In the Library with the Lead Pipe – Page 30 – An open access, peer reviewed journal

By Emily Ford So ALA has joined the ranks of two point oh. Last month it rolled out ALAConnect, a service influenced by Ning, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google Docs, and other online networking platforms and shared work spaces. Despite the hoopla about the system I hadn’t even heard of it until one of my working groups was...

By Brett Bonfield Only a few information technology organizations predict the future by inventing it. ((The full quote by Alan Kay: “Don’t worry about what anybody else is going to do… The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Really smart people with reasonable funding can do just about anything that doesn’t violate...

“The indicators that served as benchmarks in the past, such as number of volumes and number of journal subscriptions, are no longer sufficient because of the more expansive role that the contemporary library has assumed” (Weiner, 2005). “The measurement of quality will come back to the questions of who are the users, what are the...

By Ellie Collier Working in an academic environment, the majority of my student interactions are based around a specific assignment. Every semester there is at least one assignment that comes across my reference desk that makes me throw my hands up in exasperation (such as: a scavenger hunt that was written before we moved much of...

By Editorial Board Since our launch last October, In the Library with the Lead Pipe has been publishing a new post nearly every Wednesday. As writers, drafting long-form, in-depth posts on a weekly basis has proved challenging, even with the contributions of our talented guests. We’ve heard from many of you that, as readers, you’ve found...

While personal information is often thought of as only the documents, emails, and other pieces of information that people receive or retain for some potential, immediate, or future need, William Jones, in his Keeping Found Things Found: The Study and Practice of Personal Information Management (Morgan Kaufmann, 2008), expands the field to include information about "me" or owned by "me." As our online identities, information about us online, expand, how can we manage that information to put our best face (identity) forward?

In the Library with the Lead Pipe is pleased to welcome another guest author, Lisa Carter! Lisa has just recently been appointed as Visiting Program Officer to work with the Association of Research Libraries Special Collections Working Group. Read more to learn about her vision and thought-provoking ideas about the future of special collections… By Lisa...

By Emily Ford Since October something has been weighing on my professional mind: my abusive relationship with Google. I love Google, I don’t ever want to leave my Gmail, my Gchat, my GoogleDocs, my web searches, my Google Reader, but right now I wish I weren’t so dependent on it. The weight to which I...

We at In the Library with the Lead Pipe are happy to welcome two guest authors to our blog! Hyun-Duck Chung and Kim Duckett are two of our creative and inspiring colleagues at the North Carolina State University Libraries. Read on to learn more… By Hyun-Duck Chung and Kim Duckett Lately we’ve been thinking a lot about the...

Why We Should Adopt ALAConnect: A brief review and rumination on ALA’s new online community

A Conversation with Kristin Antelman

Are You Worth It? What Return on Investment Can and Can’t Tell You About Your Library

Stepping on Toes: The Delicate Art of Talking to Faculty about Questionable Assignments

New schedule and a call for guest authors

Will the Real Emily Please Stand Up

It’s the Collections that are Special

My (Our) Abusive Relationship with Google and What We Can Do About It

Narrating the “Back Story” Through E-learning Resources in Libraries