Registration is now open for the Canadian Health Libraries Association 2008 Conference!
Taking place in sunny Halifax, Nova Scotia, the theme is "Navigating the seas of change"... I've never been to the east coast of Canada before, although I've lived and visited the east coast of the US before. It would obviously be much different and it would be interesting to attend this conference, but I went to last year's CHLA conference in Ottawa, many of my colleagues are going, and, besides, there are other conferences I'm considering, MLA and WILU being the two big ones coming up. I've never been to either Chicago, where MLA is this year, or Vancouver, where WILU is being held (Geez... I haven't been anywhere, have I?) so it would be interesting to see both but I don't know if I have enough professional development funds to cover both, and I certainly can't pay for one completely out of my own pocket so I'll probably have to choose. MLA is more closely linked to my current job but WILU is more generally applicable any job I'll have in the future. Chicago is closer and therefore cheaper, but Vancouver is still in Canada and if I took my wife we could make a little vacation out of it. Both locations sound interesting (although Chicago tips the scales slightly in this category). I don't know. I'll have to ask around for suggestions. Of course, YOU could tell me what you would vote for in a comment below... Hmmm...
Labels: family, health, librarianship, work
From the Distant Librarian (Thursday, January 31, 2008): Innovation in a book about Innovation.
Apparently "The myths of innovation" by Scott Berkun organizes its bibliography in ranked order by how much it was used in the making of the book. Very cool. I've always thought that bibliographies should include much more information than they do such as amount of usage in the work (such as above), how much of the referenced work applies to the work doing the referencing, or how representative the pieces used are of the work they are taken from. There's probably a wealth of data waiting to be unlocked from the writer's writing, researching and thinking processes if only they would spill it out on the page or if we had some sort of tracking method. Perhaps the increased use of citation management software (e.g. Refworks, Reference Manager, etc.) will help this along.
From Library Journal 1/25/2008: Internet Porn Statistics at Dallas Central Library Prompt City Concern.
Another example of public officials and newspaper folk thinking that filters are the answer to all our problems with inappropriate content showing up on library computer screens... I'm not going to show concern once again over the rather simplistic view too many people show when faced with this problem. Instead, what caught my eye this afternoon was one of the last details in this news item, saying that some columnist saying that "...filtering or more intense monitoring are not ideal solutions, but argued that 'doing nothing is worse than not ideal.'"
Well, one, the library is certainly not doing nothing. They do have policies and procedures in place, which, in most libraries are more than enough to handle the problem. But, after getting over the unusual wording of this concept, the statement really began to get to me on a logical level. Technically what she is saying is not possible. Since "ideal" basically means the best, and everything not ideal is worse, there's nothing left to be worse than "not ideal"! What's she's basically saying is that these options are better than doing nothing, which, although I don't agree, is a much more reasonable statement to make, and one that can be meaningfully argued for or against.
(Sorry. Sometimes the philosopher in me has to be heard! lol)
