Greetings readers and visitors to the hive!

Okay - I don’t think of the Library I work in as an actual hive abuzz w/ activity. Sure there’s lots going on. Despite the information age we are still borrowing hard-copy magazines and books from other Libraries as well as buying them.

Maybe as the next generation of worker bees moves higher on the managment food chain we’ll start to get more demands for electronic subscriptions and cries to eliminate all these dusty law books. I’m all for that where it is practical. Case law and codes are much easier to search online. But legal treatises…., the print versions come with a hand table of contents and index that even Lexis and Westlaw cannot seem to master.

And sure we’ll go digital - but how many employees will print the whole article because you just don’t want to ruin your eyes trying to read an 20 page law review article online. Of course - the advantage of pdf is that you can enlarge and Enlarge and ENLARGE to make tiny script readable.

But then I think about sweet Burgess Meredith in the Twighlight Zone as a man who wants nothing better than to enjoy reading and is left alone on the planet only to drop his glasses and break them. Sure - it will be great to have everything digital and at our desktop, but I cannot read my laptop by candlelight.

So hooray!! we survived another year - well most of us. Goodnight Johnny, Miss Parks, Your Holiness, to name a few. Let us strive to be better to each other and to ourselves in 2006.

peace out!

- David