It all started at the South x Southwest conference this spring. I sat behind a fellow who had written a piece of weblog software called WordPress. The very mention of WordPress made the open-source and webstandards geeks at the conference go all gushy, so I figured it had to be pretty good software. Well. I installed it for a project at work and my heart went pitterpat. Great interface, tons of plugins, complete control over templates, open source, and a slick layout converted me.
Blogger has been good to me, but I’d like to experiment with this software. I’ll keep my old weblog up so your links will work (you will always be able to click on archives 2003-2005 in the right column to get to the ancient stuff), but this change of venue means you’ll have to update your RSS and bookmarks. I’m going to start writing about the books and media I’m consuming, in addition to the usual collection of rants, antecdotes, gloating about my cool job, and library related things.
Soon, I’m going to start writing about some of the nifty things we’re coming out with at my workplace, The Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. I’ve been able to watch and help build an insanely complex audio-video digital library over the last year, and I think there might be some stuff of interest to you guys from what we’ve learned in the process. We’re doing a big launch at the end of the summer, so I can show you the payoff then.
Thanks again to everyone who has posted and helped this site out along the way. Grouchy librarian kisses to all of you.
Hi again – I installed wordpress back in april and played with a bit, but I’m a CSS retard and gave up tweaking it because of time constraints. I have time again and had a look at the tweaks I made and now I hate it! I’d taken a theme and changed the image and colours… but it’s crap! Did you make your theme? Or is it based on an existing theme? I like it because it’s clean, simple, and not jazzed w/ silly icons and patterns behind the various links down the right and I’m just not clever enough to fix that! Any hints/pointers appreciated!
Oh yeah, back when I was in grad school at SI (before it was SI–golly I’m old!) a bunch of us hopped in a van and drove up to MSU to spend a good chunk of the day reading comics. I need to go back again one of these days…
Hmm I might come to that IPL thingamajig – sounds fun – I’ll see what shape my car in is for the 8.5 hour drive. It’s pretty near impossible to leave Ithaca once you arrive hear. What with the moats and all.
Have you visited the Comic Art collection at MSU yet? I got to work there all through undergrad and it warped me wonderfully. The Amazing Randall Scott is the comix guru there.
I have to crush even more library paradigms?
Well, we’ve started a comix & graphic novel collection at the library. Yeah yeah, I know, all the cool libraries have graphic novels these days, but we’re an academic library, and we’re collecting cool stuff like art comix & indy comix & euro comix & mini comix & etc. & stuff.
Hey, are you coming to the big IPL 10th anniversary hoopaloo in September?
Hey is that David Carter, former overlord of the Internet Public Library??? Dude! Thanks for introducing me to Buffy, Perl, and the camp of International Beauty Contests! How’s shakes? What library paradigms are you crushing these days?
Hey Erica. I like the new look. Also happy to see you blogging about comix!
I agree. The banner is a bg image right now, droped in with the stylesheet. I’m gonna promote it to foreground and our troubles should be over…
thank god! i thought you were pansy-ing out of blogging. and yeah, the home page thing in the comment above. i clicked on the banner like, 50 times.
So glad to see the redesign, and the return of the blog! I’d was worried your posts were losing their bite :)
I’m not a web designer, but you may want to link to your home from the banner image. People, albeit lazy ones (like me), who come in through RSS feeds could then more easily get to your home. Just a thought.