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Digital Culture

So for no apparent reason, I’m

So for no apparent reason, I’m just going to write a bit.

I got into this library thing because it seemed to meet and bring together an amazing number of interests of mine, and indeed, I have discovered that it does. The fact is, though, that my interests seem to run to the esoteric. The most “librarian” thing that I am interested in is reference, but my real passion lies in the areas of contention and theory, like freedom of speech, the PATRIOT act, information freedom like Open Source and Free software, p2p systems and their use in the breaking down of the copyright system (copyright, until the digital age, wasn’t difficult….now, it’s nearly untenable). The real question is: how do these things make a job? The more I look at it, the more I see working at a library as a means to getting a law degree….*sigh*. But do I really wanna do that?

What say you, anonymous visitors?

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.

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