Flying Cars of Yesterday (2)

To counterbalance my skepticism in a prior post about the rosy-painted future of 3D printing, I offer this too-good-to-be-true quote attributed to a U.S. Patent Office Commissioner who in 1899 is purported to have said, "Everything that can be invented has been invented."

(For those who can't get enough of forecasts that went wrong, there is "Incorrect Predictions" at Wikiquote.)

Flying Cars of Yesterday (1)

Where are the flying cars promised so long ago? Unfortunately, they may be in the same future-past junk heap as 3D printing for libraries. Bracing, exciting is the concept presented on the American Libraries video. But so much of it is infiltrated with wish fulfillment, a projection of what would be were progress assured and circumstances utopian. As Voltaire said, if every infant grew up to the promise of its potential, the world would overflow with geniuses.

Thar She Blows (1)

On the ACRL post-conference webcast critiques were invariably of the gushing sort. I've no objection to praise--especially were it ever to be directed against me--but the sugary compliments lacked intellectual heft. They were pro forma and are another example of librarian "nice-ing," with politeness and support replacing thoughtful criticism.

Library Movie Titles That Didn't Make It (1)

The Towering Info: The story of a library's information tower that caught fire.

Dear Old Dinosaurs

Reference books are dinosaurs that don’t know they’re dead. Once the Brahmins of library books, they have been marginalized. That they don't circulate is a strike against them. Their expense can make them less desirable acquisitions. The internet easily out-performs them in the case of ready reference. Austere and humorless, some are weighed by intimidating bulk or voluminism through aiming for relentless comprehensiveness.

Yet they must have a few sentimental friends in the publishing or library or scholarly world, for otherwise their extinction would be official.

The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether

The best library is where the inmates--not the users but the librarians--have taken over the asylum. This plays to the strength of the individual rather than homogenizing the library operation into bland and corporate rules. Librarian-centered administration could create pitfalls of idiosyncratic extremism, obstructionism, and balkanization (as everyone does his own thing), so there must also be individual accountability.

Blogged Down (10): I and We

Library blogs are not librarian blogs, a whole 'nother animal. Library blogs are much further from an individual personality than librarian blogs, which have a right to brandish the word "I," while the former in effect uses a royal "we."

Librarian blogs cover much more subject-territory than library blogs, and in a manner from the light (e.g., Librarian at Play) to the heavy, where entries are so encumbered with end notes that you'd think that they had wandered in from the journal College and Research Libraries.