Author: Tim
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Clinging to Outdated Library Models Stifles Small Campus Innovation
For too long, academic libraries have determined their value by what they control: catalogs, subscriptions, and systems replicating those of the largest institutions. For as long as anyone remembers, academic libraries have been following a one-size-fits-all approach. If larger libraries adopted a collections-centered ethos or a vendor-driven approach to collections, smaller libraries followed along, and…
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Are Smaller Academic Libraries OA Free Riders?
I regularly attend and present at the Charleston Conference each year in November. It’s a fantastic conference dominated by some of the brightest and most agile thinkers in scholarly publishing and academic libraries. And regularly I hear the term “free rider” bandied about. It is typically mentioned in passing, as in “…and then there’s free…
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Smaller Academic Libraries, Chess, and the Endgame
I used to be a student of chess. While I was never very good, I appreciated the various ways of conceiving of the structure of the game. From myriad openings I could scarcely recall to middle-game tactics where I would sometimes find my footing, the game presented an uneven but undeniable progression towards a finality…
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Serendipity & Happenstance vs Certainty & Control
Last fall I found myself driving to Cincinnati from Pittsburgh listening to a fantastic talk from way back in the 1980s by Marion Woodman. I was on my way to meet Peter Block, whom I had worked with over Zoom several years prior on an article adapting his book Community: The Structure of Belonging to…
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The Power of Openness
I mentioned in my inaugural blog post that I struggled to extract myself from a reliance on a professional position that no longer served me. I’ve thought a lot about why and have concluded that I was scared of the unknown that awaited me upon my return to faculty. In a way, I was closed…
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My Wheelbarrow of Uncertainty
At 45, I found myself face-to-face with an impossible situation: I couldn’t quit the academic affairs administrative post that was becoming intolerable in its tedium and repetition and yet I couldn’t bear the thought of risking something as significant as the income, title, and to-do list that gave me some form of purpose to mark…