Ab’s Blog

I started my professional life as a cataloger. I have felt the push and pull of inter-departmental wranglings: “they don’t understand the value of what we do!” and “they don’t understand how people actually use the catalog!” Now that I’ll be helping e-resource librarians implement an ERM system and will no longer be an end user myself, I’m conscious of the fact that I’ll start to lose touch with what it really means to do the job.

I would like to minimize that phenomenon as much as possible, and I’d like your help, dear reader. I still manage ERIL-L, I’ve recently learned about a couple e-resources blogs and have subscribed, and I recently joined the editorial board of JERDA, so I’ll surely be reading that. I plan to attend NASIG and start a subscription to Against the Grain. I know there’s more out there–what else should I be doing to stay connected to the front lines of ERM? Journals, websites, blogs, conferences? Send your suggestions, please, so I’ll be well prepared to assist should Verde be in your library’s future!

Three of us, out of less than 30 people, at my new workplace went to the same high school. Go Tigers!

Rachel Singer Gordon asks, “What do people read outside the library field?”

• dooce - “I’m Heather B. Armstrong. This is my website.”
• A List Apart - “For people who make websites”
• Church of the Customer - by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba, authors of Citizen Marketers and Creating Customer Evangelists
• National Geographic News - Jurassic crocodiles, interspecies mating, “Toyger” kitties.
• desire to inspire - “This blog was started so that we could share our favourite inspirational design photos with you”

If you write for the web, you may find this tip sheet helpful. It discusses making your page easily scannable, optimizing for search engines, and (my favorite, as you may know) good reasons not to write “click here.”

I’m all moved into the aforementioned apartment (can you believe it?), although not all unpacked. I plugged a phone in today and found a dial tone, so I got myself a dial up connection to use while I wait for Verizon to hook me up with the high speed. This means that I’m currently torn between wanting to browse and not wanting to hurt all over: the phone jack is not near any place to sit besides the floor. Since there’s a good chance I’ll hurt all over no matter where I sit, I’ve opted to browse.

I don’t remember the last time I used dial up, so it’s been quite an experience seeing which sites load in what I consider a reasonable amount of time: Google does pretty well, of course, and Newsgator is OK too, but Wordpress, always a bit slow, is downright sluggish. And I desperately want to spend the going-away gift card some colleagues gave me, but iTunes just laughs.

Sorry Binghamton readers, but here, one more time, is the list of things I can walk to from my new place, in order of proximity:

• dry cleaners
• Dunkin Donuts
• pub
• ATM
• work
• express bus stop
• Thai food
• Starbucks
• post office
• the Charles River
• Whole Foods (if I’m not buying much)

To cope with some serious anxiety while waiting for my spouse to come back from an interview and waiting to find out whether we’re getting the apartment we want, I added some stuff to this site. There’s a del.icio.us feed in the blog sidebar, and on my main page I’ve added my promised pre-print (come on, you know you want to read about e-journal cataloging), plus a del.icio.us link and a LibraryThing link.