> The following position announcement from PALINET (Philadelphia, PA)
> was brought to my attention:
>
> Technology Consultant
>
> PALINET seeks a technologist, who is a leader and visionary to
> define and develop innovative technology solutions for its 600
> member libraries in the Mid-Atlantic region. As Senior Technology
> Consultant you will take an active role in enhancing PALINET's
> position as a leading technology advisor through awareness
> building, training, and consulting. You will facilitate adoption
> and implementation of new technology tools, methods, and
> resources by PALINET member libraries such as digitization and
> digital library development, portals and federated searching,
> institutional repositories, e-content management and related
> areas.
This is a cool-sounding job... it sounds as if they're still looking. This
had been John Iliff's position, but my take on this slot is that whoever
goes into it can make it as unique and wonderful in his or her own way as
John did in his.
Eric's follow-up comment about his short stint at PALINET made me laugh... I
remember how relieved I was to change jobs after six months at Queens in my
first library gig after grad school, when in early 1993 I went from
children's services to a new slot in Tech Services that after some
head-scratching we called Electronic Resources Librarian. Toddler Time with
a dozen wandering two-year-olds seemed SO much more challenging (and WAS)
than launching one of the first Internet training programs for library staff
or being on the team that launched the first truly online catalogs...
opening day with the online catalogs featured some hairy moments (my
compadre on that project and I had written the screen prompts to say to
press "Return" when the keyboards were labeled "Enter"-or perhaps it was
vice versa... in any event, just picture the scene in your head, droves of
quarrelsome New Yorkers barking "There's no 'Return' key!"), and for anyone
who can remember introducing the 'net to librarians back in the day, it
wasn't always easy ("Why do I need to learn this? It's not my job, I'll
never need it!"). But compared to trying to amuse and educate toddlers...
for me, at least, a piece of cake.
What does this have to do with CODE4LIB? Well, I am not entirely sure, but
it helps to remember that what's "easy" or "intuitive" or "natural" is a
very relative concept, and our systems should reflect that.
Karen G. Schneider
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