slowlibrary

Hi. I spent an awful lot of time on the phone or on Skype today, most of it making things with other folks. In order

– Chitchatting with Casey about his Library Technology Report in which I write a chapter on Open Source Software Tools for libraries. We messed about with formatting and structure, laughed about how “Web site” is spelled in formal publications compared to everywhere else on the planet, and admitted the whole thing looks pretty good. Keep an eye peeled for it.
– Talked to Jay Datema from Library Journal and Bookism along with Peter Brantley for a podcast about all sorts of things. Specifically we discussed the nature of library content and social content becoming digital and the ramifications for archivists, librarians and plain old lovers of books.
– Did my weekly podcast with Matt Haughey from MetaFilter. This is always a fun weeks-end summary of what we’ve noticed on the site including my favorite posts from Ask MetaFilter

Then I swam. Then it was nighttime. I decided to take the train to CiL so that I can swing by and say hi to some friends in NY on the way. I have books and a few little snacks to bring with me. I’ll be in the CiL area from about Sunday night late til Tuesday afternoon/evening so please say howdy if you see me around. My talk is Monday. As with most of these quickie conferences, all my mealtimes are spoken for, but I still have some discretionary walking around time, depending on when I wake up. On the way back I’ll be stopping to see friends in Baltimore and then going to give a talk in Dodge City Kansas. People laugh when I say Kansas for some reason but I had such a good time there last time and finally got a good answer to my “please explain this Second Life and Libraries thing” question from some Kansas librarians.

So, I will be on the road for a while. Then I am coming back to teach an eBay class, some more digital pictures classes, maybe help one of the small libraries I work with install an actual OPAC instead of their in-library PAC and preparing a few more local talks in the next few weeks. I may not have mentioned this previusly, but I’m contributing occasionally (well, once so far) to the Slow Library website, so if you were waiting for it to come back from dormancy, that time has arrived.

I missed Ryan Deschamps discussing a talk by Mark Leggott about the Slow Library Movement. As someone suspicious about the Slow Food Movement, I was curious about this. Go here to listen to Mark’s lecture and peek here to see if the Slow Library blog is up and running. In Mark’s words “The idea behind the Slow Library site is to propose, promote and discuss the concepts of a new movement called Slow Library. Slow Library applies the philosophies and concepts of the Slow Food and Open Source movements to the development of library services and resources.” In Ryan’s notes from Mark’s talk he says

Mark is saying “ubiquity is not an end in and of itself. Here are some thoughts that may or may not apply to the Slow Library Movement:

Let’s focus on realistic, local solutions and build community first.

Let’s forget about Web 2.0 for a second, understand our customers needs and then apply or give access to resources that help them satisfy those needs.

Let’s play.

Let’s Let’s shun pressure to “keep up” with Ann Arbor (sorry John Blyberg), Hennepin County (sorry Glenn Peterson via Tame the Web) and etc. and apply our own strengths to come up with our own creative ideas.

Let’s focus on what we can do right now to make the community a better place.

Let’s notice the beauty of things right before our eyes, and let supporting that be our Return on Investment.

Good comments by Jenny on Ryan’s blog. [anarchivist]

Tag: slowlibrary

hi – 13apr

Slow Library, a 2.0 idea