Author: griffey

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.

ALA Library Boing Boing

Libraries go bOING

I am incredibly excited that we’re finally launching Library Boing Boing! From the ALA post:

On the one hand, Library Boing Boing is a collaboration between ALA and the fabulously amazing Boing Boing folks to highlight all of the great new things libraries are doing. The most visible result will be regular posts about those great new things on the Boing Boing site itself.

On the other hand, Library Boing Boing: The Group has its own goals to help happy mutants in local communities connect with their happy mutant librarians to do good, work together on our shared interests, and make the world more better.

What can you do? To start with, head on over to the petition to make us a formally recognized ALA Member Interest Group…we need 100 signatures to get in front of the ALA Committee on Organization. Then at ALA Midwinter, it will go before ALA Council for approval.

We’ve already started a Library Boing Boing group over on ALA Connect, so go join that. It’s where we’ll hash out our plans to ~~take over the world~~ figure out what we can do to promote libraries and generally make some awesome happen.

Boing Boing is one of the most popular websites in the world, and having the opportunity to work with them to connect people to libraries is just about the coolest thing ever. I’ve been lucky enough to be featured on Boing Boing four times (1,2,3,4), mostly because the overlap between what libraries and librarians are interested in (freedom of information, democratization of information, copyright, DRM, technology) and what Boing Boing is about is huge. This is a great match, and I can’t wait to get started.

So, as Jenny said on the announcement post:

Start dreaming big. What could a dedicated, motivated, inspired group of librarians do with both Boing Boing and their own local happy mutants? How can we spread Library Boing Boing goodness throughout the profession?

Thanks to Andrea Davis and Patrick Sweeney for co-convening this thing with me, and special thanks to Jenny Levine for the idea and the wrangling! If you’re coming to ALA Midwinter, we’ll have a meetup on Sunday night (location and time TBA), and we’ll have some swag of some type to help identify other Happy Mutants. Keep your eyes out, go sign the petition, join the Connect group, and be on the lookout for wonderful things!

Tags ALA, awesome, boingboing, happymutants, library, libraryboingboing

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Scooby Doo as Skeptic Vector

Post author By griffey
Post date November 28, 2011
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Totally awesome analysis of Scooby Doo teaching kids to be thoughtful and skeptical. Best pull quote:

"The very first rule of Scooby-Doo, the single premise that sits at the heart of their adventures, is that the world is full of grown-ups who lie to kids, and that it's up to those kids to figure out what those lies are and call them on it, even if there are other adults who believe those lies with every fiber of their being. And the way that you win isn't through supernatural powers, or even through fighting. The way that you win is by doing the most dangerous thing that any person being lied to by someone in power can do: You think."

#patrec

Embedded Link

Ask Chris #81: Scooby-Doo and Secular Humanism – ComicsAlliance | Comic book culture, news, humor, commentary, and reviews
Here at ComicsAlliance, we value our readership and are always open to what the masses of Internet readers have to say. That's why every week,

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Books Legal Issues Media

Ripping your books

A really great article from Christopher Harris over on the American Libraries E-Content blog called “What’s Next? Book Match?” is getting passed around the web today. The pull quote that seems to be catching everyone’s attention is:

If I can rip my CD to an MP3, why can’t I scan my book to an EPUB?

I just wanted to step in and say: You can. There is decent case law in place that indicates that format shifting of personal copies is allowable in the United States. There is also strong case law in place for the ability to personally back up media that you legally aquire…both of these indicate that while there may be no clear “Yes you can” statement in copyright law, there is a lot of evidence that it’s perfectly ok for individuals given Fair Use rights in the US.

Moreover, there’s easier and easier ways to digitize books out there. If you haven’t seen the DIY Book Scanner project, go and check it out. This group is doing awesome stuff towards making digitizing books something that isn’t nearly as time-consuming as it once was. Plus, as I often point out in my presentations to libraries and librarians, if you think that digitizing books is going to be difficult forever, well…think again:

Tags copyright, ebook, ebooks, law, scanning

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Rooting the Kindle Fire

After a couple of days with my Kindle Fire, I decided to start playing with sideloading apps, and eventually ran into the limitation of not having the Android Market available on the Fire. I was mainly interested in having the dedicated Google apps (Mail, Maps, Docs, Google+). So I started reading, and found a handful of good tutorials:

Google Apps on the Kindle Fire: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1349902
Review Horizon: http://reviewhorizon.com/2011/11/how-to-install-google-android-market-on-kindle-fire/
How to Root the Kindle Fire in One Click: http://www.redmondpie.com/how-to-root-amazon-kindle-fire-in-one-click/

And a piece of software that makes part of the process easier, Root Explorer:

http://www.apktop.com/root-explorer-file-manager-2-17-1.html

It’s a little tricky at times, I had to reinstall the Android SDK a couple of times to get the right pieces in place. But moving through the steps slowly got me to the point where I have a working Kindle Fire with the Android Market installed. I followed the instructions pretty much to the letter, although I did root before the Market installation and then unroot afterwards using SuperOneClick. After unrooting, it’s just like before…but better. Everything seems to work. #patrec

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Living in the Cyberpunk Present

Post author By griffey
Post date November 12, 2011
3 Comments on Living in the Cyberpunk Present

In the last couple of years, we’ve seen:

*The rise of synthetic recreational drugs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_cannabis)
*The rebellion by the public against the multinational banks that have an overabundance of the wealth of the world (http://occupywallst.org/)
*A pocket computer that can have a conversation with you (http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/siri.html)
*The slow decline of the United States as a world power
*The rise of China and India as economic centers of the world
*The second largest company in the world is one that makes computer hardware (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=largest+market+cap)
*A human had his eye replaced with a camera (http://eyeborgblog.com/)
*Military and police are using focused-energy weapons regularly (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System)
*We have cars that drive themselves (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/what-were-driving-at.html)
*Some people have hardware in their bodies that are vulnerable to being hacked (http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/25/us-medtronic-cybersecurity-idUSTRE79O8EP20111025)

We are living the cyberpunk future that William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, and others told us about. Some days it feels like we’re minutes away from being in Blade Runner.

#patrec

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It’s Official: Kindle Owner’s Lending Library

Post author By griffey
Post date November 3, 2011
2 Comments on It’s Official: Kindle Owner’s Lending Library

Just a few minutes after I posted about the WSJ’s reporting on the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library, Amazon formally announced it via press release. The Amazon page for the service is live (http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/?docId=1000739811), and details are pretty clear:

One book at a time
One book a month
“Thousands of books”
Only available for Kindle hardware, not for software (iOS apps, Android app, etc)
Available for Amazon Prime members

#patrec

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Amazon Media Room: Press Releases

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Crazy Customer Service, or Creepy Invasive Sales Call?

Post author By griffey
Post date November 3, 2011
1 Comment on Crazy Customer Service, or Creepy Invasive Sales Call?

Because of the increasing insanity of some American banks and the random charging of fees like we owe them their current profit margin, I'm looking for another place for my money. After some research online, it looked like I had a couple of good choices that had no fee checking with Bill Pay, online access, and a robust mobile app. I decided to give Schwab a try, and opened an account and began moving my "business" account over. (EDIT: It appears as if most banks are backing away from this service fee, my current bank included…the below experience ensures that I’m still moving my accounts).

Well, that went so well that after a couple of weeks I was ready to make the move and move my personal account as well. The one non-standard bit about Schwab is that because they are primarily an investment company, they require a brokerage account to be attached to the checking account. You don’t have to fund it, you don’t ever have to do anything with it…it’s just the way they’ve structured things. What wasn’t clear to me was whether it was a 1-to-1 relationship. That is, you had to have a brokerage account for every checking account, or whether you could have multiple checking accounts hanging off of one brokerage.

So in an effort to get the answer, I signed in to my existing account and started poking around the “create a new account” link. It appeared like it was a 1-to-1 thing, and I wasn’t sure how having multiple brokerage accounts would work, so I just closed that browser window and thought to myself “I’ll give them a call sometime and ask”. I wasn’t in a hurry, so it wasn’t no big deal to me.

Cue two days later, I got a phone call from someone at Schwab. He left a message on my phone letting me know that they had noticed that I stopped part of the way through the account creation process, and was curious if I’d had problems or had any questions that he could answer. He was very polite and professional and left his direct phone number in case I wanted to follow up. I called back, and he answered the phone in 4 rings. I introduced myself, and he was able to pull up my account and the record of calling me in seconds. None of the typical “let me put you on hold while I look this up” or “can you verify the following 57 pieces of information for me by pushing buttons on the phone when you could very well be calling and driving at the same time” stuff. Nope, just a simple human interaction. And he answered my questions thoroughly and without trying to sell me a single thing that I wasn’t asking about.

Let’s examine this from the POV of a library, shall we? I guarantee that there isn’t a library anywhere that’s monitoring failed searches in their catalog and following up with the individuals to see if they can help. Moreover, I think most librarians would consider this a breach of professional ethics, as it would require tying searches to a person and seeing what books they were searching for.

It was exceptional customer service, and it was performed effectively and efficiently. It set a new level of expectation for me that I’m not sure other services will live up to. Certainly they haven’t in my past experience. So I’m moving my accounts, and am happy to do so. Excellent work, Schwab. Now don’t screw it up. 🙂

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Amazon to start lending eBooks

Post author By griffey
Post date November 3, 2011
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The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Kindle is set to launch its own lending library this Thursday, without the support of any of the Big 6 Publishers (Hachette, Harper-Collins, McMillan, Penguin, Random House, and Simon & Schuster). Very, very interesting, but incredibly limited. It's a foot in the door. Limiting it to just native Kindles is brilliant marketing.

From the WSJ:

"The new program, called Kindle Owners' Lending Library, cannot be accessed via apps on other devices, which means it won't work on Apple Inc.'s iPad or iPhone, even though people can read Kindle books on both devices. This restriction is intended to drive Kindle device sales, says Amazon.

The program, which is effective Thursday, comes a few weeks before Amazon ships the Kindle Fire tablet on Nov. 15, which is a direct competitor with the iPad."

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Amazon, Now a Book Lender
Amazon is launching a digital-book lending library that will be available only to owners of its Kindle and Kindle Fire devices who are also subscribers to its $79-a-year Amazon Prime program.

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