Why I joined SLA

Trained as a musician, I always thought I was going to be an academic. Once I decided to be a librarian, I worked (and still work) in a public library. So why did I recently join SLA - the Special Libraries Association? I'm sure I'll develop more as time goes on, but for now, in no particular order:

1. I wanted to take advantage of their Leadership & Management library of 998 (count 'em - 998) ebooks.
2. I wanted to network with an incredibly wide variety of individuals
3. In this ever-shrinking world, I wanted to get a view of how libraries function in a for-profit environment
4. I want to learn more about how special librarians are able to deliver product to their customers
5. I want to see what is Knowledge Management for myself
   
6. Finally: I don't want to feel guilty the next time I hear Stephen Abram speak.
   

Harvard gets it right

I'm sure many people saw the article "At Harvard, a Proposal to Publish Free on The Web" from the New York Times. What I found particularly interesting was the idea that the division responsible for managing and granting access to all these faculty (and maybe student) publications was the library.

I've been thinking this for years now, thanks to Library 2.0 and Stephen Abram. Libraries across the board should be proactive and solicit information such as reports and papers from their communities. By assembling websites where such information is assembled, scholars and interested people would know where to go - they would look to the library to be the source of the latest publications. In that way, libraries would be the equivalent of a scholarly Craigslist.

I wonder if any of the librarians at Harvard thought of this. :)

Rating an important skill in today's world

In my formative years, typing was taught in the first year of high school, when I was 15 years old. That's way too late in today's Internet-occupied world. Unfortunately, I note that many young kids don't care about correct typing but use only their two index fingers. Hopefully, ratings such as these might encourage people to see typing as a skill to be acquired for benefit of communication.

Who knows, maybe it might make it into the Olympics someday.

86 words

free Touch typing