In this post I share the full text of a grant proposal to fund library user experience design for Native American students at my institution, Montana State University. I am publishing the proposal and licensing the text CC BY so that other libraries and universities will be able to reuse and adapt t

Abstract: This project overview of Open.Marginalis is an avenue to explore Tumblr as a platform for digital scholarship in libraries, archives, and special collections.  As a platform, Tumblr supports clear opportunities for scholarship through flexible display, discovery, and description. Reviewing project goals, operations, and practices, this project overview aims to serve as an accessible point of entry for digital scholarship using this platform.

Performed by the usual suspects at the LITA-LAMA National Conference, Pittsburgh, October 15, 1996. All to the music from West Side Story, with the usual disclaimers, but no apologies to Leonard

A look at what the new Penguin Random House ebook licensing means for libraries.

US libraries are doing something even the most security-conscious private firm would never dream of: deleting sensitive information in order to protect users

This investigation explores scholarly communication business models in American Library Association (ALA) division peer-reviewed academic journals. Previous studies reveal the numerous issues organizations and publishers face in the academic publishing environment. Through an analysis of documented procedures, policies, and finances of five ALA division journals, we compare business and access models. We conclude that some ALA divisions prioritize the costs associated with changing business models, including hard-to-estimate costs such as the labor of volunteers. For other divisions, the financial aspects are less important than maintaining core values, such as those defined in ALA’s Core Values in Librarianship.

This article describes a case study in which a small team from the digital initiatives group and metadata services department at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU-Boulder) Libraries conducted a pilot of the Scrum project management framework. The pilot team organized digital initiatives work into short, fixed intervals called sprints—a key component of Scrum. Over a year of working in the modified framework yielded significant improvements to digital collection work, including increased production of digital objects and surrogate records, accelerated publication of digital collections, and an increase in the number of concurrent projects. Adoption of sprints has improved communication and cooperation among participants, reinforced teamwork, and enhanced their ability to adapt to shifting priorities.

Providing Internet access to the public has come to be an important service, but it can be quite a challenge to do so in a secure, cost-effective way. Maintaining patron privacy on a shared, public computer is one of the problems that librarians face every day. My solution was to switch to an open source (OS) platform for our patron computing.

The new Polish Copyright Act [link in Polish] enters into force on 20th November 2015 bringing library services in Poland into the twenty-first century. Major new provisions enabling digitization for socially beneficial purposes, such as education and preservation of cultural heritage, are the centrepiece for libraries of the new law.

Today, some libraries are (unsuccessfully?) advocating for a bookless future. To many, that prospect seems bizarre, even sacrilegious.

A column from the Notes section of the Seattle Review of Books

Librarians have a professional responsibility to protect the right to access information free from surveillance. This right is at risk from a new and increasing threat: the collection and use of non-personally identifying information such as IP addresses through online behavioral tracking. This paper provides an overview of behavioral tracking, identifying the risks and benefits, describes the mechanisms used to track this information, and offers strategies that can be used to identify and limit behavioral tracking. We argue that this knowledge is critical for librarians in two interconnected ways. First, librarians should be evaluating recommended websites with respect to behavioral tracking practices to help protect patron privacy; second, they should be providing digital literacy education about behavioral tracking to empower patrons to protect their own privacy online.

Why checking out ebooks thru libraries SUCKS.

Board meetings of the Lebanon Libraries in the small town of Lebanon, New Hampshire, don’t normally include signs that read “Down with Big Brother” and...

In July, the Kilton Public Library in New Hampshire partnered with the Library Freedom Project (LFP), to become the first library in the country to run a server connecting to Tor, an online network...

Homeland Security "does not make policy determinations for local communities."