Glad to hear from you. We miss you.

... oooh, I almost deleted you from my reader - glad you will continue to blog!

and a belated congrats :)

We'll keep an eye out for it. You might consider updating your blog bio here, too, before Maurice calls you on it.

Well done, Andrew. Wishing you happy holidays and a great start to 2008.

You rock, buddy. There are simply no words. Welcome to the fold.

ROTFLMAO!

With wit and creativity like that, Andrew, I don't know how American Libraries is ever going to be able to replace you.

Good luck with your move and your new job!

That has to be the best going away cake ever! Congratulations on an amazing career and to the next chapter...

Its curious how a perturbing aspect of an aura or smell or tactile feature frequently comes up in comments about the physical book. It is as though there is a suspicion that it means something.

The basis of tactile investigation prompting assimilation of concepts is deeply embedded from evolutionary experience. Primate dexterity and distinctive right and left handed manipulation prompted both neurology and evolutionary advance of the brain. Conceptualizations were prompted by tactile investigations and arms leveraged actions. This learning path of the hands prompting the mind is exemplified by the codex book. Later cultural traits of personal possession of objects including actions of portability and display are well reflected by the codex. And book possession can also be shared across time and culture indicating the codex capacity for persistent existence and library accumulation. The physical configuring of books in classified library arrays prompts researchers to conceive latent books between and among those shelved. Conveying concepts in physical objects is not a paradox, but an embedded mechanism of learning.

But here is an interesting thing about screen reading. It also has an unsettling aura of its own. We like to watch the screen in a mild hypnosis as if we were watching a campfire. What is all that about?

The first screen was the night sky. White dots on a black field. (screens still work best in darkened environments) Patterns were imposed including omens, constellations and astrophysics, but it remains a field receptive to almost any pattern and any perceived pattern is vulnerable to a realization that it is an illusion. We want stars and pixels to be objects, but they are not objects that can be possessed, they are objects that can be watched.

What if reading combines possession and watching into a composite experience? That would be pretty fascinating! It would also begin to explain a disconcertion with formats that feature one or the other of the component experiences.

Meanwhile the world is going goo-goo for cellphones/smart phones/you name it:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/33_billion_mobile_phone_subscriptions.php

At some point, I think it's only right -- if we want to be taken seriously and have an impact on our users -- to acknowledge the winners in the Tech Gizmo Dept. and focus on that.

Get some snow pants for those kids!

Congratulations. Best wishes on moving north in January :)

Congrats! Change is good.

When would be a good time to stop by and pick through your stuff, er, reallocate your assets?

Congratulations and best wishes!

Hi Andrew - Congrats on the move. It's nice to see that I'm not the only North Carolinian moving to Columbus area in January :)

OCLC's net worth just increased substantially. Congrats! I look forward to hearing what provocative opinions you form in your new adventure...

It's a shame that SirsiDynix's proud boasts that they have more people in R&D than all the other suppliers added together has yet to produce one even vaguely cutting edge product (excluding the abandoned Horizon 8.0).

Maybe I'm getting cynical in my old age, but there's nothing in the press release to make me go "oh boy, I can't wait!". Some of the features might have been regarded as cutting edge 10 years ago, but not now.

Also, there's no guarantee that the offspring of an insestuous* relationship will be beautiful or fully functional! ;-)

* Sorry, I had to misspell that to get past the blog spam filter!

So, if Vista owns Brainware, and Vista spins off SirsiDynix next year, does that mean Brainware comes with us as a pac, or that we reinvent the wheel (again) and have to figure out what to use for a pac after the spinoff? Let's see, that makes uPortal, LifeRay, Brainware, and we still have nothing for our patrons to use? ????? Maybe the third product is a charm, although, if you count the VAR relationship that was announced about three years ago with Grokker that none of us ever saw, that would make Brainware number #4.

Honestly, Andrew, I think we have a new version of "how many librarians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?" How many PAC products does it take to screw a SirsiDynix customer? :_)

Andrew,

Any thoughts about how this new partnership with Brainware interrelates with SirsiDynix's not-quite-as-new partnership with FAST for their enterprise search technology? I had been under the impression that that was where SirsiDynix was working on their next-gen-catalog development.

Alan Stewart
Memphis Public Library & Information Center
Memphis, TN

The advantage of the IDPF standards is that they are very simple (as compared to, for example, TEI). They are the kind of thing that you could use in a simple wysiwyg editor in a courseware package...