Caveat Lector

I met today with the systemwide committee that’s working out where the repository I run goes in the future. Les Carr was there. He was awesome, and so was the meeting.

This is not, you understand, something I usually say about meetings. Meetings are not awesome. Meetings are for the most part necessary banality. But this? For me (I will not speak for the other attendees), this was a frickin’ awesome meeting. My mind just exploded all over the landscape. It’s a wonder I could drive home at all.

I don’t feel comfortable yet talking about the substance of this awesome meeting. There’s a lot of work and politics yet before the substance of the awesomeness can become reality.

I can, however, comfortably mention that probably the most valuable member of an extraordinarily valuable committee is the committee skeptic, the one who isn’t sure why the committee included them in the first place, the one whose hand goes up first with a question, the one whose questions are always tough and always on-point.

This librarian’s value to the committee is inestimable, and I am hunting for ways I can make that more widely known. Skeptics are often reviled, $DEITY knows. Me, I consider them means for discovering my weak and blind spots before I go making a fool of myself. I love me a good skeptic, and it’s my good fortune that this committee has one of the best.

Watch this space late in the year. I think we might just surprise you.