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A number of folks have responded to the Liminal Librarian's original meme asking for a sampling of five non-library blogs folks read.

Here are some of mine:

1. dmiessler's "grep understanding knowledge" – He writes about society, programming, UNIX administration, and his personal life. I enjoy both his writing style and the diversity of topics he covers. His recent piece about the passing of his grandfather resonated strongly with me, as I've been struggling with having lost my own, one and only, grandfather in December.
2. Slow Leadership – Gosh, this is sort of a dirty secret, but I am ridiculously interested in management. It mystifies me, and it's a skill I'd like to gain and hone someday. Effective management and leadership are tasks I never expected to have an interest in, but I've been drawn more and more to them the past few years. Slow Leadership contains a number of insights that I have found quite useful in making sense of how (good) administrators do what they do, and I try to take some of their advice to heart.
3. The Rails Way – I'm a programmer by day, and most of my web application work is in the Rails framework. The Rails Way is written by two Rails committers who know the conventions and good patterns inside and out. Here's how it works: folks submit Rails applications they are working on, and these two rip them apart (in a very constructive and nice way), giving code samples along the way. It's very instructive. To wit, I've taken more notes on their suggestions than I can shake a stick at.
4. The Seattle Times – Okay, it's not really a blog, but I do read it in my aggregator. And what can I say? I can't let go. I still feel like Seattle is my home.
5. Slog (NSFW) – The Slog is the blog of Seattle's alternative weekly newspaper, The Stranger. It's an odd combination of gutter humor, satire, social commentary, political rants, and philosophical bombast. Where else can you read about deep-fried, beer-battered, bacon-wrapped, spray-cheese-filled hotdogs, analysis of the Alaskan Way viaduct vote, the recent Garrison Keillor flap, and the latest eating establishments in Capitol Hill (Seattle, not D.C.)?

Is the discipline of computer science on its last legs? Neil McBride, a lecturer in the School of Computing at De Montfort University, advocates for great change in The death of computing. Citing greatly reduced CS enrollment figures in the UK, US, and Australia, and the growing disconnect between industry and academia, McBride argues that computer scientists need to reform the field from within or risk further marginalization and ultimate irrelevance. Though I can sympathize with his desire to revitalize the discipline, and I understand how perception of computer science might have suffered from the dot-com bust, his message amounts to more than mere doomsaying and pointless nostalgia.

If it is true that computer scientists "look to games programming for [their] salvation," there is a great opportunity being missed. There are other options — exciting, pragmatic, and revolutionary options — computer scientists might investigate if they believe a wholesale rededication of their skills is needed for the betterment of their field. (To be sure, some already have begun this great work.) As a former student of information science and computational linguistics, I'm here as an interested observer to say that your skills are needed if we are to accomplish some of our loftiest goals. I humbly submit the following areas that could use your help:

• Information retrieval: Build smarter, faster algorithms for finding and organizing information. Instead of building a better bubble sort, figure out better ways to access and relate disparate bits of information. The Google guys made a couple bucks at this; why not cite their success, and point at the meteoric rise of Google, as evidence of the continuing and growing sexiness of computer science?
• Semantic web: Bring your knowledge to bear upon the growing semantic web discussion. If you could think up distributed computing, perhaps the challenge of distributed networks of semantically encoded data is ready for your insight.
• Natural language processing: Be the Google-killer by being the first to market with a usable natural language search tool. There is much research in NLP, but very little of it seems ready for end-users. Help make the keyword a thing of the past. Computational linguists would love to cultivate interdisciplinary connections with you folks.

Although McBride's article may fade into the background of the very frequent, if strident, cries that CS is dead, I am hopeful that interdisciplinary ties between computer science, information science, library studies, and linguistics will bring about practical innovation, not to mention a renewed sense of relevance and excitement for computer scientists.

Peter Binkley wrote a while back about the crop of neat digital librarian-y jobs that'd been popping up. There've been a bunch more lately:

• Head, Library Technology (Oregon State University)
• Coordinator for Digital Library and Metadata Services (University of Colorado)
• Digital Collections Coordinator (U. of Oregon)
• Digital Projects and Catalog Management Librarian (U. of Oregon)
• Digital Initiatives Coordinator (Clemson U.)
• Digital Library Initiatives Manager (Temple U.) [Direct link could not be obtained]
• Digital Library Program Manager (UC-San Diego)

It's great to see academic libraries diving head-first into digital collections / library initiatives, and doing so with dedicated staff.

Some of these positions look like great options for folks like myself who've been bouncing around the digital libraries world for a few years now and are starting to think about taking on greater responsibility within an organization. I know you're out there, folks. Consider applying!

I followed a series of links[1] to find this article on the effect of Generation X values upon work culture. The article cites the impending wave of Baby Boomer retirements, pointing out that a number of executive and upper management positions will open up and likely be filled by Generation Xers. Will workplace culture change when GenXers take the reins? If so, to what extent? And how will it affect libraries which, unlike the corporate world, are saturnine[2]?
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