Two of the most interesting things here at Code4Lib are OSU’s LibraryFind and dchud’s talk on taking OpenURLs to the next step — making them understand where you (say, by IP address) are and using OCLC’s registry to write links that reference your resolver.

In short, it would finally let library finding tools work sanely for people from any location. It doesn’t address off-campus uses, but it doesn’t make things any worse, either — just proxy like you’re already doing. (OpenID could solve this very elegantly… if libraries decide to jump and be early adopters here. That’ll totally happen, too.)

LibraryFind is a combination multi-search tool and harvester — they think multi-search is inherently a flawed approach (hint: they’re right) and that harvesting is ultimately going to be a better solution.

But multi-search is what we have right now… and man, even in an early stage, it kicks Metalib squarely in the testicles. It provides hits from the catalog as well as article databases (why doesn’t everyone do this?). It caches results, which makes it fast while also hugely pleasing database vendors. It’s really very excellent.

Back to harvesting now — OSU is looking to harvest stuff. Lots of stuff. Unless I mis-heard, they’ve got 200,000 items now… and they’re investigating what it’ll take to scale up to two trillion items.

To reach that kind of scale, you need some very serious investment in infrastructure — something not everyone is gonna want to do. If they, say, implemented the Magic Resolving URLs, this tool would kick ass for everyone.

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Well done, New Orleans and the American Library Association. The people were kind and event went off incredibly smoothly. Thank you for the chance to experience such a fascinating city and for enabling optimism and hope in the strength and resilience of people.

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ALA announced yesterday that librarians attending the upcoming Midwinter conference will have the “opportunity to proudly proclaim their ‘radical’ and ‘militant’ support for intellectual freedom, privacy, and civil liberties” by purchasing a red, white, and blue button that reads:

“Radical Militant Librarian – Defending Access, Defending Privacy, Defending Freedom.”

The buttons will cost $2.00, unless bought in bulk (at which time the cost goes down). What a radical bargain! And in the colors of France!

ALA claims that the slogan on the button is a response to FBI complaints about politically “radical, militant librarians” who raised their voices over the PATRIOT Act.

My anticipation is that many of our least radical, and certainly least militant librarians will happily, jauntily purchase a button and sport it at work the following week. The kitsch value of this button is irresistible (”Must… buy… buttoon… must… have one for my blazer.”) I also anticipate that many of our most militant library spokespeople will not be wearing this button at ALA this summer.

From the OED:

Militant: 3. a. Combative; aggressively persistent; strongly espousing a cause; entrenched, adamant.

Radical: 3. e. Characterized by independence of, or departure from, what is usual or traditional; progressive, unorthodox, or revolutionary (in outlook, conception, design, etc.).

That this button is a fundraiser is a granted point. But the slogan strikes me as blind, purchasable flagwaving that can (and will) be worn by librarians who will hardly deserve the label. “Revolutionary”? “Aggressively persistent”? How many of us can claim such a thing? The trumpet is hardly loud enough to be heard over the wall, much less bring it down.

Maybe this button should be given by ALA to the deserving few.

My own button would realistically read: “Clean, Showered Librarian: Defending Thai Food, Defending Lost, Defending Wisconsin Cheese.”

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A week and a half ago I attended the 2005 LITA National Forum. It was a very good conference. You can read all about it on the LITA blog.

Highlights for me at the conference involved seeing what is going on with metasearch technologies. Personally, I have been a big skeptic of metasearching and a true librarian who sees the point in the ‘native interface’ arguments. The folks at the University of Rochester and the California Digital Library have convinced me that federated searching has the potential to become one of the primary library technologies.

Roy Tennant’s keynote address was also an excellent overview of the questions we should be asking ourselves and best practices for development. I was struck by a statement he made that builds upon his maxim, “Librarians like to search. Everyone else likes to find.” He pointed out that our job is to make the computer act more like a good reference librarian rather than force a patron act like a librarian/expert searcher.

I also gave my first professional presentation with my boss on my project work on development of a serials, journals and electronic resource managemennt system. It has been the culmination of a very busy year. We were even blogged (at least twice), with more or less degrees of accuracy. Naturally, I was nervous going into it and will admit to being extremely fortunate for the coattails I had the opportunity to ride in on. The presentation went very well and I would highly recommend this kind of professional development participation…

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St. Louis was a sweltering place for a preconference, but I suppose no more sweltering than Chicago was for ALA. My trip to St. Louis went oddly well – unlike my trip last year to Virginia for Rare Book School, which was a nightmare of science fiction proportions and culminated in my lost luggage being delivered nicely, and grossly, wet.

The theme of this year’s RBMS preconference was education – both education for librarians and librarians as educators. The real focus, though, was on the former, as many plenary talks and papers and informal chat during the breaks seemed to veer in that direction.

How did library school prepare us? Was it sufficient? Will any number of degrees prepare us for the real work of working as a librarian in a special collections library? Is the LIS curriculum essentially flawed?

As you all know I was probably the number one whip wielder when I was doing my LIS degree. I lamented all of the things that many LIS students lament: the lack of rigor in the program, the dominance of the public and children’s libraries mentality, the ice cream socials. I flogged the ice cream social until it was a vanilla mess.

But at this conference I was feeling ready to defend myself against what I thought would be a loud proclamation that the new crop of special collections librarians are under-educated and, at root, unqualified to take the place of the retiring curators and directors. I even pointed out to a presenter that special collections librarians are in the minority in LIS programs (thus changing the curriculum for, say, two people would be absurd) and that we can learn a lot from talking to public and academic librarians about things like outreach, BI, and reference (where special collections are sorely behind).

To my surprise the proclamation wasn’t finger-pointing at all. The dominant idea in the end seemed to be, “What can we do to better prepare new special collections librarians?” There was a feeling that RBMS and its members were taking on the responsibility themselves to supplement what young librarians learn in LIS programs with mentoring, additional education opportunities (like Rare Book School), and internships.

And as I listened and talked with older special collections librarians, it dawned on me that I’m a professional now, and that I can help with advice and with lending a curious ear to LIS students interested in this field.

Does that mean I’m raring to contact SLIS and put my name in as a resource for students like that? I’m not sure. What do you guys think? Some of you had mentors, I know, but maybe not all. Is it our responsibility to somehow make things better for students who come after us?

Enjoy ALA, or not going to conferences at all!

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