….finally, after many, many hours of work, and countless evenings up late, finally the Master’s Paper is finished.
Author: griffey
Jason Griffey is the Executive Director of the Open Science Hardware Foundation. Prior to joining OSHF, he was 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.
From BoingBoing, a story about an economics professor here at UNC that’s come to the conclusion that (*gasp, shock*) illegal downloading of music doesn’t actually affect album sales.
A quote from the paper: “Even in the most pessimistic specification, five thousand downloads are needed to displace a single album sale…high selling albums actually benefit from file sharing. ”
Allow me to translate the gist of the paper to non-academic speak for those not at a University:
“Screw you, RIAA, you bunch of money grubbing litigious jerkwads.”

Master’s Paper update
- 31 pages
- writing the conclusion
- found lots of damning evidence on the ALA website about their copyright policies
- pretty happy with the way its going
- just like in 28 days later, the end is very fucking nigh
Get some Free Culture
Lawrence Lessig’s newest book, Free Culture, is available for download on his website, licensed under a Creative Commons license.
Yet more zombie stuff
I swear I think I’m going to have to change the title of this blog to “Bring Out Your Dead” given all the zombie posts. But this one was too funny not to include.
I give you: SHAUN OF THE DEAD!
Cool CSS Trick
The amount of cool stuff that you can do with clever use of CSS is just amazing. Take a look at a neat CSS hack for applying drop shadows to nearly any box or graphic.
According to BoingBoing and the Internet Archive the copyright on the original Night of the Living Dead has expired, and the whole freaking movie is available for download.
Now my question is: how can this POSSIBLY be in the public domain? It was made in 1968. Did the copyright owner release it? Anyone have any idea?
Well, it’s a huge crime that I haven’t gotten to see the movie yet, being the horror AND zombie fan that I am. For those that also have yet to see the shuffling horrors of a good zombie film lately, here’s some Zombie Pinups to keep you entertained.