I emphasize reflection in my classes because when I was working a standard 9 to 5 library systems job I rarely took time out to think about what I was doing. I was under a lot of pressure to accomplish a lot in a short amount of time. And yet it was those rare moments of reflection that were the most meaningful. It was during those times that I became concerned about equitable access to technology and information. As I think about it now, I think how straightforward life was in the early days of the Internet before the explosion of content. Now all of us, trained librarians and our patrons, are inundated by the quantity of information available to us and it's easy to lose track of what we are seeking. Fortunately, wise men like Stephen Harter remind us that when we're retrieving information the bottom line is that we want to capture the good stuff and weed out the rest.

For a long time, academics have viewed the good stuff as printed publications that have gone through the peer review process of scholarly communication. But at a time when much worthy content is created and disseminated outside this process is this a valid approach? Scholars around the world are experimenting with different forms of publication and finding that some of them engage new audiences. My blogging is an attempt to see how it works for me, to see if I can reflect on this process and emerge with a clearer understanding of where we might be heading so that I can be a better librarian and teacher of new librarians.