LOL!

Libraries are a pretty classic example of a profession that's still stuck in the old/print model of doing things and having a really hard time waking up to the world completely mutating around them. Sometimes I feel like I'm banging my head against a wall.

Libraries stuck? Try working in a school. The wall is harder than ever but my head is getting soft after 6 years of repating the mantra "Blogs are digital paper" in classroom and hallway and administrator's office. I finally edged my way into a library. At least the walls here are padded with books. Great that there are some library types at Net2. Maybe we should try for a lunch or a beer?  

I keep typing "I hope to meet you at Net2."  I know this is going to be like my wedding.  I only spoke to 50 percent of the people and didn't say more than three sentences to anyone.  (Except my wife.)

I'm a wannabe librarian, just haven't taken the plunge for an MLS/MIS.  (I have a problem with classrooms.)

It seems that cataloguing should be a super-hot niche right now, but that doesn't seem to be the case.  Like other areas of higher education, we're banging our heads.  I'm getting too for that!

I'll try to track you down and ask you about that niche.

  :-) 

Thanks for the introduction and I'm glad the librarian community will be repesented at the conference.  I think the advent of tagging is ushering in the ability of the  savvy but non-technical user to organize the vast amount of information on th web.  But what does that mean to our ability to access information?  How does the lack of standardization in metadata play out?  And how does that play out across culturals? Across any group actually?  And what does it mean to organizations, like libraries, who were traditional in charge of organizing and making information freely available?

Questions only, I know.  But these are things that sometimes -- I really am that much of a geek -- keep me up at night.

Marnie Webb
Net² team