Reading Time: 5 minutes
The fragmentation of social media has been something to behold. I am still trying to wrap my head around what it means for law library marketing and outreach. We want to be where people are but that only scales so far. The other thing is that maybe they don’t always want us there. Ironically, it was
Continue Reading Small Groups, Loosely Connected
Reading Time: 9 minutes
I have been reivisiting how I secure my website. Over the years, I’ve dabbled with geo-blocking but it’s a lost cause. They are easy to bypass. I have done too much research on Russian websites that are geoblocked to know that you can’t keep determined people out. The ActivityPub connectivity I set up has highlighted that
Continue Reading Tighten the Screws
Reading Time: 6 minutes
I may have been feeling too clever by half when I finally felt like I had my ActivityPub connection within WordPress sorted out. The first day of a new post rolled around (a new post will trigger awareness of the ActivityPub connector) and I saw the post appear as a Mastodon post. Then one of the
Continue Reading Steps Between Cache and Site
Reading Time: 7 minutes
Our law library has been operating in a hybrid mode deliberately for over a year now. It was one of the first things I focused on when I arrived. Staff had been operating in a hybrid model through the pandemic upheaval so one choice would have been to return to pre-pandemic staffing (everyone in a physical
Continue Reading Present, Unwrapped
Reading Time: 4 minutes
I had to travel recently and unexpectedly, which always creates a bit of turmoil. Did I put an out-of-office email up? What about my phone? Did I feed the budgie? I left my laptop behind—on purpose—and tried an Android tablet and Bluetooth keyboard combination I hadn’t tried in awhile. It actually worked out pretty well even
Continue Reading Sunset for the Work Phone
Reading Time: 6 minutes
It was exciting news in early October when Automattic announced that it was enabling ActivityPub support on WordPress.com. This means that anyone who runs WordPress on WordPress.com can connect their site to the Fediverse. In addition to being able to follow their RSS feed, you can also follow them as an account on Mastodon and
Continue Reading Misdirected Mastodon
Reading Time: 6 minutes
I am finally regaining my pre-pandemic reading habits. I’m still not settled entirely on ebooks again. I find that holding a paper book seems to result in me reading more of it. Perhaps I’m just sick to death of looking at screens. I notice I also like something that is about 3 times as thick as
Continue Reading You Can’t Get There From Here
Reading Time: 10 minutes
I’ve worked in a lot of different law libraries. During those decades, I’ve written frequently. For the most part, I didn’t think much about the creations I made after they were published. For me, written words are like water that has flowed past the canoe. They’re in the past. But, in the move to Mastodon,
Continue Reading Wading Through Scholarship
Reading Time: 8 minutes
Gosh, Twitter fell off a cliff. What a blessing. It’s been a few months now since my usage largely came to a halt. It’s made me rethink a lot of what I’m doing online. The demise of Xitter is only part of it.
Hardly a month ago, I’d posted about how RSS was becoming more central
Continue Reading Begin Again with Social Media
Reading Time: 6 minutes
Our family recently experienced one of those things that is stressful in the moment but funny after the fact. No threat to life or reputation, just something you wished you could avoid. As we were discussing it afterwards, one of the kids parroted back to me some pearls of wisdom that I’m sure I’d said. It
Continue Reading I Can’t Get No
Reading Time: 6 minutes
I had a lot of fun at the AALL annual meeting in Boston. It’s making me rethink professional conference attendance. Not necessarily not going, but having to be more deliberate to get what I want out of it. Last year, I found the numbers of people a bit much, and figured it was post-pandemic. But
Continue Reading You Are Too Kind
Reading Time: 6 minutes
I have been reading The Big Con, a book that looks at large consulting organizations and their impact on their clients, especially public ones like government. I’ve long been skeptical about how consulting fits into business operations, libraries or otherwise. This book spoke to me, reinforcing my concerns about expertise and knowledge loss, and especially hollowing
Continue Reading The Place for Expertise
Reading Time: 7 minutes
I like to think I’m a mid-career law librarian but, if I’m frank, it may be that I’m already at the end of my career based on my position. We have shallow organizational hierarchies and becoming a director is just a couple of hops up the chain from an entry level role. That’s not to say
Continue Reading Lateral Leadership
Reading Time: 6 minutes
It is a time that reminds us that information consumption changes. The tools we use, the expectations we have. I think, like perhaps many other people, I had gotten accustomed to the stability of platforms and expectations for what I would (and would not) find on them. Now that is changing, and I’m finding myself leaning
Continue Reading The Centrality of RSS
Reading Time: 8 minutes
I’ve been on a bit of a tech jag recently, working through a list of things that needed attention. I was watching usage on my photo site and saw a surprising spike in usage. On the one hand, the whole purpose of the site is to share. Every photo is CC-0. But my hosting service
Continue Reading Too Much of a Good Thing