Tuesday, September 14, 2004

Reading Habits

George seems to have listed most of his fav magazine reads and so, in the interests of full disclosure, I will tell you that one of my must-read subscriptions is Vanity Fair. It comes in print form to my house and I eagerly devour it monthly. The fact that Graydon Carter, the editor, is an ex-pat Canadian has nothing--nothing I tell you--to do with it.

I spent the afternoon on planes today. I had packed crossword puzzles to do in-flight, but I finished both the one I had in my purse and the one in the inflight magazine and as it was turbulent I needed diversion so I leafed through the Sky Mall mag. I was bemused and a bit horrified to find that I receive about 98% of the catalogs represented. I can remember the days when this magazine was terra incognito to me...elevated dog beds? Have I caught up with the world or come down to the level of...dog beds?

I had dinner with Robert Smith, the OCLC sales rep based in NYC. (did I mention I was in Albany?) He used to work at the OCLC mothership in Dublin and I miss him, so it was very nice to spend a few hours with him. Tomorrow I'll be at SUNY Albany doing a Scan presentation.

I know lots of you who are kind enough to read this blog have also read our environmental scan, and now, may also read the 2004 content trends report. We would really truly like you to tell us about stuff we missed and to point us toward trends you think will have an impact on the LibrarianShip. And while you're at it, if you have ideas about what OCLC should be going forward, we'd love to hear about them. As you know, OCLC has been around since the early 70s. Of the Fortune 500 companies only 20 that were on the top 100 in 1971 are in the top 100 on the 2004 list...so, OCLC is doing very well!