tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-369079822011-09-02T03:36:37.506-07:00Library culture and technology.John Finkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14993317075849406603noreply@blogger.comBlogger341100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36907982.post-75459485702983582652009-07-27T10:56:00.001-07:002009-07-27T16:48:03.518-07:00

Anybody who spends more than, say, fifteen minutes around me will quickly discover that I am a big fan of open source and open access. If you'd asked me fifteen years ago about open access, I probably wouldn'tve even know what it was, but nowadays I think about it a lot and I'm a little embarassed to admit that open access just might trump open source in the grand scheme of things. Of course,

John Finkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14993317075849406603noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36907982.post-35832204641292532972009-05-31T18:07:00.001-07:002009-05-31T18:16:41.966-07:00

This really deserves a way bigger post, but I'm very very (very) tired; consequently, let me present some brief lessons from my time at etigcamp in Montreal:1) 1% of librarians are indifferent, 1% of librarians are actively evil, and 98% of librarians are made of PURE BADASSERY and general awesomeness and were entirely represented at etigcamp.2) The language thing bugs me more than perhaps it

John Finkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14993317075849406603noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36907982.post-13488497655588361602009-04-03T07:58:00.000-07:002009-04-03T09:15:18.282-07:00

Yesterday I was at a conference in Waterloo, Ontario. Not a library conference, weirdly enough, but one about software licensing, development methodology, stuff like that. I don't want to talk about everyone who was presenting at the conference, but I do want to talk about the opening keynote guy and another guy who spoke later, just to compare and contrast and rant a little bit. It'll be fun!

John Finkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14993317075849406603noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36907982.post-65120565349857636102008-06-28T19:08:00.000-07:002008-06-30T10:03:47.545-07:00

So on Friday I went to my first Unconference and had a blast. Thanks very much to the fine folks at York U. who put it on, and super extra doubleplus thanks to the people who attended my Evergreen session -- it was wonderful to talk with you! I'd put up my slides, but I didn't have any, and my notes are nigh unreadable.Random impressions:* The two-track format was good to fit more speakers in,

John Finkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14993317075849406603noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36907982.post-18555181501321901252008-06-23T11:41:00.001-07:002008-06-23T11:47:21.741-07:00

I'm a frequent and veeeeery vigorous user of del.icio.us -- basically it's my brain dump, so anything that's even remotely notable gets duly tagged and marked. I'm almost up to 9000 bookmarks, yowch.So when that wordle thing came along and I was near a 32 bit machine (an aside: okay, there's no Java plugin for 64 bit Linux? buh) I popped my del.icio.us through it, and kapowee, here's the

John Finkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14993317075849406603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36907982.post-26084942526871661392008-05-01T06:13:00.000-07:002008-05-01T06:21:45.539-07:00

I've never been as good as I should be on the presentation front; I always think something's been played out and people will never be interested in hearing me yammer about it unless I happen to be right at the front to mid-front of the wave. That's happened a couple of times (with Zotero and wikis) but not often enough. So I'm trying to correct that, and here are some places I'll be speaking at

John Finkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14993317075849406603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36907982.post-85602500913846653912008-02-22T06:52:00.000-08:002008-02-22T07:28:31.399-08:00

Following this (and by extension a lot of other folks):* I don't own a cellphone. Work gives me one, but I never remember what the number is and I'm not sure I could check my voicemail. I find the interface annoying and confusing.* I don't own any desktop computer that is newer than five years old. I have a five year old laptop that I never use. The last time I bought a new computer was in

John Finkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14993317075849406603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36907982.post-87220637355129237552008-01-22T08:05:00.000-08:002008-01-22T08:27:43.662-08:00

Since moving to Canada last year, I've told people that although copyright was a particular research interest of mine back in the States, I've tried to put it on the back burner here 'cos, well, despite everything that's similar this is a different country, with (natch) different copyright laws, and I didn't want to assume something about the Canadian version of copyright and then have it come

John Finkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14993317075849406603noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36907982.post-90017384369410427432008-01-17T09:01:00.001-08:002008-01-17T09:03:37.620-08:00

Last Friday, Randy Metcalfe of eIFL was kind enough to make the trip from K-W to McMaster to talk to me about Evergreen. In the process, he makes me sound a lot cooler than I actually am. Thanks, Randy!

John Finkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14993317075849406603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36907982.post-35899329992114104022008-01-08T06:56:00.001-08:002008-01-09T08:28:12.911-08:00

So I spent most of my Christmas vacation in the depths of Michigan, in a shack that only relatively recently got their own (e.g, non party line) phone service. So yeah, forget about Internet, forget about any sort of informational fun that isn't either locally produced (spent a lot of time watching the Johnny Carson DVDs my pop got for Christmas) or over-the-air TV (Mitt Romney was hitting the

John Finkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14993317075849406603noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36907982.post-71001453419007121912007-12-13T08:05:00.001-08:002007-12-13T08:05:43.019-08:00

No introduction of the CDMCA this year. Has the bullet been dodged?

John Finkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14993317075849406603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36907982.post-38017918558946834472007-12-13T06:56:00.000-08:002007-12-13T06:57:46.369-08:00

Heh. Maybe I spoke too soon. Hey, citizens, do what I can't do and make a fuss. I don't have the power. Three minutes and counting...

John Finkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14993317075849406603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36907982.post-6294354603040574642007-12-12T09:39:00.000-08:002007-12-12T10:54:01.289-08:00

I've been thinking a lot about copyright issues the past couple of weeks -- this was a research and speaking topic of mine back in the States, but since I left the country I've tried not to think about it too much. No matter how much Canada feels like home and all to me, I don't know enough about the history of copyright and its applications here to really do anything. But two things have

John Finkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14993317075849406603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36907982.post-51998645792536605422007-10-20T12:57:00.001-07:002007-10-20T13:02:30.038-07:00

Forgot to mention this -- two great things came out of Access 2007 regarding Evergreen usability at the install: Dan Scott's Evergreen test script, which makes sure you've got all your prerequisites in line for a smooth Evergreen install, and Bill Erickson's Gentoo/Debian Evergreen Makefile. I've tested out Dan's script but have not messed with the makefile, but if I do any new installs or

John Finkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14993317075849406603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36907982.post-20050243410770519372007-10-20T12:22:00.000-07:002007-10-20T15:02:27.497-07:00

Not because it's the best one, but because the conference took place well over a week ago and all the best folks have already blogged about it. In my defense, I'm coming to this slowly because on the day after the conference ended I started getting a slight sore throat which then blew up into those monstrous, death dealing colds that I seem to get about once a year. Usually right after I travel

John Finkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14993317075849406603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36907982.post-70496478344221680702007-09-14T14:04:00.000-07:002007-09-14T14:08:53.727-07:00

del.icio.us is four today. Happy birthday del.icio.us! What can I say about it, except that I keep the sum total of my recent knowledge in there, basically anything from 2004 onwards. You get a bit of it in the sidebar on the right, but that's only stuff with the library tag, not the whole burrito.It's a little weird that just about everything I learn and know recently can be distilled into an

John Finkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14993317075849406603noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36907982.post-69629274735645172672007-09-06T08:49:00.001-07:002007-09-06T09:38:13.895-07:00

I've been at my new job/new country for -- hmm, a little over a month now -- and here's what I've learned. This is specifically unrelated to the library, so apologies for the departure. I'll get back on the library stuff shortly.Things in Canada that are more expensive than things in the US:1) Regular brick-n-mortar banks. They charge a monthly fee. To hold onto my money. Which earns no

John Finkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14993317075849406603noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36907982.post-70821799616210074892007-07-03T10:49:00.000-07:002007-07-03T11:00:25.396-07:00

Cranking like crazy to get things in order for the move so that's why I've been maintaining blog silence, although a couple things have happened in the last few days to which I want to bring some attention:Evergreen was at ALA, with flat-out terrific attendance. Incredibly encouraging, and the slides are a must-view -- I was particularly struck by the patron reactions to having a union catalog -

John Finkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14993317075849406603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36907982.post-61445783029000381732007-04-18T07:13:00.000-07:002007-04-18T07:25:43.692-07:00

I haven't written about this -- bad blogger, bad! -- but I'm pleased as punch to announce here that I've accepted a new job at McMaster University Libraries in Hamilton Ontario. It'll be the first time ever that I'll be expressly charged with working with open source software in libraries, which has been my consuming passion professionally since 1995. Add that to the opportunity of working with

John Finkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14993317075849406603noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36907982.post-6314143546939147882007-04-18T06:09:00.000-07:002007-04-18T07:11:32.452-07:00

This post is going to be about Twitter eventually, but let me start out by dividing the worlds of blogging and/or social networks into two very rough portions. There's personal blogging, which is about what you ate for breakfast, where you are right now, what's going on with your favorite TV shows, your professional activities etc... basically media about you as a person, whether that be

John Finkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14993317075849406603noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36907982.post-38456902524370612042007-03-13T10:14:00.001-07:002007-03-14T11:12:34.324-07:00

Welp, I went and survived ODCE, but wouldn't you know it I forgot to come back here and talk about it. So here's what went down:I had 100% attendance! Yes, this means my one attendee showed up.There was another guy who was supposed to be there, and he didn't show up, and he left his 4 attendees and the organizers scratching their heads.None of those 4 attendees came to my session.I'm not

John Finkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14993317075849406603noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36907982.post-12387218954840997272007-02-25T16:14:00.000-08:002007-02-25T16:28:22.160-08:00

Finally starting to get a handle on this OpenID stuff, although I have to admit it's taken some rattling around in my head to actually get it to come together. The "Aha!" moment just came something like ten minutes ago, with this tutorial. Took me about five minutes and kapow, I could log into wikitravel, using libgrunt.blogspot.com as my ID and the fine folks at myopenid as a server.It helped

John Finkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14993317075849406603noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36907982.post-8432906065664371312007-02-25T14:46:00.000-08:002007-02-25T14:47:49.904-08:00

As lucid an explanation of the importance of Net Neutrality as I've ever seen. Go see it if you haven't.

John Finkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14993317075849406603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36907982.post-79368885759472648402007-02-25T14:01:00.000-08:002007-02-25T14:08:39.828-08:00

And nobody came?So, as I've mentioned before I've got a workshop coming up at ODCE, on electronic bibliographic management. Actually the title of it is "Options in Electronic Bibliographic Management" and maybe that title was a bit dry, because I got a phone call from one of the conference organizers last week. She told me, somewhat apologetically, that a grand total of one person signed up for

John Finkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14993317075849406603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36907982.post-20220701101821557782007-02-01T06:32:00.000-08:002007-02-01T06:46:36.320-08:00

What a time to be a librarian!First off I found out that I'm not dooming myself by moving from sysadmining to librarianship -- not too worried about that, but hey -- and I wake up this morning to find multiple references to something pretty damn exciting, and written in Ruby on Rails to boot.oss4lib sez:"In a nutshell, LibraryFind is metasearch software developed in Ruby on Rails, and released

John Finkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14993317075849406603noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36907982.post-4005689483050849312007-01-22T04:47:00.000-08:002007-02-05T06:14:06.716-08:00

Okay, maybe not, but he's managed to absolutely thrill the hell out of me and have me run around my basement like a fool at 7am -- no mean feat before I've eaten breakfast. Could SOPAC be the answer? Drupal frontend plus social catalog equals holy mackinac. I am pumped, I tell you.Pumped.

John Finkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14993317075849406603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36907982.post-2722842470668431042007-01-21T15:04:00.000-08:002007-01-21T15:23:11.111-08:00

I've been a Linux-on-the-desktop user for a while now -- 12 years. Maybe 13 -- I actually can't remember. I usually date it from 1994, but I may have been in as early as the fall of 1993. At any rate, let's just say a *long* time and be done with it. Until recently, I've never been able to wow people on Linux, at least not visually. There's only so much you can do to point to month long

John Finkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14993317075849406603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36907982.post-52979661028602044072007-01-05T09:20:00.000-08:002007-01-21T12:39:14.321-08:00

I've been invited to give a workshop and talk about the Creative Commons to SWON. Really, I could not be more pleased about this -- I don't know any details about times or dates or (really even) at this point about content, except that all content will be CC licensed, natch.More details as I get 'em.

John Finkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14993317075849406603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36907982.post-1164129521038653002006-12-13T13:21:00.000-08:002006-12-13T13:47:07.448-08:00

There's been a lot of really big buzz around Second Life in the library world. Lots of libraries have electronic presences in SL -- University of Cincinnati, the state libraries of Kansas and Michigan, a huge presence from these guys -- they were the first, as far as I can tell. It's getting a lot of non-library related press as well; both from news sources and blogs. And it's not just hippie

John Finkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14993317075849406603noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36907982.post-1165789323991697972006-12-10T14:19:00.000-08:002006-12-13T13:35:00.315-08:00

Woohah, I've been invited to speak at ODCE on Zotero and other bibliographic management systems. This is no itty-bitty poster session -- it's two-plus hours of workshop. Man. Ouch.I'll be developing some sort of handout/slideshow/other sort of thing for the workshop and will, of course, be licensing it under some sort of Creative Commons license.If you're planning on attending ODCE and read

John Finkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14993317075849406603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36907982.post-1165278319322966332006-12-04T16:23:00.000-08:002006-12-04T16:25:19.346-08:00

Take a look over here. McMasters is planning on outsourcing cataloging; this has been done before, of course, and in my limited experience it seems to usually end up costing more to outsource than to keep cataloging in-house, but maybe things have changed since the last time I thought about this (roughly 2001) and/or McMasters has some information that I don't have. Regardless, a gutsy move.

John Finkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14993317075849406603noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36907982.post-1162922686201707622006-11-07T10:04:00.000-08:002006-11-09T09:48:01.536-08:00

Remember how I talked about RefWorks and ownership of data? The CBC ran an article about how Canadian universities are abandoning RefWorks because of the Patriot Act -- it's a pretty good read. My wife heard some audio on this on CBC Radio, and supposedly they went into a lot more detail about it -- pity I didn't catch it. Apparently they mentioned some sort of homegrown RefWorks replacement,

John Finkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14993317075849406603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36907982.post-1162842453603856222006-11-06T11:47:00.000-08:002006-11-06T17:15:54.253-08:00

Lots of chatter about Google's Rollyo.com-ish CSE stuff. Always one to jump in on the middle of a trend, I've whipped one up for searching Ohio's newspaper websites. Seems to work okay, and I do appreciate the fact that Google has let me opt out of advertising for search results.

John Finkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14993317075849406603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36907982.post-1162838365382123782006-11-06T10:32:00.000-08:002006-11-06T11:41:09.570-08:00

There's been a lot of talk about Zotero and RefWorks out in library blog-o-land. I've had oblique experience with RefWorks (I wrote my own master's paper using citeulike, which I wouldn't really recommend to anyone due to the fact that, at least at the time I was using it, it was mostly geared towards science-y stuff and having to manually type in references was a Colossal Pain) as we officially

John Finkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14993317075849406603noreply@blogger.com4