Archive for June 2009

Ray Bradbury, libraries and the Internet

June 26, 2009

According to a New York Times story, science fiction icon and general guru, is fighting to save his local public library in Ventura County, California. Bradbury is, of course, most famous for his depiction of book burning in his novel Fahrenheit 451, but the NYT reminds us that some of his other books have significant [...]

Occasional tweeting

June 24, 2009

After resisting for a long while, I have finally joined Twitter. I image that my tweeting will be even more occasional than my blogging, but for anyone interested it’s @david_bawden. Yes, the underscore does matter.

Inforum proceedings

June 22, 2009

The proceedings of the Prague Inforum conference, which I mentioned in a previous post, are now available online here. They are of interest to anyone concerned with the use of digital information sources, particularly though not entirely in a Central European context. My own paper, ‘Library / information prospects: three views of the future’, can [...]

Prague’s New Library

June 3, 2009

I had the opportunity last week to see around the newly built, though not yet opened, State Technical Library in Prague, thanks to the kindness of Martin Svoboda, its director. Very different from its predecessor in the mediaeval town centre, the new library sits in a campus suburb a few stops away on the metro. [...]

Everyday information practices

June 1, 2009

Having just read a highly interesting new book by Reijo Savolainen of the University of Tampere, Finland, on his work on ‘everyday information practices’, I was inspired to use this as the basis for an editorial in the Journal of Documentation. This is some of what I wrote: Everyday practices of documentation, and the influence [...]