say so. When vendors spout crap I will call them on it. My staff deserve good tools, my users need good tools, and I can’t afford to buy stuff that sucks.”
Together, we’ll fix the world one product at a time.
Related story: State of our ILS
“It’s a new world and building onto a system that is more than 15 years old isn’t going to cut it anymore – there needs to be a new system, one that allows for more freedom, and it has to come soon, because more and more libraries are going to turn to open-source.“