internet librarian 05: parting thoughts

This is the first conference I've attended in a long time that's made me want to blog non-stop. And it's not insignificant that it's a library-focused conference that inspired me.

When I took a job teaching information technology, instead of a job teaching in a library school, I assumed I was leaving my library roots behind. I wasn't able to justify travel to library conferences, and I felt my ties to the professions starting to dissolve. But over the past several years, with the rise in social computing as a theme in technology, I'm delighted to find the threads weaving back together. Suddenly, libarians are talking about the same things that technologists are talking about--managing information, collaborative filtering, metadata and classification schemes. And I'm in the wonderful position of having a legitimate foot in both camps.

At the speakers' reception last night, Michael Stephens told me he was preparing to do a survey of librarian bloggers, and asked me if I'd participate. It was lovely to be thought of as a librarian in the present tense.

And now, as I fly over Utah's extraordinarily beautiful Great Salt Lake (I've never seen it before, and am grateful for the clear skies that are allowing me this bird's-eye view...photos will be on Flickr soon), I'm thinking about how to keep these bonds a little tighter in the future. I really should touch base with some of the faculty I know at UW's I-School, and see about maybe giving an occasional guest lecture over there. And I'll be working hard on the folks at MSN, whose absence was notable this week. Google's not making the mistake of ignoring libraries in their quest to win the hearts and minds of searchers, and MSN shouldn't be making it either. If that's the only tangible legacy I leave behind, it will have been a year well spent.