Some thoughts about “The Desk Setup”

One of my favorite blogs written by a librarian(s) is In the Library with the Lead Pipe. This blog consistently addresses issues that are not usually discussed either openly or in-depth but are nevertheless of many librarians’ interests, such as burnout, librarian identity crisis, or upward mobility, to name a few.

So I was, of course, over the moon when Brett Bonfield, one of the bloggers at In the Library with the Lead Pipe, requested a written interview with me about my computer and gadget setup. Brett’s idea was to write a blog post similar to The SetUp, which is a site that features a series of interviews of people who work closely with the web in one way or another, that is, technologists. The people who have been interviewed for The SetUp include Paul Graham, Jakob Nielson, Stephen Wolfram, Danah Boyd, Jeffery Zeldman, Dan Benjamin, and many more well-known people. If you are interested in the web but haven’t read The SetUp, I highly recommend reading it.

And now, thanks to Brett, we have the librarians’ version of The SetUp: The Desk Setup.  It is not only cool but also quite informative to know what kinds of technology tools today’s librarians use to get their work done as well as at their leisure. Many cool gadgets and interesting software are mentioned along with iPhone and iPad apps that librarians use. But beyond those, the interviews also show that there is still a wide variety of set-ups that librarians have at work. Some librarians battle with old computers at work while some librarians work with a machine with 8 GB(!) RAM (yes, I am jealous).  Some librarian is running most of the library computers on Linux, while other librarians don’t even get the full admin rights to her/his own work computer.  If we (meaning ‘the society’) expect our librarians to be on the vanguard in the areas of information, technologies, and digital literacy, the full admin rights shouldn’t even be an issue. Don’t you think? So we (meaning ‘librarians’) might just have to double up the effort of doing “the job of making clearer connections between libraries and technology.”

The Desk Setup was posted today. Go check it out. Add things that weren’t mentioned there but you use and love in the comments. Share your thoughts!

About Bohyun (Library Hat)

Bohyun Kim is the Associate University Librarian for Library Information Technology at the University of Michigan Library. Formerly, she was the Chief Technology Officer and Professor at the University of Rhode Island Libraries.
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2 Responses to Some thoughts about “The Desk Setup”

  1. Thanks for writing this post and for participating in our version of The Setup. I should have asked you to write the introduction for the post. This is a wonderful summary of what I love about The Setup and what we were trying to do with our version of it.

  2. Library Hat says:

    Thanks for inviting me to the interview. It is a great post and I loved your Afterword! It is awesome to show the world that the library-land is filled with savvy technologists whose main concern is with promoting the public’s rights to access/utilize information and facilitating their exercising those rights through the right tools often behind the scenes. I think the world is catching up.

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