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.
I discovered an audio tool the other day that was too well done and too interesting not to use in some way. Audioboo is currently an iPhone only audio blogging application that knocked my socks off when I tried it out. You sign up for an account, and download the application from the iTunes store.
Once you have the app installed, you can use it to record up to 5 minutes of audio, title it, tag it, attach a photo, and hit send…up it goes to the Audioboo site, and to your personal page. If that’s all it gave you, it would still be a great app, but it goes the full 2.0 route and automatically feeds your audio into iTunes podcast store for download via iTunes. It gives you a raw RSS feed which you can do with as you will, and even supports embedding of the “boo” anywhere else on the web. Oh, and of course, it with Twitter for you. Here are my first two tries at playing with this new tool:
I’m going to play with this a bit at ALA Annual 2009 in Chicago, maybe track some people down and do flash interviews with them. Try and find something interesting to share, and see if this tool answers some questions on making media available to the masses.
So: Keep your eyes on this space, or even better, subscribe to the RSS feed directly. Let me know what you think, and see if this tool gives you another option when it comes to creating and distributing media.
It’s been, unfortunately, another big gap in my blogging here. But I’ve been busy!
- I finished my new book manuscript, and sent it merrily off to Neal Schuman for review.
- I worked overtime trying to ensure that our new Academic Library got included in the state of TN budget.
- I’m trying to, if not revolutionize, and least evolutionize the program planning process for LITA.
- And I’m preparing for what looks like 3 different presentations at ALA Annual 2009:
- Unconference on Friday at 9:15am at the Palmer House Hilton, Northwest 5 Room
- OITP Libraries and Mobile Devices Public Policy panel on Sunday at 1:30 in McCormick place West, room W-192a
- BIGWIG Social Software Showcase on Monday morning at 10:30 in McCormick place West room w-184
If you are attending ALA Annual 2009, please come join me at one of the talks above. I promise not to be too boring. 🙂
That, and a real job, will keep anyone busy, I think. But every time I fail to blog for a week or so, I feel guilty about it. I keep expecting to log in to PatRec, and have it be passive-agressive that I did so: “Oh, so glad that you could visit…no, no, it’s no problem that you’ve been gone so long. Here, let me just warm up the “add new” link for you. It’s not a problem, really.”
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Death of Newspapers
As with many things, the Daily Show nails the death spiral of the newspaper with absurdity and humor. My favorite line in the whole piece is “Find me anything in here that happened today.”
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| End Times | ||||
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WordPress 2.8
Version 2.8 of WordPress is now official, codenamed “Baker,” and I just upgraded this very blog. Most impressive thing so far is just the raw speed of the admin interface. It’s many times faster than 2.7.1. I’m looking forward to seeing what else the upgrade has brought with it!
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Advice for Academic Librarians v.2
Interview that I did with Lauren Pressley for ACRL on advice for academic librarians.
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Catching the Wave
No sooner do I mentioned the thinking I’ve been doing about Proactive Reference, and Google throws all my thinking into a tailspin. Just a few days ago, Google announced a brand new product, called Google Wave. So what is Google Wave? It’s not easy to grok at first glance, but a the elevator pitch might be: Communication for the 21st Century. It takes the most popular communication formats (email, IM, Txt) and mashes them together with the new, real-time web (Twitter, Friendfeed, etc) and you get something that is greater than both parts.
There’s a TON to say about this, and at first blush I’m going to bet that it’s the biggest revolution in communication online since the invention of email. It’s both a platform and protocol, and will push existing thought-leaders like Twitter to open up in ways they might not be ready for.
Here’s a video of the launch preview…I’m trying hard not to gush about the possibilities. Look for much, much more on this from me over the next few weeks.