The PLA Blog | Official Blog of the Public Library Association
Touchy Feely
Here’s a guest post from a librarian named Terence Fitzgerald. Terence is a buddy I met at Pratt Institute who specializes in taxonomies, controlled vocabularies and metadata. The central idea of Media Ecology is that the tools and media we surround ourselves with and use to extend our natural abilities deeply affect how we think [...]
Signage from the road
I’m something of a signage geek. Being a visual learner, I suspect I’ll always be interested in visual literacy, communication arts, and semiotics. I’m offering here a selection of signs from my trip. Some are from libraries, many are from elsewhere. I hope you’ll take this post lightly, but at the same time consider what [...]
10-Day No-Work Post-Conference Rule
Karen Keys here, checking in with some post-Midwinter wrap-up. I know a lot of folks are tuning in because they didn’t get the chance to attend Midwinter, but I picked up some handy-dandy advice for those of who did attend or who frequently attend conferences. It’s called the 10-Day No-Work Post-Conference Rule. Amazingly, it means [...]
Skateboarding is not a crime at the Mesa Library
Today I visited Antoine Predock’s Mesa Library in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Before I ever entered the building I decided it has one of my favorite young adult spaces I’ve seen yet. Why? Because there is a skatepark attached to the front of the building. Rather than defending the public space against recreational use by [...]
Retired New Mexico Rancher Loves His Library
After ALA Midwinter Meeting I grabbed a rental car and headed down to New Mexico to do some exploring. Last night I ate my dinner at the bar of a little restaurant called The Shed (Santa Fe) where I highly recommend you try the pollo adobo. Delicious. Anyways, when I travel I like to start [...]
YALSA 28 Days of Advocacy Coming Soon
Lorraine here with something neat I learned about at the YALSA blogger meetup on Sunday morning: February 2009 will be “28 Days of Advocacy” on the YALSA blog, with posts each day about the who, what, where, why, and HOW of advocating for teens and libraries. I hope you’ve all looked at Add It Up, [...]
Automatic bike rentals in Denver? Good to know!
Nick Franklin here again. I was saying to my neighbor on the Super Shuttle from the airport the other day about how ALA should sponsor bike rentals during Annual Conference so that we could get our morning exercise getting to the meetings that way if we choose. Maybe someone in Conference planning is reading? [...]
The OSC will not be Shredded Swiss Cheese.
It may well be a week or so before I can wrap my head around all of the stuff that has been happening here at the ALA Midwinter Meeting in Denver, but I wanted to drop a note about the Open Shelves Classification (OSC) meeting that happened in a hotel basement the other day. Some [...]
Code of Ethics 70th Anniversary
After hearing about Russian tanks ending the Prague Summer, Viktor Pestov decided he had to do something, so he talked his brother and a friend into becoming pamphleteers. To keep from being caught by the police, they threw their pamphlets out of windows during parades. They crawled into the trolley yards at night and stuck [...]
taxonomy vs. folksonomy
Lorraine here, with a quick thought from the YALSA blogger meetup. Some serious work on tagging and categorization is taking place at the YALSA blog and much of it is clearly needed – having standardized tags and categories make stuff findable (I assume that I need not elaborate further, o library-blog readers…) However, Beth Gallaway [...]
