Blog posts from January 2007

During the week leading up to ALA Midwinter, I received an email message from a publicist, stating that his client would be attending Midwinter, and wondering if I would like to conduct an interview. His client is David Pogue, the excellent NY Times columnist and blogger who writes about technology topics, especially handheld electronic devices. I jumped at the chance to interview Pogue, suggesting 10 Sunday morning as the appointed time.
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I'm a big fan of the interactive/ dynamic/ RSS'ed/ video-blogged/ to-the-user-born school of library services. The days when we saw our job as input/output for books and journal articles are, I hope, long over. Most of us get itchy when we think about spending a year to make a minor decision… that way of doing things is so very 1995.

But when I talk to colleagues inside the belly of the IT beast, they share one heartfelt concern: think about what you're asking for.
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In the days of yore it was not uncommon for universities in Britain and the U.S. to have a policy called "rustication." If a student acted up academically, he would be sent away from the university for a few months to think about his transgressions and, ideally, rededicate himself to the life of the university. As the term "rustication" implies, the concept in its pure form involves being sent down to the farm. I doubt that many rusticated scholars, such as the young Milton, Dryden, and Swinburne, actually slopped any hogs, but the thought of them knee-deep in muck provides some measure of solace and encouragement for us all.
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