tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22958186402683921652011-10-16T03:47:15.701-06:00I have been working in theological libraries since 1989.<BR>I view theological librarianship as a type of religious vocation.<BR>I invite you to read and respond to these postings.Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.comBlogger831100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-12883437983718503562009-09-01T07:57:00.004-06:002009-09-01T08:37:12.672-06:00

Google has, to the best of my knowledge, never claimed to be omniscient. While their oft repeated motto, "Don't be evil", might be seen as a claim of omnibenevolence, Google usually is straightforward about their interests: Reconciliation and redemption are outside of their purview, but data and dollars are right up their alley.Thus it should be no surprise to the watching world that the Google

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-26528914662576959432008-11-26T16:07:00.000-06:002008-11-26T17:16:43.836-06:00

I have just completed the annual task of compiling library statistics for ATS and ATLA a little later than usual, but still before the deadline. I should preface what follows by stating that I like statistics. I like being able to break complex processes down into neat rows of numbers and then lining up those rows of numbers on a spreadsheet. It gives me a secure feeling inside to see all that

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-79100451410274931692008-10-31T10:34:00.001-06:002008-10-31T11:10:52.165-06:00

This is the lobby of the Millennium Hotel in St. Louis where the American Theological Library Association will hold the opening reception for their annual conference during June 17-20, 2009.I'm in St. Louis right now meeting with the Education Committee and the Annual Conference Committee to plan what is shaping up to be an excellent conference for next summer. What follows is a brief pictorial

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-3607633430056320812008-09-15T15:06:00.000-06:002008-09-15T15:36:32.535-06:00

I know that most of us in the geographic region of the country known as Chicagoland have little to complain about compared to those of you in Texas and other parts of the country that bore the brunt of Hurricane Ike's fury. But I did see in a weather map on Saturday evening that Ike had pushed bands of rain across the Midwest and even as far north and east as Buffalo, NY. When I came into the

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-54188477336075825642008-09-05T15:26:00.000-06:002008-09-05T16:03:48.088-06:00

Since I have sometimes posted on things Googlish in this blog, I thought I would mention that my first experience with the beta version of Google's Chrome browser was less than ecstatic. Until I tried Chrome, I had no idea how prevalent Macromedia's Adobe's Shockwave Flash is. Chrome definitely has a bug when it comes to the Flash plugin. I found blog postings where other people claimed that

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-16465192992390277052008-09-05T14:59:00.001-06:002008-09-05T16:07:19.150-06:00

After having been gone on a lovely vacation in Colorado and after having unburied my desk at work, I am now prepared to declare the winner of the Longest Thesis Title Contest:Congratulations to Eric Benoy from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary for submitting the winning entry, weighing in at 289 characters (including spaces and punctuation), a Ph.D. thesis title from 1993:An investigation

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-12828712371157975492008-08-04T15:30:00.000-06:002008-08-04T15:46:00.056-06:00

It's that time of the year when we are working on processing the new D.Min. theses. A quick query of our catalog turned up one thesis title from 2001 that was 207 characters long:Development of an educational program of Christian formation for the Baptist Church of Quintana, Hato Rey, Puerto Rico to deal with the racial and ethnic prejudice in the congregation and the local communityWhat's the

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-84330407904822873962008-08-04T13:52:00.000-06:002008-08-04T14:14:26.142-06:00

William Patry has announced the end of his Patry Copyright Blog.For the past four years, William Patry has provided a well-written inside look into the messy world of copyright legislation. In an area where most of us are as much at sea as beginning Hebrew students are with BDB, Patry gave us intelligent landmarks by which to chart our course when trying to understand copyright. Anyone who has

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-22938769325653941222008-08-01T08:24:00.000-06:002008-08-01T08:30:02.547-06:00

Today's online Chronicle Careers is an article by Thomas H. Benton entitled "On Stupidity". In it, he briefly reviews a spate of books warning of America's burgeoning anti-intellectualism. He then lists a number of complaints that come out of his own direct observations as an educator. He sees too many students who are:Primarily focused on their own emotions — on the primacy of their "feelings

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-50478500293988024152008-07-16T08:39:00.001-06:002008-07-16T08:56:28.841-06:00

I had an earlier posting proposing the creation of a digital repository for theological librarians. I have now discovered another reason why we should create such a repository: It would be a great way for ATLA to make some extra money.According to The Chronicle, the American Psychological Association is going to start charging its members $2,500 per article to be deposited in the PubMed Central

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-9124662391661779522008-07-14T15:01:00.000-06:002008-07-14T15:07:09.138-06:00

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the library: Many thanks to the students at Mary Gates Hall for demonstrating the presence of fecal coliform bacteria on the keyboards in the library and computer lab as reported in The Chronicle.Yet another variant on The Name of the Rose -- don't lick that thumb after hitting the space bar!

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-3317135395022985922008-07-10T10:36:00.000-06:002008-07-10T10:57:14.689-06:00

One of my college professors used to use a humorous speech called "A Speech For All Occasions". It began with the phrase, "A funny thing happened to me on the way to the meeting," and built from there to make the point, "In short, we need more funding." The rest of the speech was made from clichés and stock phrases cobbled together in a way that almost made sense.I sometimes feel like my

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-48131923678288591712008-07-01T10:22:00.000-06:002008-07-01T10:34:26.116-06:00

Having just returned from the better part of a week in beautiful Ottawa, Ontario at the annual American Theological Library Association Conference, I find myself re-energized for the daily work of being a theological librarian, serving as a steward for the collected resources of the theological disciplines. I was interested, then, to see the following report in The Chronicle this morning: "More

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-68539809017883710362008-06-28T20:10:00.000-06:002008-06-28T20:23:05.929-06:00

For my final roundtable of the conference, I attended the Information Commons roundtable led by members of the Information Commons staff from Asbury Theological Seminary. Last year, quite a large group attended their presentation on the Information Commons model; this was a much smaller group interested in continuing the conversation about how Asbury has made the Information Commons model work

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-61193585334907944942008-06-28T20:04:00.000-06:002008-06-28T20:09:55.596-06:00

The most thought-provoking seminar that I attended during the conference just happened to also take place on the last day of the conference. I am grateful to Anthony Elia from the JKM Library for his presentation, "Beyond Barthes and Chartier: The Theology of Books in the Digital Age". By interviewing seminary faculty members and researchers, Anthony uncovered some of the emotions and somatic

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-72157425619546851492008-06-28T19:59:00.000-06:002008-06-28T20:04:24.794-06:00

This morning's roundtable was about Facebook. Roger Loyd, Michelle Spomer, and Emily Knox each shared some of their experiments with Facebook and with creating Facebook Pages for their libraries. Michelle noted that Facebook has recently surpassed MySpace in terms of the total number of users, with Facebook having over 124 million users compared to over 115 million users on MySpace. MySpace,

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-84633649896704818422008-06-27T17:39:00.000-06:002008-06-27T17:46:17.207-06:00

I am grateful to Tracy Powell from the Pitts Theology Library at Emory University for initiating a roundtable discussion on establishing a digital repository for theological librarians. Her presentation took us through the basics of what a digital respository is and some of the advantages of DSpace as an open source program for establishing a digital respository. We then had a good discussion

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-80116171979349634842008-06-27T17:36:00.000-06:002008-06-27T17:39:30.079-06:00

It was announced at this morning's Town Meeting that EBSCO is partnering with ATLA to provide a digital archives collection. This announcement has also been released through various online forums. From the June 27 Religion News Service release:"EBSCO has partnered with American Theological Library Association (ATLA) to provide new collections of historical monographs and serials in digital

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-45931060051195577172008-06-27T17:31:00.000-06:002008-06-27T17:36:16.415-06:00

Dennis Norlin reported this morning that ATS announced at its recent biennial meeting that it is beginning a 4-year review process to revise the accreditation standards. ATS reported several trends that are reshaping theological education:2007 saw a decrease in the total number of M.Div. degrees awarded across the country.The megachurch phenomenon is increasingly changing the path through which

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-86046382204143092282008-06-26T20:45:00.000-06:002008-06-26T20:50:30.978-06:00

Most of my time during the first day of the conference was focused on issues surrounding library involvement in teaching and learning. (Though there was the ever highly stimulating ATLA business meeting led with decorum and aplomb by Martha Lund Smalley and distinguished members of the ATLA staff.)Paul Myhre from the Wabash Center conducted a juiced-up roundtable on teaching and learning that

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-5733337924950705432008-06-26T20:38:00.000-06:002008-06-26T20:45:53.583-06:00

The ATLA conference's opening plenary session was a fascinating inside look at the consortial purchasing power of the Canadian Research Knowledge Network. The presentor was Leslie Weir, University Librarian at the University of Ottawa, president of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries, and chair of the Scholars Portal Operations and Development Committee (among many other accolades and

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-86472535125881064962008-06-25T19:27:00.000-06:002008-06-25T19:40:38.286-06:00

There was a full house for the new member's reception this evening:I was able to spend part of the evening with a new member from the South Asia Institute of Advanced Christian Studies from Bangalore, India. I hope that ATLA's International Collaboration Committee will be able to establish more ties in the future with the Indian Theological Library Association.Then the weather was beautiful for

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-23990655906087760842008-06-25T19:21:00.000-06:002008-06-25T19:27:18.194-06:00

I spent most of my time today attending two pre-conference workshops: One on doing scholarly writing for the soon-to-be-unveiled new journal, Theological Librarianship, and one on ways to become more active in raising funds for the library.The workshop on writing for Theological Librarianship was a good follow-up to a continuing education course on scholarly writing that I took earlier in the

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-91459169392165109812008-06-24T20:34:00.000-06:002008-06-24T20:48:17.219-06:00

"Hi, my name is Blake and I am a recovering Technical Services Librarian."I introduced myself this way at the Technical Services Interest Group meeting tonight just to be funny. (That's me, the frustrated class ham.) But there is something therapeutic about all sitting in a circle and talking about Technical Services stuff for two hours with other like-minded librarians.Since I am on the

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-40611309547081909272008-06-24T15:31:00.000-06:002008-06-24T15:40:05.938-06:00

While many of the ATLA staff have been in Ottawa since Sunday working to get everything ready for the conference, I just arrived in Ottawa today. After so many days of horrible travelling weather this spring, I was grateful to have a clear, beautiful day for flying. As a member of the Education Committee, I already had a chance to visit Ottawa last October and practice the elaborate rituals of

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-75766773089104633832008-06-10T15:07:00.001-06:002008-06-10T15:21:56.854-06:00

I stumbled on a transcript from a Web 2.0 conference the other day, and I think it makes a good read. The talk was presented by Clay Shirky and is titled "Gin, Television, and Social Surplus". In it, Shirky argues that in the early upheavals of the industrial revolution, British society numbed their discomfort with gin, and in the early stages of the communications revolution, society in

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-27419694972710009312008-05-29T14:11:00.000-06:002008-05-29T14:33:45.099-06:00

The Chronicle recently posted an online article announcing the end of Microsoft's Live Book Search project. Initial evidence indicates that Microsoft could not keep up with Google Book Search. I reported that Google had already topped the 2 million title mark in their book scanning project back in October; Microsoft is ending its project at 750,000 titles (plus 80 million journal articles).

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-80081118670479445252008-05-15T16:12:00.000-06:002008-05-15T16:24:32.477-06:00

The most recent In Trust online newsletter includes a One-Minute Commentary on local church ambivalence towards seminary learning. The One-Minute Commentary is responding to a May 6, 2008 Christian Century article by Stephanie Paulsell from Harvard Divinity School who notes that, in America, ecclesial suspicion of seminaries dates back to the very beginnings when Increase Mather questioned the

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-72765957059603291412008-05-07T08:19:00.000-06:002008-05-07T08:23:37.057-06:00

There's a brief but interesting interview in The Chronicle's May 6 "The Wired Campus". The interview is with Kelly Sutton, the co-founder of a student technology blog called Hack College. I thought the following was particularly interesting:Q. What is the most important way technology has changed student life in recent years?A. It’s no longer weird to spend a lot of time on the Internet.

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-89776320840057281652008-05-02T15:35:00.001-06:002008-05-02T16:02:20.502-06:00

The following chart comes from FlowingData, run by Nathan Yau at the University of California at Los Angeles:As one of the commenters on the FlowingData posting points out, many Facebook applications are labeled "Just for Fun" for lack of a better category available in Facebook. Still, when 9,609 applications are labeled "Just for Fun" out of a total of 23,160, you get a pretty good indication

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-32204262717877875122008-04-30T15:35:00.000-06:002008-04-30T15:44:40.305-06:00

I am pleased to announce that Jesus Christ is featured prominently in the top 100 WorldCat identities. Though Marx's heading is almost as prominent as Mary's, and Faulkner is pretty big, too. (Faulkner? Really?)If you have not investigated WorldCat's beta Identities site before, point your browser to http://orlabs.oclc.org/identities/. If nothing else, this can become a new vanity search for

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-83578966432746316302008-04-30T08:45:00.000-06:002008-04-30T08:49:32.741-06:00

My thanks to John Jaeger from Dallas Baptist University whose frequent news postings on ATLANTIS brought this item from the Barna Group to my attention:New Research Describes Use of Technology in ChurchesAccording to the Barna Group, the pace of adoption of technology in Protestant churches has been slowing over the past two years. The Barna Group attributes this to churches having to pause for

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-18506488203441079412008-04-23T14:19:00.000-06:002008-04-23T14:35:06.626-06:00

This web site has been out there for awhile, but I thought it was good enough to pass on:"Steroid" Scandal Rocks Major League LibrariesAnd a serious opinion offered to reward your efforts in checking out my blog posting: Enhanced cataloging is not "enhanced" at all, but is merely doing what cataloging has always been meant to do: Provide the researcher with enough information to decide whether or

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-81672396162925311542008-04-18T11:49:00.000-06:002008-04-18T11:55:26.094-06:00

A beautiful Friday in Chicagoland with warm breezes and vigilant geese staking out their patch of library turf seems like a good day to blog about one of the lighter aspects of library life: food in the library.The Chronicle has posted an article about the more relaxed attitude toward food that typifies the hip, turn-of-the-century academic library. "[Morningside] College has joined those that

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-28882934661670098882008-04-09T09:36:00.000-06:002008-04-09T09:46:09.049-06:00

I am spending a fair amount of my time these days immersed in copyright issues. While that statement is probably true for librarians in general, I have found myself particularly engaged with copyright as our seminary has begun teaching its first distance courses and, several years after initial experiments, has started offering online courses again. My primary interest is how this affects

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-19733722246174169662008-03-25T11:27:00.000-06:002008-03-25T11:41:10.107-06:00

There is a March 24 New York Times article about Google's new "Search-within-Search" feature. (Thanks to Impact Lab for alerting me to the article and providing the moniker "Search-within-Search".) Both NYT and Impact Lab note why this is a dubious feature for retailers.It got me wondering, though, whether this feature also applies to libraries. It does not appear to yet, but it looks like it

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-49730830611240616542008-03-25T09:09:00.001-06:002008-03-25T09:22:02.716-06:00

Now that I have experimented with a library group page on Facebook, I have reached several conclusions:1) For an organization like a library, Facebook intends for you to create a page rather than a group. Many thanks to Michelle Spomer from Azusa Pacific University for her advice on this subject. (Michelle is also responsible for organizing the Facebook group for Theological Librarians.)

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-21929948621234334482008-03-13T08:09:00.000-06:002008-03-13T09:04:42.173-06:00

The Chronicle has an article on student protests over the University of Iowa's policy that makes all student theses part of a freely available institutional repository. Of particular concern are "theses" created by graduates from the University of Iowa's Master of Fine Arts program. As noted by C. Max Magee on themillionsblog.com, "In so many words, their [the graduates'] fiction, poetry, and

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-4381266485831126762008-03-11T10:35:00.000-06:002008-03-11T10:48:31.906-06:00

I've jumped into Web 2.0 with one toe. (It hurts when you land like that!) I have created a Facebook page for our library, but now I'm wondering what to do with it.For starters, I have discovered that one can create either a group page, which people can then join, or one can create a business page, and people can become "fans" of your library via the business page. Those of you that are

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-71286358269619320382008-03-11T10:12:00.000-06:002008-03-11T10:35:00.707-06:00

Wired's Science blog has an interesting posting on the history of the introduction of paper into Chinese society. While the invention of paper officially dates back to 105 A.D., archaeological evidence is supporting the idea that paper making was already practiced in areas of China for one or two hundred years prior to Cai Lun introducing it in court.One wonders what cyber-archaeologists a

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-83437778251383636382008-03-06T10:33:00.000-06:002008-03-06T10:43:19.759-06:00

My thanks to techdirt.com for a posting that got me thinking this morning about the morass that is the state of ebooks in libraries. I have been having an email exchange with InterVarsity Press trying to obtain permission to provide online access to articles from their New Testament dictionary series for course reserves. It turns out that IVP has already licensed their material via Logos's

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-21684280656730591192008-03-05T16:47:00.001-06:002008-03-05T18:43:07.583-06:00

Remember -- you read about it first here:I was at a Doctoral Committee meeting this afternoon where we indulged in another round of therapeutic commiseration about the difficulties of proofreading doctoral theses for correct Turabian format. Not only is it a time-consuming process, but there is also the question of who is responsible to do it. It is not unheard of for the duties normally

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-7113767559404252112008-02-29T21:19:00.000-06:002008-02-29T21:26:06.177-06:00

I have been pleased to add the Gale Virtual Reference Library to our online offerings. As our seminary begins to offer distance education and online courses, I have been looking for ways to increase our online holdings. And, yes, one does hold VRL titles; Gale provides free archival CDs with PDF copies of your titles. Gale's VRL includes a number of significant theological reference resources

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-221375291051535232008-02-25T14:51:00.000-06:002008-02-25T15:14:41.788-06:00

After a prolonged silence, I am returning to my blog with a few thoughts, appropriately enough, about library staffing.While I tend to do much of my blogging in off hours, I have also relied on times when I have been able to do some blogging at my desk at work. Not only did I have a very busy fall season in my personal life (with shoulder surgery thrown into the mix), I have found my life at the

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-11121175436828576472007-11-06T10:22:00.000-06:002007-11-06T10:59:35.802-06:00

I'm pondering the following email that I just received from the Cataloging Distribution Service at the Library of Congress:Beginning January 1, 2008, the Cataloging Distribution Service of the Library of Congress will reduce prices on all MARC Distribution Services (MDS) and for new subscriptions or renewals to Cataloger's Desktop and Classification Web ordered after January 1, 2008. Prices

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-32109936114940351182007-11-05T16:09:00.000-06:002007-11-05T16:22:16.396-06:00

I'm just a bit too late for the October 2007 celebration of Theological Libraries Month, but as a native of Cheyenne, Wyoming, I can't resist the following suggestion for next year:I think that wyominglibraries.org's use of the mud flap girl could be a model for a new TLM logo.Or perhaps a bit of Western color with the Pry it from my cold dead fingers campaign?Just a suggestive . . . er,

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-15261516709762954342007-11-05T14:39:00.000-06:002007-11-05T14:55:21.288-06:00

A new report from ACRL, Establishing a Research Agenda for Scholarly Communication: A Call for Community Engagement, is calling for further research on eight different aspects of the current system of scholarly communication. I was intrigued by the following paragraph from section 4, Authorship and Scholarly Publishing:"When faculty employ and create new forms and techniques, evaluating their

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-12426985942715099432007-10-19T19:20:00.000-06:002007-10-19T20:18:17.298-06:00

I've finished my second day here in Ottawa, Ontario with the ATLA Education Committee working on planning the next annual conference scheduled in June, 2008. Breakfast was at 7:30am, and we finished our working supper at 8:30pm. Tomorrow morning we will review what could be called the first draft of the conference program. There is a lot of work yet to be done, and there will be many changes

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-29153061213808548752007-10-18T20:39:00.000-06:002007-10-18T21:11:39.696-06:00

This posting is a shameless promotion of next June's annual ATLA conference in Ottawa, Ontario.This post comes from my hotel room at the Ottawa Westin where the Annual Conference Committee and the Education Committee are meeting to put together the program for the conference. This is my first visit to Canada's beautiful capital. (I believe "Capital Region" is the technically correct designation

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-42159626962353274722007-10-12T10:15:00.000-06:002007-10-12T10:30:27.985-06:00

In response to my query about the availability of statistics for Google Book Search, Dan from the Google Book Search Team wrote:Thank you for your email. As you may know, we've been able to include over 2 million books in Google Book Search so far. We hope to be able to release further information about the scale of Google Book Search in the future.I hope that the Google Book Search Team can

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-44230028986759916542007-10-10T08:18:00.000-06:002007-10-10T08:24:53.097-06:00

Here in the Chicago area, there is a lot of reaction to Google turning on their street view service in the Windy City. In-between web sessions spent Googling their own streets in an effort to catch their neighbors doing something naughty, Chicagoans are lamenting the loss of privacy that comes with the ubiquitous images of daily life broadcast on the Internet. Google, of course, keeps pointing

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-12426843180402333602007-10-04T15:24:00.000-06:002007-10-04T15:35:50.240-06:00

I have been doing some more experimenting with both Google Book Search and Microsoft Live Book Search. I continue to be amazed at the speed with which these collections are growing, though neither Google nor Microsoft are publishing any statistics on the actual size of their databases, making evaluation difficult. (I have emailed Google about this lack of statistical data -- if they send me any

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-24148224214705945662007-09-25T08:00:00.000-06:002007-09-25T08:03:35.879-06:00

Back in May, I had posted about library assessment. As we near our 10-year accreditation visit this November, library assessment continues to be very much on my mind. Yesterday, at The Ubiquitous Librarian, Brian Mathews reported on some interesting work that he is doing with ARL's LibQUAL+ service quality measurement tool. At a cost of $2,250, LibQUAL+ may be out of reach for smaller

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-13453938738535403792007-09-21T15:42:00.000-06:002007-09-21T16:11:46.334-06:00

When I began this blog, I posted The Calling, Part 2 which was about the second thing that had attracted me to a career in theological librarianship. In this post, I want to write about the first thing that attracted me: The service that I can offer to students who are preparing for a vocation of Christian ministry.As caretakers of theological collections, we gain a kinesthetic appreciation for

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-54391097737463038892007-09-14T09:24:00.000-06:002007-09-14T09:33:50.034-06:00

The Chronicle's Wired Campus has an article about the lack of public workstations in public libraries. This article is in turn reporting on an AP story about the increasing demand for Internet access in public libraries. All of this reporting on libraries and computers has been spawned by ALA'a recently released report (227 p.; 6+ MB): Libraries Connect Communities: Public Library Funding &

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-45926358288613942262007-07-27T08:02:00.000-06:002007-07-27T08:26:03.883-06:00

This week's News Update email from ATLA caused me to take a closer look at a valuable resource: the Center for Research Libraries.The CRL summer issue of Focus is entitled, Religion in the Modern World. The table of contents includes:Some Primary Source Texts on Christian MissionsSome Additional Resources on MissionsATLA Collections on MicroformSome Resources on Islam and JudaismTibetan Language

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-45484291827337204962007-07-23T14:53:00.000-06:002007-07-23T15:13:27.078-06:00

I regularly get requests for recommendations from students who are interested in a Personal Bibliographic Management (PBM) program to help them format notes and bibliography pages in Turabian format. I admit that I sometimes have trouble seeing the attraction of these products. I find many of the full-featured versions rather complex to use, much more complex than simply learning the rules for

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-25675905393113196692007-07-23T09:00:00.000-06:002007-07-23T09:05:30.537-06:00

Today's Chicago Tribune has an article on the 9th annual TransVision conference hosted by the World Transhumanist Association here in Chicago. This from the WTA's web site:"The World Transhumanist Association is an international nonprofit membership organization which advocates the ethical use of technology to expand human capacities."Please understand that I am all for the ethical use of

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-57000446335285839572007-07-19T15:07:00.000-06:002007-07-19T15:36:17.197-06:00

You can visit the Open Library, or, at least, the skeleton of what it may become. In the words of Brewster Kahle, the Co-Founder and Director of the Internet Archive,So, why an Open Library? Because we can combine the best that the library system and publishing industry offer to build towards universal access to all knowledge.There is not a lot to see yet at the Open Library--you can search for

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-72279448569844787872007-06-17T11:52:00.000-06:002007-06-18T12:13:09.334-06:00

Friday morning's plenary address was delivered by Dr. Ingrid Mattson, the Director of Islamic Chaplaincy and a professor at the Macdonald Center for Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford Seminary in Hartford, CT. Her address focused on issues of spiritual formation and preparation for ministry for Muslims, particularly in the United States. While at first glance this may

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-12732174740947641512007-06-14T20:00:00.000-06:002007-06-15T04:54:13.252-06:00

The Thursday morning plenary address was delivered by Joey Rodger, a long time Quaker who has been a director of both the Public Library Association and the Urban Libraries Council, and who has recently retired from the position of Executive Director of the Pendle Hill Peace Center in Wallingford Pennsylvania.Joey's address was titled Keeping the Word: Reflections on Sacred and Secular Aspects of

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-31814440673160344912007-06-13T20:41:00.000-06:002007-06-13T20:56:53.522-06:00

This morning's preconference workshop was Changes in RDA, presented by Judy Knop from ATLA. The following is a summary of what was presented. You can read my complete notes here.While RDA (Resource Description and Access) was supposed to be completed by now, the development process has been slowed down with a goal of completing the new cataloging rules sometime in 2009.In her presentation, Judy

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-72516003429150710332007-06-12T20:58:00.000-06:002007-06-13T20:40:45.922-06:00

My next several posts are all going to be coming from the American Theological Library Association's annual conference in Philadelphia. As a member of the Education Committee, I arrived in Philadelphia a day before the pre-conference workshops in order to participate in the final planning meeting before the conference starts. This evening I was also able to participate in a Technical Services

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-73438944043317795012007-05-21T13:30:00.000-06:002007-05-21T16:09:42.819-06:00

This past Friday, I had the opportunity to attend a disaster recovery workshop put on by the University of Illinois Library Preservation Committee and the Illinois Fire Service Institute. At the workshop, we spent the first half of the day learning about planning for disaster recovery, and then we spent the second half of the day working hands-on with wet and burned books, learning how to assess

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-92034517650354990692007-05-18T21:30:00.000-06:002007-05-18T21:41:36.796-06:00

Since I have been posting about copyright, I had to include this link to a delightful Disney mashup about copyright that is its own object lesson:Thanks to Wired's blog for alerting me to this.

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-67573334209309111212007-05-17T10:06:00.000-06:002007-05-17T10:17:22.410-06:00

Amazon.com's blog announced yesterday that they will be offering downloadable music without programmed copyright restrictions from EMI Music and over 12,000 other labels. That means that today's iPodders will no longer have to direct their energy to subverting DRM software before listening to and sharing their tunes. Surely, if licensed music can be made this accessible for the purpose of

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-72194052976940574052007-05-09T14:26:00.000-06:002007-05-09T14:39:23.668-06:00

Leave it to the Austrians -- the good folks at Impact Lab are reporting the story that the Vienna City Hall has launched a sex hotline to raise money for the Vienna Public Library. Callers may be a bit disappointed, as instead of more lurid offerings, they will receive a recording of an actress reading passages of Victorian erotica. So what's a theological library got to do in order to compete?

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-45458874750584479102007-05-09T12:03:00.000-06:002007-05-09T12:14:04.872-06:00

This posting is thanks to the great session on library assessment at a recent CATLA Conference led by Robert Roethemeyer from Concordia Theological Seminary.Over the past decade or so, theological schools have been adapting from an assessment process that tended to be quantitative to a process that is now more qualitative -- outcomes-based assessment that demonstrates how an institution is living

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-16003509244983338182007-05-03T11:09:00.001-06:002007-05-03T11:19:19.345-06:00

I continue to be amazed at the speed of the progress of both the Google Book Search and the Microsoft Live Book Search projects. Three years ago, who could have predicted it? Or, more precisely, with decades of predictions that some day someone was going to digitize the libraries of the world, who really expected it to happen this fast? While neither Microsoft nor Google are disclosing their

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-57989573208828526392007-04-26T08:48:00.000-06:002007-04-26T10:34:21.320-06:00

Knopf has published a new book on email and email etiquette entitled Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home. You may enjoy the review of this book on Canada.com. According to the review, "'Send' may be the most dangerous four-letter word of the 21st century."This got me to thinking about online education, something that we're exploring in earnest here at Northern Seminary. In a

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-83930371590131425742007-04-15T08:00:00.000-06:002007-04-14T17:03:38.651-06:00

A wise man I know once said that there are three things that one should never have in a library: a skylight, a flat roof, and a spiral staircase. We have two of the three items -- a skylight and a flat roof -- and as a result, we do get leaks in our library:Fortunately, this latest leak is one that our maintenance crews can patch for us. Until they have a chance to work on it and then test the

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-36737100856988485442007-04-12T08:00:00.000-06:002007-04-11T23:52:11.966-06:00

An article in the online edition of The Chronicle tells more of the unhappy story of Sheri Klouda, the faculty member fired from the School of Theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary because she is a woman. Her story is not unique in the history of theological education, and it got me to wondering about the status of women involved in theological librarianship. Even in

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-12000300489204806762007-04-10T08:00:00.000-06:002007-04-09T23:16:02.564-06:00

The Freedom and Innovation Revitalizing U.S. Entrepreneurship Act of 2007, H.R. 1201, is being sponsored by Congressman Rick Boucher (D-VA), Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), and Congressman John Doolittle (R-CA). The Bill states that it is being proposed "to amend title 17, United States Code, to promote innovation, to encourage the introduction of new technology, to enhance library

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-71781168854382349702007-04-09T15:38:00.001-06:002007-04-09T19:52:11.390-06:00

Overdue fines are the Scarlet Letter of librarianship. To my mind, billing patrons for the late return of materials has at least a tinge of public shame to it. The patron has been Bad, therefore he or she needs to be Punished. (Note that I am here only discussing overdue fines for late items, not a bill for the replacement cost of unreturned items -- a different matter altogether.) I know

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-73331009376701510652007-04-07T11:04:00.000-06:002007-04-07T12:08:59.433-06:00

I confess that there is not anything theological about this post. It can be filed under the general heading of "Stuff That Happens In Libraries". Or, in this case, around many buildings in the midwest. I'm not sure what the origins of corporate ponds are, but by constructing so many of them, we have created a marvelous artificial environment for Branta canadensis, the Canadian goose:Because of

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-24199743209993819972007-04-05T08:35:00.000-06:002007-04-05T11:22:58.975-06:00

I was pleased to see in the Chronicle's Academe Today an article about a new Copyright Renewal Database at Stanford University. It appears that this database could be an invaluable tool for tracking down the copyright status of books published in the "gray years" from 1923-1963.In spite of the much publicized efforts of Google Book Search and Microsoft Live Book Search, we are still a long ways

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-75757563160007470292007-04-03T20:37:00.000-06:002007-04-03T22:45:53.748-06:00

I have been enjoying the active discussions on the recently formed Future of Subject Headings list run by the American Library Association. The Library of Congress has already abandoned keeping track of series headings; now we are nervous that subject headings may be the next thing to go.Of course, librarians by constitution tend to be a bit nervous. We enjoy predicting our own doom, and have

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-32010543538273867642007-03-20T09:12:00.000-06:002007-03-20T09:51:49.816-06:00

I'm indebted to the Chronicle's Daily Report for twigging me on to futureofthebook.org. A collaborative (and eclectic) group of authors, social scientists, systems engineers, programmers, bikers, graphic designers, and entrepreneurs have come together to chronicle the shift away from the printed page toward the networked screen, "and impact its development in a positive direction". They have an

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-55337203145871503142007-03-19T08:55:00.000-06:002007-03-19T09:03:46.889-06:00

Many thanks to the director of the G. Allen Fleece Library at Columbia International University for bringing my attention to her blog, The Book Cover at http://fleecelibrary.blogspot.com/. Her posting on the Sports Illustrated Uproar is worth a read. If you have a moment, you will also want to take a look at her Fleece Theological Forum, to "answer questions for pastors on matters of exegetical

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-87784998750125826362007-03-15T21:00:00.000-06:002007-04-03T22:43:48.974-06:00

This post is dedicated to the other librarians that I have met in the American Theological Library Association.~~~~~~~~~~.~~~~~~~~~~I figure that if George Lucas can start Star Wars with Part 4, I can start this series with Part 2. In a future posting, I'll tell you about the first thing that drew me to theological librarianship as a career. In this posting, though, I want to tell you about the

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-26831544399954808722007-03-09T19:43:00.000-06:002007-03-09T23:59:01.274-06:00

Yesterday, I heard on the radio that it was the 25th anniversary of the computer virus. Or maybe January 19th was the 21st anniversary. Or maybe January 26th was the 25th anniversary. Or, well, just sit back and enjoy the story:In the beginning, God created the multiverse.And the multiverse was without graphics and was text-based, and the Spirit of God hovered over ARPANET.And God said, "Let

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-27612758534819179752007-03-06T19:38:00.001-06:002007-03-09T23:56:23.522-06:00

A book landed on my desk the other day to review for possible repair or replacement: Vestiges of the natural history of creation, by Robert Chambers, New York : Harper, [18??]. (Our spine label says 1847, but that appears to be pure conjecture.) The cover was in tatters, but the paper was in excellent condition and would easily hold up to rebinding.I'm usually not sentimental about books as

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2295818640268392165.post-50108493488772428732007-03-05T10:30:00.000-06:002007-03-09T23:54:18.757-06:00

For my first posting, I am choosing a humorous look at the history of tech support. Having a good sense of humor makes survival in a field undergoing volatile changes much more pleasant. The following YouTube video is a good reminder that, in some ways, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Click here to view Medieval Help DeskI think most theological librarians are conservative

Blake Walterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03136002121175414103noreply@blogger.com1