I’d like to welcome you to OPAChyderm.
Of course, there’s none of “you” out there at this point, but why quibble with who’s imaginary and who has delusions of grandeur? This whole blog, really, exists mostly because I thought the name was extremely clever, in a high-school boy sort of “my knowledge of Dungeons and Dragons and Monty Python is more extensive than yours” sort of cleverness. The kind that, at best, will only impress other 15 year old boys.
The idea is to talk about technology in libraries. Not only how much it usually sucks, but what we can do about it. Why it’s like that. What the bottlenecks are. I’m new to the world of libraries, and the relationship between libraries, the internet as an information repository, ubiquitous technology, and the existing culture of librarianship is freakin’ fascinating. So we’ll cover some of that stuff here.
Plus, my wife is pregnant, so I imagine she’ll come up every now and then, too 🙂
A Pachyderm is something that, to put it gently, is fat and thick-skinned. An elephant, for a majestic example. A hippo, for a less-majestic example. I chose the name, like I said, beacuse I thought it was clever, but also because I’m finding that a lot of librarians right now are pretty thin-skinned. They don’t want to hear about how great Google is (I’m looking at you, President Gorman). They don’t want to hear about how successful the Amazon API is. The times are a-changing, as Dylan and the WanderingEyre both know.
This is my first anonymous blog. Why be anonymous? Not because I’m planning on saying anything awful about the library where I work or the people I work with. Things are, for the most part, peachy.
But I do occasionally want to rant a bit. Not about things in particular, but about things in general. And I’ve found that I censor myself when I probably need not.
I don’t take this as an opportunity to reject any responsibility, but rather to experiment a bit more with my thinking.
So, anyway, welcome.
OPAChyderm 