Jason Griffey is the Director of Strategic Initiatives at NISO, where he works to identify new areas of the information ecosystem where standards expertise is 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 IT 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 AI & Machine Learning in Libraries and Library Spaces and Smart Buildings: Technology, Metrics, and Iterative Design from 2018. His newest book, co-authored with Jeffery Pomerantz, will be published by MIT Press in 2024.
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.
Jason can be stalked obsessively online, and spends his free time with his daughter Eliza, reading, obsessing over gadgets, and preparing for the inevitable zombie uprising.
At least, one small one. From Canoe:
A federal magistrate has ruled that two North Carolina universities do not have to reveal the identities of two students accused of sharing copyrighted music on the Internet.
Also see the discussion on Slashdot.
More really interesting discussion from Jeff Pomerantz, this time re: IP and scholarly work. It is better have control of your own IP, or give it up in order to get publicity?
But if (1) a db that I care about being indexed in does not automatically hoover up this journal’s contents, & (2) it is not possible to submit my own article to be indexed, then Houston, we have a problem. Given a choice between retaining copyight & having my work disseminated, well, that’s almost a no-brainer. Databases are the source that scholars traditionally go to when doing lit reviews, so obviously I’d want to have my work in them.
When I read the line about “given a choice…” being a no-brainer, I agree, but in the opposite direction. I would gladly trade publicity for my own IP rights. Lets transfer this argument over to a much more potentially lucrative IP realm: music.
This is the traditional trade off for musicians in the US: rights vs publicity. Historically bands have offered up their IP in order to allow the music labels publicize them, make them famous, get them booked at arenas instead of bars, print t-shirts, etc. In a sense, they trade their IP for the ability of the public to “find” them, much as Jeff has argued is necessary in academia.
Now…would any sane person (not affiliated with the RIAA/MPAA) in this day and age argue that it’s better for content creators to trade their IP for publicity? Nearly every artist would be better off with their own IP rights.
Here we are, telling our students to not use Google only, use other information sources, use the databases that the library subscribes to… are we also really saying, to hell with commercial databases, if it’s on my website that’s sufficient? Have we gotten to a place where dbs are actually irrelevant in academia?
Honestly? We’re fast approaching, and as more and more universities start their own archives, or academics start archiving their own work (which I have always done, and highly recommend to anyone out there)….yes, we’re quickly moving away from the traditional databases. As more interesting and collaborative “cataloging” starts moving in to academia (tagging and folksonomies for one) I can see traditional database searches moving to the second line of search. Hell…if people (even librarians) were honest, I bet they are already a second line for a known items.
Still holed up at Falls Creek Falls, at the IT Symposium. Last night = Bingo and an open bar. Today = presentations, vendor swag, and a trail walk around the lake.
All in all, not a bad way to get paid. Learning a bit, which is nice…really good presentation this morning regarding smart classrooms, which had tips I really hadn’t thought of. So there is learning going on.
Currently sitting the lobby of the Inn at Falls Creek Falls State Park, mooching a very small, and nearly useless, wireless signal.
Get this: I’m at the 2005 IT Symposium for the state of TN. The State puts in a small wireless network for conference goers….and then blocks all traffic except port 80.
Which means no Thunderbird or other POP email, no IMAP, no IM, nothin’. Webmail works, but JEEZ…we’re at an IT Conference, right? You’re throttling our ports? For what possible reason?
I plan to get to the bottom of this ASAP. I can’t imagine why this is being done, and the organizers here blame it on people upstream of them…so I’ll check with them. More news as I get it.
So in a recent entry, Jessamyn talks Wikipedia and how librarians are going to have to get over their love affair with authority:
The debate we’ve seen happening over the authority, or lack thereof, of collaborative information systems such as Wikipedia is just scratching the surface of the debates we’ll be seeing in the years to come. Librarians ignore Wikipedia, and by extension the new face of information, at their peril. Keep in mind I’m not saying that we all have to run to the Internet to answer our questions, just that if we fail to see the impact these systems are having, and the openness and transparency they bring with them, then we fail to learn something crucial about the downsides to the inflexible authority of print.
Indeed…in a talk I gave the other day, I discussed a lot of new hip and trendy things in LibraryLand, but it never fails that I get gasps of astonishment when I show academics the Wikipedia. I’ve never been fond of authority as the answer to our information instabilities, but I’m even less so now with the living antithesis of authority on hand (and so remarkable!).
I blogged a bit ago about an academic paper I’ve got rattling around in my head having to do with new ways of viewing information sources as relating to the Coherence Theory of knowledge. Spoke briefly with Jeff Pomeratz from UNC regarding my idea via email, who said:
I agree, librarians are too hung up on authority as a criterion. It reminds me of the story I remember reading about early Renaissance scientists trying to discover how many teeth horses have. After checking all books that might have a reference to horses’ teeth & coming up with nothing, it was decided that it was an unanswerable question! That said, I don’t think authority as a criterion can be dismissed: I’d trust the accuracy of a statement on a topic from an expert on that topic over a statement from a non-expert any day. But why? That I leave to you to answer in a philosophically principled way. So I’d argue that authority has to be positioned relative to other criteria.
Authority as a criterion may not ever go away completely…as I said to Jeff, when I’m sick, I go to a doctor, after all. But as an end point for deciding validity or truth, it is clearly not the only answer that should be given. In libraries, we have the concept of a “subject expert” who is responsible for things relating to that subject…selecting books, answering tough reference questions, producing research guides. That’s an authority concept that I don’t really mind. Would it be better if they did this work in concert with other “experts?” I would argue yes…the more brains on the problem, the better.
When making arguments for a position, I think that examining the web of interconnections to that position is a better form of support than simply a reference to authority.
This all seems so self-evident to me, that sometimes it is difficult to present well. I’m re-reading stuff on coherence theory now, and hopefully can more fully form some actually arguments at some point. I’d love any thoughts that anyone might have to spur my brain in the right direction.
One of the strangest flash animations I’ve ever seen, and as a bonus it includes the phrase “Super Para Magnetic Effect.”
Via BoingBoing, Indy Custom Radio from Ian Clarke (the designer of Freenet). A music client which downloads freely-available MP3’s, plays them, and allows you to rank them. It takes these ranks, and (much like Amazon and Netflix progressive suggestions systems) the more you rank, the better the match for what you like.
I’m trying it out, and we’ll see how it goes. It will be interesting how quickly it can learn my preferences, as well as what sorts of music will actually pop up. Right now it doesn’t require any login or anything, so I’m guessing that the “preferences” are stored locally to the computer. Would be nice to be able to carry those prefs from one computer to the other, either via a login or some other authentication setup. Would also be interesting to increase the “folksonomic” quotient by making the preferences more transparent, and being able to actually view others “tags” or rankings. Also be interesting to see which songs are getting 5 stars, etc….could very easily to a top 50 from the data, using #’s of people who are ranking each song, combined with the actual 1-5 ranking.
Had a phenomenal weekend, working a lot but enjoying some of the great weather. Got to go on a good hike on Sunday with Indy and Bets along Shakerag Hollow…the wildflowers are unbelievable. There must be a dozen species blooming along the trail, and there are entire hillsides of trilliums. Pictures will follow soon.
This week = Stress and things of which we may not speak. We’ll see how it goes.
Doesn’t this look like it eats souls? Or like Yoda’s evil cousin?