Peter Bromberg wrote about being an agent for the customer rather than a gatekeeper (a topic sure to make me gleeful as the gatekeeper model drives me batty), and this reminded me I had meant to post on one of my favorite things: the wonder that is the Nordstrom shoe department. As I have mentioned [...]
Entries Tagged as 'why librarians'
customer service: all hail the Nordstrom shoe department
June 3rd, 2010 · 4 Comments · Uncategorized
shoe shopping, the long tail, and libraries
May 1st, 2010 · 6 Comments · Uncategorized
I hate shoe shopping. I know — this is grounds for eviction from my gender. But if you’d once gone into every shoe store in your hometown, asked if they’d sold your size, and they all said “no”, you’d hate shoe shopping too. (I wear an 8.5AA, and basically no one sells — or manufactures [...]
Tags:amazon·long tail·macgyver·shoes·user needs·why librarians
Create Your Own Economy (part I?)
August 13th, 2009 · Comments Off · Uncategorized
I’ve just started reading Tyler Cowen’s new book, Create Your Own Economy. (That is to say, I’ve just finished Chapter 1.) I should preface this by saying that Cowen is one of my great intellectual crushes and his blog, Marginal Revolution, has taught me a lot and strongly influenced my thinking on some matters (as [...]
Tags:cataloguing·create your own economy·culture clash·findability·library 2.0·tyler cowen·why librarians
objectivity vs. transparency
July 21st, 2009 · 2 Comments · Uncategorized
The always fascinating David Weinberger blogs on transparency vs. objectivity. Worth reading the whole thing — the argument gets deeper as it goes along. But here’s the part where I really started thinking: Transparency prospers in a linked medium, for you can literally see the connections between the final draft’s claims and the ideas that [...]
Tags:culture clash·david weinberger·library 2.0·user needs·why librarians
why even the future needs librarians
July 4th, 2009 · Comments Off · Uncategorized
So I was watching the new Star Trek movie and… (bear with me here). At the end of the movie, offstage, we’ve got 10000 Vulcans on some colony, bereft of their planet, trying to rebuild their culture. And what’s one of the first things they’re going to do? Re-establish libraries. And hand out research grants [...]
Tags:digitization·findability·indexing·star trek·why librarians
