Leah alerted me to a good article in Slate about the Bush Presidential Library controversy at SMU. The media coverage on this has really exploded; the New York Times has had several articles about it recently. (I’m not bothering to blog about each and every one of them.) It’s so late in the game that I wonder if the faculty will be successful in forcing any changes to the agreement.
I had a good trip to Seattle for the ALA Midwinter convention. According to this round-up in Library Journal, the convention had very good attendance (beating attendance at the previous 2 Midwinter meetings, in San Antonio and Boston). Although I heard a few rumors about some of the reference sources that were named to RUSA’s Outstanding Reference list for 2007, I haven’t yet seen an official list or announcement.
This was my first trip to Seattle. On the plane ride in, we were treated to a quite fantastic view of Mt. Rainier. Here are some of my impressions of the city:
The annual ALA convention this summer is in Washington, D.C. It should be hot and steamy, but it’s a pretty good location for the convention, if you ask me. I’ve come to prefer conventions where you can walk to the convention center from your hotel, or at the least be a short train ride away. As much as I love Chicago (which hosted the last annual ALA that I attended, 2 years ago), it is not an ideal convention city for me because there is nothing around its convention center to walk to–not enough restaurants, few hotels, etc. And it’s not directly on a train line. The main action of the city is a cab ride away. D.C. should be better.
I’m off to Seattle this weekend for the ALA Midwinter convention, where I’ll be discussing partnership opportunities with other publishers. These discussions promise to have a large impact on our direction as a company in 2007 and beyond, and I look forward to reporting back on their outcome. Aside from the convention, I intend to tour the new downtown branch of the Seattle Public Library, which happens to be across the street from my hotel. The library was designed by Rem Koolhaus and is apparently a striking and provocative building.
For those of you interested in content tagging and structure, which plays a huge and increasing role in our business, here is an interesting article from Library Journal about XML.
Today’s New York Times has an article about the controversy brewing at SMU about the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum. The article describes a faculty meeting held on Tuesday about the library in which various faculty members raised questions about the issue. Among those quoted is the current chair of SMU’s History Department, James Hopkins, who was my faculty adviser when I was an undergrad there.
The bloggers at Information World Review have a couple of good posts about the Thomson Learning and ProQuest Information sales. This will be an interesting year in the information industry, needless to say, what with all these heavyweights in such transition.