Registration at ALA 2017

 Of course, I registered in advance! First day at the American Library Association's 2017 Conference.

TechWeek Reception at CapitalOne HQ

 Reception at the extremely nice HQ of CapitalOne.

Opps, Maybe Not the 'Future' After All

 

Interesting how titles tend to change over time. I was going through a number of old posts and saw a reference to an article in Newsweek from 10 years ago, extolling the virtues of the recently released Amazon Kindle. The title of the article was, "The Future of Reading". Since it was a relatively old link, I clicked on it just to make sure it still worked. And it did -- only the title of the article now read, "Amazon: Reinventing the Book".

That was funny. Did I get the original title wrong? I went to my best friend, Archive.org and looked the thing up -- and sure enough, the original title was "The Future of Reading"

So between 2007 and now, apparently the Kindle no longer rated as the "Future" of reading. This is understandable. For every true 'revolution' in technology, there are always a dozen (or more) false starts. This was one of them.

Staats-Zeitung, My Uncles and Abraham Lincoln

I saw Sidney Blumenthal discuss his book "The Political Life of Lincoln, 1849-1856" at Printers Row Lit Fest over the weekend.  He talked about the critical role local newspapers played in the anti-slavery movement -- some of which Lincoln wrote articles for.  One newspaper in particular was the Chicago-based "Staats-Zeitung".  This rang a bell for me as I recalled my uncles Julius and Ernest being involved with the same paper in the late 20s early 30s. Below is a copy of the newspaper's listing from the "Illinois Newspaper Directory & History" (1934).

Current Cites for May 2017

Current Cites for May 2017 is out! You can find the issue here...

I couldn't resist recommending something non-library this month -- an interview with Tim Berners Lee, inventor of the WWW. His advice for "young computer scientists" was what you might expect from a true innovator, namely, "ignoring conventional wisdom and following their own instincts."