Michael Giarlo from the Access 2006 conference

Michael Giarlo, recent MLIS graduate of Rutgers SCILS, is blogging at the Access 2006 conference in Ottawa.

Here's an excerpt from a recent post:

Day one of the Access 2006 conference is winding down. Two groups of hackers (by trade or in spirit) gathered earlier today at Hackfest and Ad Hockfest, determined to work on a select few of the excellent project suggestions. The experience was entirely new to me, but not uncomfortably so. I was in a group (with pbinkley, ksclarke, tholbroo, and BigD) that worked on a Scriptaculous- and Cocoon-powered METS editor, a project similar to one I may be working on at Princeton. The most rewarding aspect, though, was meeting fellow library technologists and hearing about the interesting, and sometimes interestingly uninteresting :), projects they're working on.

I wound up skipping the opening reception tonight because of how crappy I felt, and instead found a cool Irish pub--the Aulde Dubliner Pour House--a couple blocks away from my hotel. It was exactly how I would have pictured an Irish pub in Canada. Hockey was on every television; the Tragically Hip was playing loudly; and folks were quick to offer a friendly “"Cheers!" ” It was quite relaxing, thanks in some part to the Kilkenny Cream Ale...All in all, a good beginning to the conference in spite of my malaise. I'’m looking forward to reading other folks'’ accounts of their Access 2006 experiences over at Planet Access.

Michael recently published a paper in LSJ entitled The role of skepticism in human-information behavior: a cognitive-affective analysis. He is currently a digital library developer at the Harvey S. Firestone Memorial Library at Princeton University, developing a digital repository and creating web-authoring tools for digital collection-building.