Moving and Shaking

Congratulations to all the other Movers & Shakers!
infinitemonkeys
Although I found out a couple of months ago that I’d made the list, I’m still really bemused by it all. Partly because it came out of the blue, but mostly because I can easily think of a dozen people who are infinitely more deserving. However, I’ll gladly try and grab my 5 minutes of fame ๐Ÿ™‚
At the risk of doing a “Kate Winslet“, there are lots of people I’d like to thank for getting me to where I am today! Back in 2005, John Blyberg‘s innovative work at Ann Arbor gave me the confidence to start fiddling with our own OPAC. Fortunately, Dynix’s developers had created an OPAC that was fairly simple to tweak and an ILS that was easy to query, so it wasn’t an uphill struggle. (I can’t stress just how important it is that ILS vendors give their customers flexible and extensible products)
Since then, a plethora of people have continued to inspire me (in no particular order and far from complete) — Jenny Levine, Casey Durfee, Tim Spalding, Tony Hirst, Jonathan Rochkind, Helene Blowers, Casey Bisson, Kathryn Greenhill, Michael Stephens, Brian Kelly, Brendan Dawes, Richard Wallis, Phil Bradley, Stephen Abram… and, oh God, who’s the other one?!? ๐Ÿ˜‰
A big “hi” to everyone who puts up with my inane waffling in the LSW chat room — you guys and girls rock! ๐Ÿ™‚
An especially big “thank you” to my long suffering friends and colleagues at the University of Huddersfield. I’m extremely fortunate to work in a library that both innovates and inspires innovation. (Did you know Huddersfield had one of the first facetted PACs back in the 1990s? It might not be as well known as NCSUs OPAC, but Dr. Steve Pollitt‘s pioneering HIBROWSE system laid the groundwork for Endeca.)
Finally, another big “thank you” to Iman Moradi and Bryony Ramsden.
Iman’s probably the closest thing we’ve got to a “Superpatronโ€ at Huddersfield and his boundless energy and support for the library never fails to amaze me. This year, he’s got his students playing with library data and creating visualisations — how cool is that?!
Bryony, my partner of 14 years, never seems to mind the endless hours I spend on the PC at home — for that, and many other reasons, I’m eternally grateful to her!
So, to all the unsung Movers & Shakers out there in libraries throughout the world, karma++ ๐Ÿ™‚