Explorations with Information and Technology

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Latest from Explorations with Information and Technology

Reading Time: 7 minutes
I’m still in my first year at my new role and it’s budget season. This is one of those perennial experiences that you would think would become routine. If you move libraries, though, you find that each organization does it differently, even if they use the same words. At the same

Reading Time: 5 minutes
One of the things I’ve learned both from self-hosting a server inside my home and from using commercial hosting is that I want bad actors as far from my server as possible. When I migrated my hosting company recently, it was primarily for cost reasons. I was delighted, though, to find

Reading Time: 6 minutes
Librarians are knowledge workers. We work on things that require attention to detail and investigation, whether we’re cataloging books or answering obscure reference questions. I am always interested in new research on interruptions and thinking around how to improve the work environment so that librarians can be as effective as possible.

Reading Time: 6 minutes
My recent travel to Canada couldn’t have been more normal. I drove up to the Ambassador Bridge border control with very few other cars from Canada. The person in front of me was in hijab and showed an ID as they entered the gate. They were waved through quickly and I

Reading Time: 5 minutes
A colleague was in town and attending ABA Techshow so I swung by McCormick Place to see them. It’s been awhile and the Expo pass is free (something I will keep in mind next year). I walked over to the Metra and hopped on the train to the conference site. As

Reading Time: 5 minutes
I crossed the border into the U.S. from Canada with my American wife in mid March. It seemed pretty normal, even given the extra paperwork we were doing: car import, dog import. I’m a green card holder and have gotten comfortable with the ease with which I’ve been able to cross

Reading Time: 4 minutes
One of the interesting things about my current role is that it is two part-time roles. When I was hired, the role required a library director 49% of the time and a faculty member for the remaining 51%. It has resulted in a lot of unusual outcomes. For example, when I

Reading Time: 6 minutes
The semester started last week and I have been building out my course materials in our online learning management system (LMS). Our university uses Blackboard but I expect that users of Thomson Reuter’s TWEN or Blackboard’s competitor, Canvas, have been going through a similar experience. I’ve been surprised how much duplication