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Uses for Five Weeks

Just an idea that others might find useful…after participating in the remarkable 5 Weeks to a Social Library course offered by my heroes, I began to think of ways to re-use all of the incredible content.

As you may have noted, at MPOW we’re hiring two new librarians. Hiring new librarians is always accompanied by some type of orientation process. The Head of Reference and I are going to collaborate on the orientation process, and the plan is to use some of the 5 weeks presentations as introductions to tools we’re using and concepts we’re interested in pursuing. Here at UTC we’re using WordPress, Joomla, RSS, del.icio.us, GAIM, and the plan is to implement other things discussed during 5 weeks…why reinvent perfectly good introductions and explanations of those tools?

I’m thrilled with the thought that all of this content can be used for free, and for any number of things…learning takes many forms. I know that it’s going to save me enormous amounts of time at MPOW. Thanks to the organizers, and also to the participants who graciously allowed your work to be licensed for reuse.

By griffey

Jason Griffey was most recently the Director of Strategic Initiatives at NISO, where he worked to identify new areas of the information ecosystem where standards expertise was useful and needed. Prior to joining NISO in 2019, Jason ran his own technology consulting company for libraries, has been both an Affiliate at metaLAB and a Fellow and Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, and was an academic librarian in roles ranging from reference and instruction to Head of Library IT and a tenured professor at the University of TN at Chattanooga.

Jason has written extensively on technology and libraries, including multiple books and a series of full-periodical issues on technology topics, most recently a chapter in Library 2035 - Imagining the Next Generation of Libraries by Rowman & Littlefield. His latest full-length work Standards - Essential Knowledge, co-authored with Jeffery Pomerantz, was published by MIT Press in March 2025.

He has spoken internationally on topics such as artificial intelligence & machine learning, the future of technology and libraries, decentralization and the Blockchain, privacy, copyright, and intellectual property. A full list of his publications and presentations can be found on his CV.
He is one of eight winners of the Knight Foundation News Challenge for Libraries for the Measure the Future project (http://measurethefuture.net), an open hardware project designed to provide actionable use metrics for library spaces. He is also the creator and director of The LibraryBox Project (http://librarybox.us), an open source portable digital file distribution system.

2 replies on “Uses for Five Weeks”

A hero and the best roomie ever?! I must be really awesome.

I am so glad to hear that you are going to use the content this way. It is exactly what we intended. Hooray!

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