Research through images

Not that I have anything particularly insightful to say about it, but flickr.com has become a very powerful research tool for this librarian. Sometimes you just don’t know what you are looking for until you see it. Lately I’ve been researching sustainable/green technologies for homes, and being able to browse through millions of images to gather information is really helpful.

I’m also blown away by the diversity and niche-ish-ness available from the various groups on flickr. For example, today I happened upon this group devoted to pens. Yes – pens. Good pens. Some really nice photography from the pen freaks. Makes me want to go buy a new pen.

Tagging

Try as I might, I just can’t get into social bookmarking/tagging. I have tried using del.icio.us, and digg, but I can not dig the deliciousness of either. I try to add appropriate tags to my blog posts, but that is it.

I’m not sure why. I like them. I think they are cool. But I just don’t use them.

Weird.

Conference Time

Next week I’ll be at the Computers in Libraries conference, in Arlington, VA. Looking forward to an interesting few days full of new ideas. I’ll be blogging it, in full nerd attack mode.

“Hip” librarians…

So here is a New York Time article about the new, young, edgy and hip librarians of the 21st century.

I think they are a little late noticing this, but I guess it is good. Thing is, you can’t judge a book by its cover. I have worked with some older librarians who were incredibly smart, talented, versatile, and cool. Like my former boss – older than 60 — who speaks multiple languages with great fluency, has 3 Masters Degrees, and can write actual computer code in circles around me. Or my boss now, who is a great painter. You know, you really don’t need to have a nose ring or tribal tattoos on your face, eh? Case in point: yours truly goes to work everyday in his plain clothes — but look what I can do:

So eat your hearts out, hipsters. Bwahahahaha!

But all my 42 year-old old skater bitching aside, rock-on, hip edgy librarians. The image did, indeed, need updating. That fact is attested to by the use of the “shushers” in the title of this NYT article. Every generation likes to take what it is doing and put its own “stamp” on it. I don’t know many old skateboarders that don’t love to laugh about the lack of “style” in newschool skateboarding, but you know, there’s still style there. Just a different style.