A funny and ultimately disheartening? article in the Washington Post portrays librarians as the last defenders of truth in a decadent culture consumed with trivia and superficialities, even going so far as to describe librarians as “trench warriors for truth.” Here’s a dramatic excerpt from a chat reference service: “We’re losing him! We’re going to [...]

I recently gave a keynote talk at a meeting of a statewide library directors group. I called the talk “The Search for Tomorrow’s Library Leaders in A ‘Dissin’ the Director’ Landscape” and part of the talk referred back to some previous ACRLog posts on leadership and library directors. I mentioned some of the reasons that [...]

At ACRLog, I try to write about the biggest issues I can wrap my head around, and I try to write primarily for librarians who are new to the profession, especially those who are only a year or two into school or who have recently graduated. I think of this as following the imperative to [...]

Pardon me while my head explodes. The word “access” is one with generally good connotations among librarians. It’s in a lot of mission statements. It takes on a more mercenary meaning when it refers to the relationship between the press and power. And The New York Times has a very scary story about it today. [...]

Drexel University Libraries’ annual Scholarly Communication Symposium focused on web 2.0 in general and open science in particular. This is fast becoming my favorite conference: I can walk there; it’s free; it’s well organized; everyone there is smart, friendly and from diverse backgrounds; you get to eat a great lunch and it’s all over by [...]