j's scratchpad

Rebecca MacKinnon, a former CNN bureau chief in Asia and a Berkman Thursday meetings regular, gave a very interesting talk about her blog, NK Zone.

The other day, I received four copies of one publisher’s catalog. I belong to a few professional associations for information professionals that sell my name to marketers. I often receive the same piece of mail from the same companies. Usually, it doesn’t come on the same day. I often wonder whether it’s more cost-effective for [...]

This holiday for special librarians “… recognizes the unique contributions made by information professionals around the world and the critical role they play in the changing global information community.”
I’m not sure what to make of the holiday having a sponsor, though. I appreciate Factiva’s willingness to support librarianship, but it just makes me wonder which [...]

While I was waiting at the reference desk at my local public library tonight for a librarian to finish with another customer, I picked up a book on the display in front of the reference desk: “Walking Across America.” I looked at the back cover to see if it said what the book was about [...]

Murphy’s Law got me like I thought it would. I figured whenever I bought a new computer, within a few days, the next best thing would appear on the market. Sho ’nuff. Apple released a new line of laptops this week–which come with wireless standard–and the price on mine dropped $300. I called the dealer [...]

Within a few hours of posting this tagline:
“For my blogiversary, I bought myself a copy of Jump’s new CD Between the Dim and Dark, released on April 20th. How timely. Newbury Comics: $11.88 on sale. review“
I was getting hits from searches for variations of “the dim and the dark.”
(It’s good. Buy it.)

giving this guy featured on page 98 of Time magazine a business card? ha ha ha
(It’s an inside joke. If you sat near us at dinner at BloggerCon, you might laugh, too.)

Now that I’ve typed and posted my notes from BloggerCon, I’m remembering and revisiting how much the sessions I attended meshed with each other. As people in the Librarianesque Session talked about blog features, I wondered how many had been in the Visions from Users session and wondered how I could communicate what people were [...]

I broke 3500 hits today. My average is around 700. I’ve had high traffic for the last few days. I don’t know if it’s spiders or people reading my BloggerCon notes, which I think are all finished now. This blog is the third most popular blog on Harvard’s server today.
This blog passed 1,000 items at [...]

I started this weblog on April 20, 2003, but didn’t post anything until April 21 ’cause I didn’t know what to say. It’s been downhill ever since and I still don’t know what to say.
Without the encouragement of such bloggers as Liz Donovan and Dave Winer, I wouldn’t have gotten started. Without continued encouragement from [...]