By any means ...

I read a short article by in the Fast Company (embargoed until the next issue is out on newsstands) about a guy named Alfons Cornella ... He wrote a – no wait – he wrote THE first mathematics text written in Catalan ... that, by itself is enough for him to added to my Wall of Heroes ... Catalan, Basque, Irish ... I’m a sucker for all of the doomed languages ...

Anyhow, after his book tanked (imagine that ...?!), he decided that ...

“My mission would be to acquire ideas and diffuse them to society by any means.”

I love that ... probably because that’s exactly what I see as the mission of all libraries ... of all librarians ... to acquire ideas and diffuse them ... by any means ... and I guess that last part is my favorite ... by any means ... one more time, this time with feeling ...

... by ANY means!

It’s a great article ... you should really read it ... you’ll be glad you did ...

If you're interested, you can find out more about Alfons and his idea acquisition and diffusion at his site, Infonomia ... it's in Spanish, but I think it'd be worth learning!

Community strengthening, strategic plans, and the things we should do

I had lunch with a friend of mine a couple of days ago ... it's amazing what you find out when you least expect it ... intermixed with the stories of his escapemanship travels through Prague and the Philippines after graduating from college, was talk of his "new" job ... He works in educational services for a public television station in the region, and mentioned that after a recent pow-wow with the station president and the board, his roll is to go out into the community and link up with representatives from public, community, educational, and other service organizations to develop strategies for helping them achieve their missions and visions using the station's broadcasting expertise ...

To me, that's what libraries should do ... instead of putting together a strategic plan that identifies how we should build collections, develop a programming calendar, and emphasize our reference/information services, we should focus on helping our constituents (patrons, public agencies, and private businesses) achieve their goals ... that'll bring way more value to a community than would focusing inwardly on traditional "library" stuff ...

Anyhow ... after he told me about his new focus, I bought his lunch ... and began to hope that I'd be able to do the same, very soon!

Theory of everything ... last Wednesday

I was on vacation a few days ago ... an almost perfect day ... the kind of day that makes me believe in a unified theory of everything ...

It started when I got up early (I love getting up early on days off!) ... I had a leisurely breakfast and went in to the library as soon as it opened ... yeah, I was on vacation, but I wanted to do some totally non-job-related (hah-hah) research about communites of content -- research I could have done at home, no doubt, but there is something wonderful about going to the library when you're not on-the-job ... With a cup of Scooter’s flavor-of-the-day in hand, I found a big window-side table, planted myself, and logged on to the library's public WiFi and found and read through gobs of stuff about communities of content across the world ... I'll write more of that at some time later ... I had my Creative Zen on shuffle, and listened to the likes of Style Council, Van Morrison, Cathie Ryan, Billy Taylor, and a holy host of others ... Four hours passed quickly ... and I didn’t really want to leave ... until I did ...

Back in my car, I switched the radio on to serendipitously discover Steve Kraske’s interview of Dr. Michio Kaku on KCUR ... Dr. Kaku is a theoretical physicist at the City University of New York, and was apparently in town promoing his book Parallel Worlds: A Journey through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos (now that’s a title!) ... I'm pretty much a social sciences/humanities kinda guy, but I've always found the artistry and mystery of science, and particularly physics, beautiful and inviting ...

My favorite part of Dr. Kaku's talk was his likening of physics to music ... string theory as the harmonics of the universe and chemistry as the melodies created when these harmonies play together creating something with infinite layers of uniqueness ... Man, I just love that!

I was also struck by something he said about simplicity ... if a theory on physics is too difficult to explain to a child, then it's not worth the explanation ... the theory of everything requires simplicity at its core and throughout its whole ... and that got me thinking that this should probably be true in libraries too ...

A few hours later, I found myself standing in the halls of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. I hadn’t been there for a while, and that was good ... you see, everything seemed somewhat new and different ... and my new favorites were the Chinese and Japanese scrolls and screens ... they told stories, elaborate stories without words ... they reminded me of being a kid and looking through Richard Scarry’s art ... while the style was completely different, the stories had a way of wrapping around me ... I'm a passive observer of art (just as I am with physics, I guess) ... I understand less than I wish, but appreciate more than I used to ... and my few hours at the Nelson made me happy ...

I finished the day off at O'Dowd's Little Dublin, one of those staged Irish pubs that have sprung up all over ... I know that a lot of folks don’t care for these, but I have to say, the food was fantastic ... matched with live music (and hysterical conversation) with Eddie Delahunt, the night was a perfect topper.

So ... here it is ... my theory of everything ...

Happiness is time to consider, experience, and imagine the world and all its textures, tastes, smells, sounds, and sights ... most importantly, this happiness is only complete with someone with whom you can share it ...

How cool is it that I had it all of this in one day ... and for the rest of my life I'll have it with me everyday.

Continuing from yesterday ... Simplicity

Here's a perfect example of what I mentioned yesterday ...

Maryland Share is a community information database (CID) put together by Maryland's public libraries ... while I applaud the concept of a library-based CID, instead of pushing the content out to the Internet to be searched via conventional search engines, it requires patrons first to find the Maryland Share ... maybe with a major marketing campaign that would be more likely.

So the trick is to gather, create, or repurpose content, and then make sure people can find it their way ...

Also, we have to stay away from systems that create barriers between the content and the user ... a perfect example of this is JCL's own Sirsi system ... using the browser's back button instead of the "Back" button provided within the catalog system causes all sorts of problems ... that to me is pretty easy to detect, and should be pretty high on the list of things to fix ... I don't mean to pick on Sirsi at all -- most of the vendor-based systems and home-grown databases have problems equally as ripe for resolution ... don't think I've ever had that problem with Amazon or Google ...

Oh, and a very Happy New Year!