Helping patrons find the information they need is an important part of the library profession, and in the past decade the profession has seen the rise of dedicated "discovery systems" to address that need. The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) is active at the intersection of libraries, content suppliers, and …

[caption id="attachment_26113" align="alignright" width="232"] Cover page from the NISO white paper "The Future of Library Resource Discovery"[/caption]
In early October, NISO will be hosting a two-day forum on the future of resource discovery in libraries. This is an in-person meeting to extend the work of Marshall …

Two articles in each of two threads this week:

• If Strong Encryption is Outlawed...
• Allocations of IPv4 Internet Addresses Now Restricted; It's a Good Thing IPv6 is Finally Here

Feel free to send this newsletter to others you think might be interested in the topics. If you are not already …

I'm just home from the American Library Association meeting in San Francisco, so this week's threads are just a brief view of new and interesting things I found on the exhibit floor.

• Book-Donations-Processing-as-a-Service
• Free Driver's Ed Resources for Libraries
• Free Online Obituaries Service from Orange County Library

Note! Funding for …

This week's threads:

• Where should you keep your data? Your library can help with that answer!
• Use index cards for your next presentation's question and answer session -- it'll make for a better experience for you and your audience.
• What's that bird? There is an app for that! Give it your …

Edited after initial publication to add: My thoughts are with the people in and around Charleston, South Carolina, this evening. What is making it out of the media fog to me tonight is your compassion for each other. Please be well as you absorb, internalize, and recover from this shocking …

This week's threads:

• Let's Encrypt announces its launch schedule, so soon everyone can have web servers with encrypted transmissions;
• Ploys by businesses to get you to come into the office, if you work at a place where coming into an office is optional; and
• A summary of Open Repositories 2015 …

I threw my hat into the ring to be on the LITA Top Tech Trends panel at the ALA annual conference later this month in San Francisco, and never could I say that I was more excited not to be selected. (You can find more info on this year's Top …

In just a few weeks there will be a gathering of 25,000 librarians in the streets of San Francisco for the American Library Association annual meeting. The topics on my mind as the meeting draws closer? How patrons intersect with advertising and privacy when using our services. What one …

One of the things discussed in the NISO patron privacy conference calls has been the need for transparency with patrons about what information is being gathered about them and what is done with it. The recent announcement by Google of a "My Account" page and a privacy question/answer site …

Yesterday Bobbi Newman posted Thinking Out Loud About Patron Privacy and Libraries on her blog. Both of us are on the NISO committee to develop a Consensus Framework to Support Patron Privacy in Digital Library and Information Systems, and her article sounded a note of discouragement that I hope to …

Dear Colleagues,

Know of someone looking for a skilled library technologist? The funding for my position at LYRASIS will run out at the end of June, and I am looking for a new opportunity for my skills in library technology, open source, and community engagement. My resume/c.v. is …

I was asked recently to prepare a 15 minute presentation on lessons learned working with a remote team hosting open source applications. The text of that presentation is below with links added to more information. Photographs are from DPLA and Flickr, and are used under Public Domain or Creative Commons …

In this week's threads: a protest -- or maybe just an art project -- by a reader who saves his e-book copy of Orwell's 1984 by photocopying each page from his Kindle, the "AutoAwesome" nature of artificial intelligence, and a call to action for libraries to implement encryption on their websites.

Feel …

Last week I had the pleasure of presenting a short talk at the second virtual meeting of the NISO effort to reach a Consensus Framework to Support Patron Privacy in Digital Library and Information Systems. The slides from the presentation are below and on SlideShare, followed by a cleaned-up transcript …

Via Gary Price's announcement on InfoDocket comes word of a cost-benefit analysis for the wholesale adoption of ORCID identifiers by eight institutions in the U.K. The report, Institutional ORCID, Implementation and Cost Benefit Analysis Report [PDF], looks at the perspectives of stakeholders, a summary of findings from the pilot …

Welcome spring in the northern hemisphere! Thoughts turn to fresh new growth -- a new tool to help with writing documents for procuring library systems, a fresh way to think about how libraries can transform and be transformed, and spring cleaning for your browsing habits with a do-it-yourself VPN.

Feel free …

This article has been translated into Polish.

Over the next couple months, NISO is managing a project to "develop a Consensus Framework to Support Patron Privacy in Digital Library and Information Systems." ((From NISO's March 11, 2015, press release about the project.)) I'm honored and excited to be on the …

In this week's Thursday Threads we look at the rise of fake social media influence, how a young media company (Netflix) is now bigger than an old media company (CBS), and a reminder of how secrecy in constructing trade agreements is a bad idea.

Feel free to send this newsletter …

This weekend I was at the second "DPLAfest" for the Digital Public Library of America. For a while I was in the national e-book program track. Participants from public and academic libraries, from consortia, from publishers, and from authors discussed what a national ebok program for libraries would look like …