Caveat Lector

So I was writing an email, and I wanted the title of that book. You know? The book by those folks at Cornell about managing technology change in libraries. Where they talk about how some folks are on the bleeding edge, and that’s fine, but eventually technological change has to broaden its base so that more people feel ownership in it and more people are skilled enough to handle it. That book. You remember that book?

Well, I do. But I surely couldn’t remember the title or the editor, and I wasn’t sure whether Cornell University Press had published it, or if the Cornell librarians had published it elsewhere.

I tried a subject-keyword OPAC search. No soap; too many relevant subject headings, not enough time to go through them all. I can’t force the OPAC to disgorge a scannable list of books from the last five years having something to do with library technology.

So I said, “screw it” quietly to myself, and typed “cornell library technology book” (sans quotes) into Google.

And there it was. Becoming a Digital Library, edited by Susan J. Barnes. That’s the book; I didn’t even have to refine that extremely ugly search. I typed the title happily into my email.

I hate OPACs. I hate them more every day. This is why.

It’s an excellent book, by the way. I recommend it, and mean to model my behavior on its suggestions.