Categories
Personal

Goodbye, 2008

While 2008 wasn’t always easy, in looking back at it, it really was an outstanding year for me. Personally, of course, I had my amazing wife Betsy helping me survive the first year of Eliza’s life… easily the best thing that’s happened in any year of my life. Professionally, I hardly know where to start. At MPOW, we rolled out a new OpenURL resolver, and worked like crazy in planning a new library for the UTC Campus. And in the larger professional community, my year was just nuts: my first book was published (well, half-mine, anyway…Thanks, Karen!), I spoke at a ton of conferences, and made my international speaking debut. And I had a great year writing both here and over at ALA Techsource.

I can’t imagine having another year as full as this one. I’m not sure that I even want to try. But 2009 is shaping up to be pretty interesting already. Working on a second book, signing a contract for another big writing gig for the later part of the year, and I’m sure that even more exciting things are around the corner.

My best hope for the new year is that I can find even more great friends, write things that people want to read, help push MPOW into a few interesting places, and continue to be the best father and husband that I can be.

Categories
Library Issues Technology

December Techsource post

In my December Techsource post, I decided to do my Year End Top 5 Technologies list. Head on over and take a look, and tell me if you agree. 🙂 Here’s the teaser:

In the spirit of the bazillion other  year-end lists you will see over the coming weeks, I decided to list my Top 5 Most Influential Technologies of the year. These are the technologies that I think librarians need to be aware of, examine, and find uses for in their library. Not all of these started this year, but 2008 was  the year they broke out and became necessities in many people’s lives.