2011 Annual ed.

Linked data: The many library consultants speaking at the conference believe that we are fools for continuing to use the MARC format. They did lots of evangelical work about library linked data, saturating us with quotes from Sir Tim and old slides with circles and connecting lines.

Discussion questions: If linked data is so great, why do you have to sell it to us? Why are the freelance consultants promoting linked data so strongly? What do they have to gain from it? Why do we not see wide adoption of this perfect solution in other domains?

A healthy skepticism is not a weakness. Librarians are critical thinkers and have learned not to adopt new technologies just because they are new.

Harrah's Casino: It is not generally a good idea to go to a casino during ALA, except perhaps for the breakfast buffet or as an air-conditioned shortcut between two places. I learned this.

Eric Miller: The president of Zepheira was the speaker at the PCC Participants' meeting. Sounding like a Baptist preacher, he tried to save the audience from their MARC sins and to convert the audience to linked data. Miller spoke as a general in the linked-data, full-frontal assault that the Semantic Web groupies carried out at Annual.

Roger C. Schonfeld, director of research at Ithaka, again gave the results of his latest, extremely-low-response-rate survey of college faculty and again concluded that universities and colleges really don't need academic libraries anymore because Ithaka can supply everything colleges and universities need in the way of information.

RDA: Many had prepared extensive presentations about RDA, only to learn a week before the conference that the "big three" libraries will institute it no sooner than in 18 months if at all, taking the wind out of the sails of their talks.

The main thing causing RDA to fail is a bullying article published in 2007 in D-LIB magazine and written by Diane Hillmann and Karen Coyle. They used the article to pressure the Joint Steering Committee to poison RDA and to make the code conform to their needs (as consultants) and to make it MARC unfriendly and library unfriendly. Had they not interfered so much, the code would likely be successfully put in place by now.

Jay Jordan: He announced his retirement and will be departing with the multi-millions of dollars he got from OCLC in both current and deferred compensation. We expect to see a building on OCLC's Dublin (Ohio) campus named after him soon: The Golden Parachute Building, and I have dibs on making the SACO proposal for it.

Dewpoint: The weather in New Orleans was Venusian: very hot and very humid. The people on Huron Street need a much better location scout. The poor climate makes it harder to benefit from the conference. ALA should stop using its conferences as profit engines for the organization and pay a little extra for more suitable locations.  

---