Introduction.(Chapter 1)

As I begin what is now my sixth issue of Library Technology Reports, I find myself reminiscing about a career that is now in its midlife stages. Having been a library support staff person for ten years before obtaining the "professional" degree and then steadily rising through the administrative ranks from cataloger to department head to associate university librarian at various universities during the last eleven years, I am struck by how my viewpoints and opinions regarding my vocation have changed and how the landscape itself has changed. I remember doing music score cataloging and how wonderful it felt as a music graduate student to see all the new library materials coming in and to search OCLC for the record, and how exciting it was to find that record using the arcane and intricate search strategies granted only to those so blessed to be scheduled time to use OCLC (back when they charged by the minute). I remember how exciting it was, without an MLS degree, to be working with NASA in the early 1990s on building and digitizing what would become a real-time medical library on the International Space Station. I remember my first professional position as a telecataloger in the mid-1990s, cataloging computer files for eight major universities from my home in Houston for an early version of the National Digital Library. And I remember learning early on that, if I wanted to make a difference in my profession both locally and globally, both doing scholarly research and becoming involved in administration were the ways to achieve those goals.

I also remember how vigorously I defended, early in my career, …