James LaRue - myliblog

I just had coffee with a retired CEO who told me a great story. When someone would come into his office to pitch a new idea, and ask for, say, $10,000, the CEO would tell him to come back when he could ask for a million dollars. Every day, said the CEO, there should be a line outside my door asking for big money for big ideas. How many times did anyone take him up on it? Never. So that's an interesting scenario. If I were to say to you, here's a million bucks for you to radically transform your institution, or at least to begin to in a significant way, what would you spend it on? I wonder how many librarians could answer that?

Author Gary Marcus is a New York University psychologist. In his book, "Kluge: the haphazard construction of the human mind"  (Houghton Mifflin, 2008), he provides an accessible and entertaining case for the human brain as something of an evolutionary mishmash. After providing a raft of evidence that suggests that if we were crafted by an Intelligent Designer, He was either a shockingly absent-minded engineer, or was off His meds, Marcus gets to the gist of it: "It would be foolish to routinely surrender our considered judgment to our unconscious, reflexive system, vulnerable and biased as it often is. But it would just as silly to abandon the ancestral reflexive system altogether: it's not entirely irrational, just less reasoned. In the final analysis, evolution has left us with two systems, each with different capabilities: a reflexive system that excels in handling the routine and a deliberative system that can help us think outside the box." In his concludin...

So on Thursday, January 23, 2014, apparently the Great Firewall of China collapsed, and all the Internet traffic of the nation was sent to a single IP address in Cheyenne WY, which of course failed immediately - the most colossal failure of the Internet to date. It was down for 8 hours. The very next day, Gmail, the email program of Google, arguably one of  the most technologically sophisticated companies in the world, again, simply failed, although it was repaired far more quickly. Explanations for both are pretty lame. Yeah, the Firewall made a routing error. Oops, there was a little software bug. That seems like quite a coincidence. It looks more like a hackfest to me. Welcome, all, to the new era of vulnerability. Our entire communications network, and all the business conducted on it, is held together by means of physical, and virtual connections far beyond my  understanding or ability to secure. And when somebody messes with it, it's hard to know just who, or wh...

My first few days of "retirement" seemed to involve me working harder than ever. But then, it was never "retirement." It was the Next Chapter. One of my key projects was to update my website . I had to recast what wasn't much more than a set of bookmarks and CV files, to a presentation to the world about how I hope I might be able to help other libraries (and not just libraries) move forward. There are three ways: through speaking , through writing , and through consulting . I have to say that I really don't like most of the websites I see. I find myself inclining toward a minimalist aesthetic in many areas of my new life. To me, that means an understanding that the most precious resource on our planet is attention . I really don't want to be shunted around 16 panels, 42 photos, 6 Flash videos, 4 Next Pages, and pop-ups. Who has the time? After a whole lot of thought, I whittled jlarue.com down to 8 pages. That feels ... about right, especially sin...

This is just a check-in. [x] Wrap-up my job as Director of Douglas County Libraries. While I don't claim to have resolved all issues, I think I worked through a good set of them. I left the organization in good shape, and stepped out at a time when the next director will have a chance to put his or her stamp on things. I loved my time at DCL, and am confident that the institution will continue to do well. There are so many smart and capable people there. But whether it does or not, I'm done as director, effective 18 January 2014. [-] Start my new career. I began by crafting a business plan. It's pretty solid, I think. And I've sent out the word. But there is much to be done. - My website is old, and needs refocusing and refreshing. But I have spent a lot of time thinking about the services I can offer, the value I can add. I'm also having a lot of fun poking around the various templates and possibilities. - My >1,000 contacts have been whittled down to...

It's the end of the year - and also, the launching of my new career - so I am once again looking at my software tools. I ran across two today that I probably don't need , but I found very well done. The first is an open source mind map application, run from within a browser. It has a wonderfully clear and intuitive design. Things tend to do about what you think they'll do. It's called MindMup . I've used it on my laptop and on my iPad. The interface automatically adjusts to the device it's running on. The desktop version has sensible keyboard commands (Enter to make a sibling, tab to make a child), a good set of features (links are live, everything can be dragged around, expanded or collapsed), runs quickly, and saves to Google Drive or Dropbox. It will print, export PNG, PDF, HTML, or Freemind (and a few others). Here's my first map: You can see that the collapsed topics (Articles, for instance) have a stacked-card look. There's a lot to be sa...

That's the headline of the December 14, 2013 Denver Post. "Again" in a font size larger than the masthead, with the subheading: "Student gunman dead after targeting teacher: girl, 15, critical." The full story is here . It happens I was driving south on University, just north of Arapahoe High School yesterday just exactly as this was happening. I was passed by a mobile command unit, and saw all the red lights congregating a few blocks ahead of me, so turned around and avoided it. I didn't find out what had happened until later. The shooter, an 18 year old student, is said to have posted on Facebook, "the Republican Party: Health Care: Let 'em die. Climate change: Let 'em die. Gun violence: Let 'em die. Women's Rights: Let 'em die. More War: Let 'em Die. Is this really the side you want to be on?" (Addition: the shooter was apparently seeking a specific teacher, "whom students described as a librarian at the school...