Tanned, rested and ready
I'm flying back from four talks in four days—Computers in Libraries (twice), the Library of Congress, and Digital Odyssey in Toronto.
The Library of Congress talk was videoed, and will be public in a couple weeks.* It was great fun to do. (Who could pass up the chance to discuss the tag vampire smut with some of the world's top catalogers?) And as a long-time user and admirer of the Library of Congress, it was quite an honor. I pushed them hard on openning up their data, and the shortcomings of the LC subject system, but they were good natured about it. And my anti-OCLC feelings drew no fire. As one of them put it, only half-kidding, "They wouldn't be anything without us."**
Derik A. Badman's cartoon of Roy Tennant (left) and me (right) giving talks. Actually, Roy's example was about murdered midget gypsy prostitutes. Well that's three conferences he won't be invited to!At CIL I got a lot of opportunity to show off LibraryThing for Libraries, our new push to put LibraryThing data into library catalogs. Response was positive, even fevered.*** Demos went well, showing book recommendations and tags in a large public library. ("Chick lit" and "cyberpunk" are great examples, but I have to size people up quickly to know which one to use.) There was a certain amount of disbelief about its coolest feature--no back-end integration and working with any system. But anti-system-vendor sentiment is so high that this was welcomed. The first round of libraries should be at least a dozen strong, with both academics and small and large publics.
The highlight of all three conferences was the chance to puts faces to names, often names of blogs. My Google Reader feed is suddenly full of people I know! (But if I start listing I'll surely forget someone...) I had a couple good meals, one good argument, a great lunch conversation at the LC and, as a coda, a stroll around Toronto.
(later) I'm off the plane now and in D.C., staying with friends for a few days. There's a lot left to do for LibraryThing for Libraries, but the big initial push is over, and we can throw time back into building new features for LibraryThing. A number of them will revolve around JavaScript. Altay, our new JS guru, will be rolling out some serious magic.
*Among other things they need to synch it up with the "slides." But I do my talks live, driving around at breakneck speed. The staffer assigned to coordinate the synch looked positively frightened.
**I owe a blog post revising my post about OCLC and MIT. Apparently OCLC didn't stop them, but MIT legal.
***I came back from one talk to find the booth table littered with business cards. I felt like an NBA star at a nightclub.
Conference coverage:
The Library of Congress talk was videoed, and will be public in a couple weeks.* It was great fun to do. (Who could pass up the chance to discuss the tag vampire smut with some of the world's top catalogers?) And as a long-time user and admirer of the Library of Congress, it was quite an honor. I pushed them hard on openning up their data, and the shortcomings of the LC subject system, but they were good natured about it. And my anti-OCLC feelings drew no fire. As one of them put it, only half-kidding, "They wouldn't be anything without us."**
Derik A. Badman's cartoon of Roy Tennant (left) and me (right) giving talks. Actually, Roy's example was about murdered midget gypsy prostitutes. Well that's three conferences he won't be invited to!
The highlight of all three conferences was the chance to puts faces to names, often names of blogs. My Google Reader feed is suddenly full of people I know! (But if I start listing I'll surely forget someone...) I had a couple good meals, one good argument, a great lunch conversation at the LC and, as a coda, a stroll around Toronto.
(later) I'm off the plane now and in D.C., staying with friends for a few days. There's a lot left to do for LibraryThing for Libraries, but the big initial push is over, and we can throw time back into building new features for LibraryThing. A number of them will revolve around JavaScript. Altay, our new JS guru, will be rolling out some serious magic.
*Among other things they need to synch it up with the "slides." But I do my talks live, driving around at breakneck speed. The staffer assigned to coordinate the synch looked positively frightened.
**I owe a blog post revising my post about OCLC and MIT. Apparently OCLC didn't stop them, but MIT legal.
***I came back from one talk to find the booth table littered with business cards. I felt like an NBA star at a nightclub.
Conference coverage:
posted by Tim at 10:45 PM
11 Comments:
Tim, I really enjoyed seeing your talk at the LC. I'm excited by a lot of the work that you're doing.
Tim, that first link isn't by me (though they use my picture). And you may have missed my other drawing of you (which is the one I thought you were gonna use):
http://flickr.com/photos/madinkbeard/463075473
Man, I look better in the first one!
I'll correct the link.
yada yada yada - is it not time to give the man with the books some attention rather than all these features for libraries - thatwhere the original money came from - and the majority of the support too?
Yay! I got to meet you at CIL! Thanks for the CueCat! I can't stop scanning my books =)
Well, LibraryThing has always been partially about the library stuff. (Where do you think all that good book data comes from?) Maintaining and expanding our relationships with libraries is good for all.
Also, if libraries take this up like I think they will, LibraryThing will have money left over to fund non-library stuff.
partially yes but of late it seem to be exclusively so - the boards for advances have been so neglected of late that grass has started growing over there
You're right. Note taken.
thanx Tim
Cheers and great to meet you at CIL! Enjoyed your talk quite a bit as well -- magical fantasy sadomasochism for children and all. :-)
(I was without a business card, so I left you my sticker...)
thank you very very nıce thank you very very much...
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