Everything's up-to-date in Kansas City. At least that's what I had always been told. In fact KC has gone about as far as they can go by offering free wireless in the airport. I was there this week speaking at the Military Libraries Workshop.

As I sat in the airport Thursday evening watching the snow come down and my estimated departure time get farther away, I managed to find a stray power plug and sat down to catch up on email and maybe submit a blog post. The former took no time at all (with only a week left of work at NCSU, my correspondence has dwindled...the end-times get lonely). When I tried to do the latter, I was confronted with a serious message from KC's free wireless provider:

My blog. Not "inappropriate," not "restricted," not even "suspicious"... pornography! In fact, blogs.ala.org is categorized as such since I could not get to others either. Had the area around the terminal's only power source not been so crowded, I might have tried a few real porn sites to see if I could get through, but who could guess what kind of scrutiny I might have been under at that point. After several tries, I became somewhat embarrassed and even felt it necessary to explain the repeatedly appearing screen to the gentleman with whom I shared an armrest lest my failed attempts at work become as suspicious as real porn.

The only alternative was to sit there and laugh about it. Was this Karmic revenge for ALA's stance on filtering? Was it some sort of mid-western editorial about the quality of my blog? How ironic that I had to wait until I got home to blog about it.

I've had a few e-mails from folks asking me why I have not reported on the Amazon Kindle yet. As one who was once labeled the "E-Book Evangelist," certainly I would have an opinion on this one. Frankly, I almost don't know what to say, and the usual 3-day fermentation period that is my writing style, which usually results in a zippy 250-word blog post, just was not coming.

One of the phrases that I used to use about e-books is "the second mouse always gets the cheese." I thought that for sure early failures in e-book devices would lead to the perfect handheld device, software that made digital reading a pleasure, and a DRM acceptable to most libraries—or at least their patrons. I sincerely thought that by now we would have a device that smelled like a paperback, and we still don't have anything that even feels like one. Since the early days of digital books, many a rodent has died upon the altar of the e-book mousetrap. The cheese itself (digitized content, in this painful metaphor) has aged gracefully and gotten bigger. But the perfect device, the perfect software, still eludes us.

That said, I don't want to dwell on the Kindle itself. There are plenty (plenty, plenty) of blogs, reviews, and even videos mostly deriding Kindle's ability to not be more like an iPod. I'm not going to criticize its look and feel because $400 is above my technical curiosity threshold. Really, Amazon, did you think that making me choose between this oddly colored (is that 1993 PC beige?) e-book device and a Sony Blu-Ray was giving me any choice at all? Though I don't have one in hand, my biggest disappointment is that the pictures I have seen make it look a bit too much like the grainy snapshot that was available when I did blog about Kindle over a year ago.

I do not find disparity between belief in the power of the printed word and the power of the word digitized. I have said all along that an e-book is not a device, it is not a piece of software—it is the work in electronic form. How a publisher chooses to distribute that work, and how a person chooses to consume it is where the disparity begins. —Your's truly, Computers in Libraries, May 2005

So we're still down to distribution and consumption being the biggest barriers. These are the topics being debated in the circles of Google Books and the OCA. And now Amazon has distracted us with their new little device. I really only want to see one for the supposed wonder that is the e-ink display. As I have been cleaning out my office, I came across my old RocketBook and SoftBook. I still like them both as devices, but due to technological and content restrictions (and some financial mismanagement), they were doomed to failure.

So maybe we need to take another step back. The Kindle is just another device, like the iPod, and the Palm, like the RocketBook. Tastes for consumption are hard to predict, but content providers can put themselves in the stream regardless. I grow increasingly pessimistic about a publisher's ability to put itself in that stream without hyperbolic DRM paranoia.

The e-book scene is so different than it was when I first got involved, yet the arguments for and against seem to be getting circular in nature. What exactly will get us out of this circle, out of this e-book malaise, I do not know.

There's nothing like a very flattering press release to turn rumor into fact. It's true, starting January 7, I will be the Executive Director, Networked Library Services, at OCLC.

I've had a great run at NCSU Libraries, where I have been just shy of nine years. I'm immensely appreciative for all the opportunities that were given to me here—a library that puts its money where its librarians' mouths are, aspires to and achieves greatness, embraces practical advocacy, and hires some of the best people you could ever hope to work with. I can honestly say that in nine years, I have never had a boring day at work.

More than that, NCSU Libraries indulged my desire to speak, write, and consult on a variety of library topics . . . activities that ultimately led to a platform from which I could launch a new chapter of my career. Of course none of the above would have been possible without an unbelievable collection of colleagues, some of whom have moved on to other pastures, many of whom I will be leaving with a touch of sadness.

Okay, before this gets too sappy . . . what about OCLC? I can barely contain my excitement. Yes, this is a big move, both for my career and for my family. Frankly, it's where the action is, and that's where I want to be. I'm going to get a chance to work with really great people, learn new things, and help increase the value of OCLC to libraries and the value of libraries to patrons.

Dark side? "Pshaw," I say. Those of you who know me well know that I decry the notion that there are "sides" to our profession. My passion for my chosen field requires that I work for places and people that embrace the ethos of librarianship. OCLC is such a place. It is the biggest such place. What will I be doing? Suffice it for now to say that I will be working hard to make things better. The same thing that I have always tried to do. The word might be passé, but "psyched" is the best one I can think of to describe how I'm feeling about the new job.

What becomes of my status as vendor provocateur? My column? This blog? Well, I'll be submitting my last "Technically Speaking" column next week for the January/February issue of American Libraries. Again, a nice run there, and a platform that I have loved and will dearly miss, but life goes on. As for the blog, I have not completely decided. As a companion to the magazine column, I hope the mantle will pass. But I also hope to find a platform and new voice (i.e., new content) for "Hectic Pace" . . . like many things, that will depend on time allowed and whether readers out there want to continue to hear from me. Will I stop provoking and being a little disruptive? Will I stop writing? Will I stop being so opinionated? Fat chance on all three counts.

I've had so many nice emails, Facebook wall postings, IMs, and phone calls from friends and colleagues, but I'd be remiss if I did not mention the love and support of my family during this transition—my wife Sharon with whom I embark on another geographic adventure like the one we had to California now so long ago, Emma (9), and Eli (5). I couldn't do this without them. So, farewell (soon) to Raleigh, N.C. Hello Dublin, OH. I can hardly wait.

I always wish that I would put more of my predictions in writing. At least the ones that I ended up being right about. Actually, even being wildly wrong can be fun. Anyway, here's one I predicted, but the formal announcement is missing some of the details that folks might not be aware of.

SirsiDynix, the seemingly last library vendor on the market without a detailed plan for a "next generation catalog," has made an OEM agreement with Brainware for a next-generation faceted search solution. The press release is online (pdf). The release is slated for Summer 2008 . . . I've been griping that 2007 was hardly "next generation" . . . next summer seems a long way off with all the new interfaces that are coming out all over the place.

Brainware technology will provide innovative fuzzy search, fuzzy logic, dynamic categorization, and other capabilities that will empower information seekers to discover more content from more sources—including libraries’ own catalogs, Z39.50 sources, subscription resources, digital collections, crawled web content, subscription content, and social networking data—than ever before.

SirsiDynix is a little late coming into the game with new interfaces, but Brainware looks like solid technology from a company based in one of the technological hotbeds in Northern Virgina . . . my old stomping grounds.

What the press release doesn't mention, but which makes the partnership all the more obvious (logical?) is that Brainware is owned by . . . care to guess? Tick-tock, tick-tock . . . that's right, Vista Equity Partners, the firm that bought SirsiDynix last year. Look here for other potential synergies. I'll let someone else guess the next one.

In other news . . .

. . . tangentially related to SirsiDynix, the firm's old CEO, Patrick Sommers, has landed on his feet at Gale Group. Cengage (does that rhyme with 10-gage?) Learning appointed Sommers president of Gale last month.