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.

Categories
ALA

ALA Annual 2010 Unconference

If you didn’t get the chance last year, the ALA Annual Unconference was awesome, and it’s back this year for a return engagement. Whether you are a fan of the Unconference form, or just interested in what the buzz is about, the 2010 ALA Annual Unconference should be a really, really good way to spend the Friday of the Annual Conference.

One of the things that people say brings them to Annual is the opportunity to network, and attendees consistently say that they want more networking opportunities. This is the perfect networking opportunity, and I give you a money-back guarantee for the cost of the Unconference that you’ll meet interesting and thought-provoking people.

Go! Register! Attend! You’ll love it.

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presentation

IOLUG 2010 Mobile Futures

Here are the slides for my presentation given today for the Indiana Online Library Users Group 2010 meeting. I actually did an audio capture of my talk, using the Keynote record function…and Keynote crashed halfway through the video render, corrupting the file and forcing me to roll back to a previous version of the file (go go Dropbox). *sigh* So disappointed to lose the audio, because I thought that it went really, really well. In any case, here are the slides. I suppose one day I’ll learn to stop trusting technology.

IOLUG Mobile Futures Keynote

Categories
Digital Culture Media

Interfaces, part 2

This distinction from the post below, that media can either be collapsed (Content, Container, and Interface as a single piece, as a book) or expanded (each separated, as in a DVD, remote, and screen) explains a bit about why the Touch interface is so visceral. The iPad feels different from other devices when you use it, and one of the reasons that I believe it does is that it collapses what have been expanded media types. With the iPad (and to a lesser degree, the iPhone, Android devices, Microsoft Surface, etc) you directly interact with the media and information you are working with. When you watch a video on the iPad, the Content, Container, and Interface are as-a-piece, and you interact with the video by touching the video itself.

This has a lot to do with the revolutionary feel of these new touch devices…and I think it explains why previous attempts at things like Tablet PCs may have failed.

Categories
Books Digital Culture Images Library Issues Media Music

Interfaces

I’m sure this isn’t an original thought (so very, very few are), but it was novel enough to me that I needed to write it down…and that’s pretty much what a blog is designed for.

I’ve written and talked about how libraries need to become comfortable with the containers of our new digital content, as since we move into the future the containers (ereader, ipad, tablet) will be important to users. We already know, more or less, how to deal with content. I’ve also been thinking about the interfaces that we use to access this content, and it just hit me:

Print is the only example of a media where the User Interface, Content, and Container have been, historically, the same thing. With music and video, we are completely used to the container, the content, and the user interface each being distinct: we put a tape into a player, which we control with kn0bs or buttons, and the content itself is ethereal and amorphous. With print, until very recently, the content, container, and interface were all the same thing…a book, a magazine, a broadsheet, a newspaper. All are content, container, and interface wrapped into a single unit. This may point to one of the reasons that people seem to feel a deeper connection to print materials than to the 8mm film, or the cassette tape.

I’ve been thinking a lot about these distinctions between container, content, and interface….I think that these three concepts could inform the way that libraries conceptualize what we do, and maybe find better ways to do it.

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ACRL ALA presentation

Creating a 21st Century Learning Environment

I and the amazing team from my place of work (University of Tennessee at Chattanooga) are leading a preconference for ACRL at the ALA Annual Conference 2010 in Washington DC entitled Creating a 21st Century Learning Environment. I’m incredibly excited about this, as we’ve worked for years to create amazing environments for our patrons, both in our existing building and in the planning for our new library building (opening in January 2012). I fully admit and embrace my bias for the way we do things (transparently, collaboratively, driven by data), I think that libraries who might not be as lucky could learn some things from us.

From the description of the preconference:

Successful 21st century academic libraries serve students holistically by meeting academic as well as other needs. This preconference will introduce participants to techniques and strategies for creating 21st century library environments and spaces, including the use of data-driven decision making and 2.0 technologies, the creation of broad avenues of input and partnerships, and the development of associated timelines and budgets. Examine library culture, services, technologies, and polices that enhance student learning, the benefits and pitfalls of campus collaborations, and address the nuts and bolts of renovation and building projects.

If you or anyone from your library is interested, registration is still open.

Categories
ALA Media presentation Writing

Gadgets & Gizmos

Gadgets & GizmosI am so thrilled that my issue of Library Technology Reports, Gadgets & Gizmos: Personal Electronics and the Library, is now available. Of all of my recent writing projects, this one was the one that I had the most fun with. I also think it has a ton of good information in it to help Libraries and Librarians make some decisions about gadgets that they should be examining. I spend a little time at the beginning talking about why I think that we need to be worrying about personal electronics in the library:

Libraries have always been the democratizers of content. We step in to distribute the economic burden of informa- tion and allow access to those who could not afford to own the information themselves. As our content becomes increasingly digital, these gadgets give us the delivery mechanism for the content. In the traditional library, the content and the delivery device were one and the same: the book, the magazine, the journal. In the digital world, the two are distinct, but that doesn’t give libraries the liberty of continuing to be interested in only one of the two pieces of the access puzzle.

I’m even more thrilled that it’s available electronically through ALA in a ton of formats (PDF, Epub, prc for Kindle). I’m reading through it on my iPad, and the ePub version looks great.

If you are interested, I am also doing a companion webinar on the topic THIS THURSDAY, April 22, at 2pm EST. Register for the webinar, and you’ll get $10 off the print version of the LTR!

As always, I’d love to hear from anyone that has questions or feedback!

Categories
libraryblogging presentation

Blogging Workshops at TxLA 2010

I had the pleasure of doing two different hands-on workshops at the Texas Library Association conference this past Thursday and Friday: one entitled Blogging Basics, and one called Extending Your Blog. Doing hands-on at events like this is remarkably difficult, as without very carefully setting up expectations with the participants, it can fall apart fast. I’m happy to say that I don’t think either of these fell apart…although I was personally happier with the Basics session. I way, way over-prepared for the Extending session, and the fact that we had 3-4 different blogging platforms in the room made giving instruction for something as simple as adding Google Analytics code to the template caused us to bog down more than I had hoped.

Overall, I got the feeling that people were happy with the information they got, which is the goal. I’d love to hear from anyone who was in the workshops in the comments, and I can’t wait to see the evaluations.

Here are the slides I used for each session. For the Extending Your Blog workshop, we only covered like 60% of the actual slide content, but I knew that would happen.

Blogging basics

Extending your blog

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presentation

Ebooks at Computers in Libraries 2010

Here’s my video presentation for Computers in Libraries 2010! I’m so, so sorry that I couldn’t be there, but the incredible Bobbi Newman graciously agreed to let me participate via video. Please, if you have questions or comments, leave them below. I promise I’ll get back to you! Or contact me directly via email, or on Twitter.

Categories
ALA TechSource

Touch and User Experience

I just posted over at ALA TechSource on some of my thoughts after using the iPad for most of a week…I’m convinced that we’re about to hit a period where we will have to start thinking about reworking our user interfaces for Touch interaction. From the post:

We are used to mediated interactions with digital objects, using a tool as an intermediary or proxy. We’ve been interacting by metaphor, instead of directly. The mouse pushes a cursor around the screen, and the cursor interacts with the object (window, file, text) that we’re interested in. On a touchscreen, especially the modern touchscreen, you are interacting with the digital world directly. For those who haven’t had this experience, I can’t emphasize how much this changes the relationship between the information and the user.

Let me know what you think…do you think that libraries will move towards Touch-based technologies in the next year?

Categories
Gadgets Technology Web

The week of waiting

It should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me that I’m almost unnaturally excited about the iPad launching this week. There’s a lot that I’m excited about, but a short list would be:

  • iBooks
  • Digital comics
  • Games
  • Web-browsing
  • Video on the huge screen

The most exciting things are the ones that emerge as a result of the new form-factor combined with multi-touch. I’m maybe most looking forward to the apps and web experiences that I would have never thought of before…like this one, called iMockup:

Seriously, that looks awesome for quick and dirty UI work. I can’t tell you the number of times that I’ve gone to Caitlin’s office and been like “Give me a sheet of paper and tell me what you think about this…” This total fits that creative space in my head, and puts it into a digital form that I can reuse.