Small public squee
It’s probably a measure of my fit with the profession I chose that I have a laundry-list of heroes in it. I tend to go for people who challenge received wisdom intelligently, and the more lively and outspoken they are about it, the better.
(Yeah, yeah. I plead no contest to the charge of narcissism, even though I make no particular claim to intelligence. It does go to show, though, that it’s possible to be loud and occasionally contentious in this field and survive. Even prosper.)
I’ll cop to squeeing a bit when I get an email from one of my heroes. Walt Crawford and I are just about sparring buddies now. I loved hearing from Barbara Quint. And today I got a message from Andrew Pace, whose dry wit about his vendor background in the beginning of The Ultimate Digital Library amused and cheered me when I was considering taking a position with a library vendor. I’ve enjoyed reading his American Libraries columns, too; sometimes (especially recently) that was the only worthwhile read in the whole mag!
I’m told that development of the NCSU catalog is ongoing, which is no surprise. The nice thing about software projects is that there’s always room (if not necessarily funding) to improve them. I fully anticipate that my nitpicks as well as input from such luminaries as Karen Schneider will be considered and addressed where possible.
(Oh, and yes, the report from California is a must-read, even though it’s a PDF. My jaw dropped to find such radicalism in a buttoned-down library report! It’s wonderful stuff.)
Anyway, I was happy to hear from Andrew Pace, and I wanted to share my little squee moment with everybody.