Showing posts with label library. Show all posts
Showing posts with label library. Show all posts

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Thus Spoke Pragmatic Librarian

Jason writes:

You miss too much these days if you stop to think.

The quote above comes from “Until the End of the World,” the fourth song on U2’s 1991 album Achtung Baby. Although the song alludes to Judas’ betrayal of Jesus, the “stop to think” line seems apt for the overall scope of my blog.

As an academic librarian, I need to keep up with trends in higher education, librarianship, technology, and the disciplines for which I act as library liaison. I also ascribe to a principle similar to Murphy’s Law about technology: once I learn about a new technological development that could affect academia, “the next big thing” is already sneaking up to supplant it. As a result, keeping up can get overwhelming at times, and I feel like I have little time to reflect holistically on the true significance of all these developments.

In this blog, I try to grapple with the rapid changes occurring in higher education, librarianship, technology, and (by extension) society in general. I also want to provide a forum for those who want to “stop to think” without missing too much.

With that kind of an intro, and a tag line that reads:
Part professional. Part personal. All pragmatic.
Jason seems to have the site that you might want to add to your RSS Reader and visit.

Thursday, June 07, 2007

LibraryThing Blog

What is LibraryThing?

LibraryThing is an online service to help people catalog their books easily. You can access your catalog from anywhere—even on your mobile phone. Because everyone catalogs together, LibraryThing also connects people with the same books, comes up with suggestions for what to read next, and so forth.

What software does it require?

None. If you can read this, you can use LibraryThing.

What does it cost?

A free account allows you to catalog up to 200 books. A paid account allows you to catalog any number of books. Paid personal accounts cost $10 for a year or $25 for a lifetime. (See here for non-personal accounts.) I conservatively predict the revenue will enable me to recline all day on an enormous pile of gold.

And they have a blog... where they discuss new features, plans and announcements.

Check out LibraryThing and consider adding the blog to your RSS Reader of choice.