Author: 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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Gadgets presentation Technology

Georgia Library Association Midwinter 2011

I had the pleasure of presenting the keynote at the GLA Midwinter meeting this past Friday morning, where I gave a talk I entitled “Experiences become Expectations.” The thrust of the talk was one that I’ve written about before; that our patrons expectations of libraries are influenced by the experiences they have with technology in the world. I’m really pleased with the way it turned out, and will be continuing to explore this idea for the next few months in various ways. If you’re interested, take a look at my slides below for some idea about the sorts of things I talked about.

Georgia library association 2011

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Media Personal

State of the Union 2011 Tag Cloud

Here’s my annual take at a tag cloud for the 2011 State of the Union address. The amount that these have changed in the last 5 years is immense…go back and take a look at the previous ones to see how the focus of our country has shifted over the last half-decade. Here’s 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010, linked for your convenience.

2011

Categories
ALA presentation Technology TechSource

Techsource Tech presentation

Here are the slides that I used for my portion of the TechSource webinar today…I’ll link to the archive of the presentation as soon as it’s available! Archive of the entire presentation now available…if you missed it, go take a look!

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ALA presentation

TechSource ALA Midwinter Wrapup

Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow! Join ALA Techsource in their annual Midwinter Wrapup webinar! Tom Peters, Kate Sheehan, myself, and Marshall Breeding will give our analysis of the new technologies and technological questions that emerged in the last 6 months. More information available over at the TechSource Blog.

1:30pm Central/2:30 Eastern Time! Come listen and participate.

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ALA Books LITA Media presentation

My interview with Vernor Vinge

I was thrilled to be able to meet and talk with Dr. Vernor Vinge at ALA Midwinter 2011, and am incredibly happy with the way that our interview went. Here it is, in 2 parts, for those that missed it live.

Part One

Part Two

Categories
ALA Books Digital Culture LITA Personal presentation

CES and ALA Midwinter 2011

The next week or so for me is completely insane, as I’m attending both CES2011 and ALA Midwinter 2011, even though they actually overlap. I’ll be flying from Nashville to Las Vegas on Tuesday for CES, hopping from Vegas to San Diego on Friday for ALA Midwinter, and then taking the red-eye late on Monday night to get back to Nashville and then home early Tuesday morning.

Then I’m gonna sleep about 20 hours.

There are a lot of things I’m excited about for both trips…CES is a bazaar of tech, and I’m attending a number of exciting Press Conferences from Sony, Lenovo, ASUS, and other major tech companies. I’m going to be doing reporting on the trip over at Perpetual Beta, including (if the wifi holds up) some livestreaming. I will send a tweet out when I start a livestream, so if you are interested, follow me over at twitter and you’ll get the head’s up when I go live with anything.

At ALA Midwinter, there’s also a lot to be excited about. I have two favors to ask of anyone that happens to read this and will be in San Diego:

The first: if you are a LITA member, consider coming to the Saturday morning LITA Board of Directors meeting at 8:00am in the SDCC Room 11b. It’s early, and I don’t begrudge anyone their sleep, but if you want to see how LITA works, and help to make it better, come hang out with the Board for the morning.

The second is: Come see me stumble over my fanboy self while I interview Dr. Vernor Vinge, on Saturday in the SDCC at 1:30pm in room 29 A-D. Go to that link and leave me a question you’d like to see Dr. Vinge answer, check here and at LITABlog for a live stream of the interview, and help make this an awesome event for librarians everywhere. Dr. Vinge is a 4 time Hugo Award winner, and his writing has within it possible futures for information, libraries, and books that we should really pay attention to.

I hope to see a lot of friends as well…if you see me, please wave me down and say hello.

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Media Personal

His punishment was harsher…

Merry Christmas!

Here’s 39 Degrees North’s adaptation of a wonderful poem by the fantastic Neil Gaiman.

I posted the text to this very short story way back in 2003.

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Personal

PatRec from Christmas Past – Caga Tio

Way back in 2008 I wrote up my absolute favorite Christmas tradition, from Cataluna in Spain: Caga Tio. If you don’t know about this _awesome_ tradition, you really should click through and read about it:

Catalan families go into the woods and find a Christmas Log (Tio de Nadal) to bring into their home. It’s painted or otherwise decorated with a face, and wrapped in a blanket. Over the weeks before Christmas, the Caga Tio is fed sweets and other treats, in order to get him ready for the command performance on Christmas. After weeks of being fed, the Caga Tio is ready. He is then beaten with sticks by the children of the family until he poops out treats for the children, usually in the form of the Catalan treat called turron. Yes…the log poops out the children’s treats, which they then consume. Caga Tio literally translates into “Pooping Log”.

Love this tradition, mainly because it’s sounds so crazy to Americans.

Categories
Digital Culture Gadgets Technology

Google ChromeOS Cr-48 Review

Cr-48

I ended up writing about 2000 words over at Perpetual Beta on my experience with the Google ChromeOS Cr-48 laptop thus far, and see no reason to duplicate all that info here at PatRec. Here’s the review, linked up in 5 parts:

Categories
ALA Library Issues Media Personal Writing

Privacy and Freedom of Information in 21st-Century Libraries

CoverI’m really priviledged to be a part of the latest ALA TechSource Library Technology Report, Privacy and Freedom of Information in 21st-Century Libraries. When I was given the opportunity to contribute to an issue with Deborah Caldwell-Stone, Sarah Houghton-Jan, Barbara M. Jones and Eli Neiburger…well, I said yes.

I wrote the chapter entitled “Social Networking and the Library”, and the general thrust of the chapter can be seen in this excerpt:

The central tension between libraries and social networks is simple: a social network gains usefulness when you are identifiable (people know who you are) and you share information about yourself (people know what you like). Libraries have, for years, operated under the general guideline that both of those pieces of knowledge are no ones business but yours….Taken at face value, as they relate to social networks, library ethical policies can be interpreted as directly contradictory with…privacy statements. Libraries have chosen, at times, to value privacy over access to social networks when these are in conflict. If the privacy of the patron is compromised via social networks, one possible answer is to attempt to limit access to those networks, which flies in the face of open and free access to information.

If you’re interested in the topic of Freedom of Information and how difficult holding on to library’s traditional values becomes in the 21st century, this issue is a great read. Head on over to Techsource and pick it up.