ElizaCast number 2, filmed February 22, 2008
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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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Missed my Blogoversary
Given my infrequency of posting, its obvious that I’ve been a little busy lately. Mostly it’s been Eliza based, but work is also nuts. This time of year is crazy, and you pile working 3 days a week instead of 5 AND building a new library…well, its a little slice of insanity.
I’ve been so nuts that I completely missed my 5 year Blogoversary!
February 10th, 2003, after an inauspicious start, I started blogging. Five years, 1241 posts, and 1445 comments later, and it’s still going strong. Over the course of those years, I’ve been featured on BoingBoing four times, Digg once, highlighted by the ALA, and it’s led to an enormous amount of opportunity for me.
Pattern Recognition also led directly to being invited to write a book on Library Blogging, which will at long last be out this Spring. Another writing opportunity has presented itself as well, which will be announced in the next few weeks…I’m not at liberty to say quite yet, but if you want to read what I have to say, you’ll have at least one more place you can be sure to see me in 2008.
Most of the above isn’t thanks to anything special I’ve done, but instead thanks to the readers and comments on Pat Rec…thanks to everyone who takes time from their day to read me. I appreciate it more than I can adequately express, and hope that you’re getting some value for your time.
All in all, this crazy blog has done a lot for me. Here’s hoping the next 5 years are as auspicious as the last!
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Clickthrough licensing dreck
I’m in the middle of reviewing a hosted blogging solution for K-12 called ePals…this is to determine if it needs to be/should be included in Library Blogging
V. LINKING TO THIS WEB SITE
Unless you have a written agreement in effect with ePals which states otherwise, you may only include a link to an ePals Site on another Web site if:
(a) the link is a text-only link clearly marked “www.ePals.com;”
(b) the link “points” to the ePals’ home page URL and not to other pages within the ePals Site; (c) the appearance, position and other aspects of the link does not damage or dilute the goodwill associated with ePals’ or In2Books’ brand name and trademarks;
(d) the appearance, position and other aspects of the link does not create the false appearance that any entity is associated with or sponsored by ePals;
(e) the link, when activated by a user, displays the Site’s full-screen that is not within a “frame” on the linking Web site; and
(f) the link will not be used in connection with or appear on a Web site that a reasonable person may consider offensive, obscene, defamatory or otherwise malicious.ePals reserves the right to revoke its consent to the link at any time, in its sole discretion. If ePals revokes such consent, you agree to immediately remove and disable any and all links to ePals Sites.
To illustrate this insanity, if I were to, say…link directly to their Email description page, I would be in violation of this license. Or if I link directly to their Blog page…again, in violation.
Can you imagine a Web where people had to request the right to link to something?
Jenny and Michael, in a fit of brilliance, have set up a Win a Wii donation drive for Blake Carver, who runs LISHost, my very favorite internet hosting service. If you read a library-focused blog, there’s a better than average chance that Blake is hosting it…including Pattern Recognition.
So: go and donate, and maybe win a Wii!
Here’s an idea I had today that I wanted to get down so I don’t forget it…autonomous self-checkout with cell phones. Here’s the idea:
You write a web-service that logs the customer into their account from their cell phone browser, and then takes over the camera on their cell. They point the camera at a bar code on the book in question, and you software looks it up in the catalog and checks it out to the patron.
The difficult part for the library is how to enable the deactivation of the security strips that most of us use…ideally, the security system would be tied to the catalog, and would know when a book was checked out and when it wasn’t, and alarm only as appropriate.
This would take library staff completely out of the checkout process (which self-checkout already does) but would ALSO take any specialized equipment out, and allow for nearly complete patron autonomy in the stacks.
The interesting thing is, I’m pretty sure that all of this is possible with current open source software. Certainly there would need to be some development, but I don’t think anything would have to be completely written from scratch…maybe connectors that transfer data from one system to the other.
Thoughts? Is this being done anywhere? Or did I actually have an original thought?
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Happy Mardi Gras!
Mardi Gras is a really special time for Betsy and I. During our undergrad days, we made a yearly pilgrimage with some of our best friends down to the Big Easy for Mardi Gras, watching the parades and generally acting silly. Years later, it was where and when we decided to get married, eloping to New Orleans and getting married in the New Orleans Parish courthouse on Lundi Gras of 2001.
It’s a great holiday, and to everyone: Laissez Les Bons Temps Rouler!
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2008 State of the Union as Tag Cloud
Last year’s 2007 State of the Union Tag Cloud was such a hit, I decided to follow up again this year. A few major differences: Congress is mentioned a lot more this year, while health and oil don’t show up at all. This year’s address looks more active…instead of “fight” we get “fighting”. Overall, the themes are still easily picked out: “terrorists” still play a major part in the speech, and we get “empower” and “hope” and “trust” as themes.
against agreement america american better build business children citizens clear coming congress continue country economy empower enemy ensure expanding extremists families federal fighting forces free freedom funding future government health history hope housing increase iran iraq iraqi jobs law leaders liberty life markets meet military million nation pass past peace people plan power programs progress prosperous protect reform results schools security seen seven state support tax terrorists today tonight trade troops trust work world year
created at TagCrowd.com
I’ve kept up with the recent Orson Scott Card controversy in libraryland, and I respect nearly everyone who has taken a strong stance against the decision by the YALSA to award OSC the Margaret A. Edwards award for adolescent literature for 2008.
But.
I’m not sold on the controversy here.
There is no denying that OSC is a homophobe…no, that’s probably not strong enough. “Fear of homosexuality” doesn’t approach his views. OSC is a heterosexist bigot, based on his own words, and does not deserve either our respect or our patience. But the two works that are being honored, Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow, are not homophobic. They don’t seem to speak with the same voice as OSC in interviews. They portray strong, smart kids doing incredible things, and should stand above and beyond the idiocies of the author.
The award is given, according to the description online, in order to:
…recognizes an author’s work in helping adolescents become aware of themselves and addressing questions about their role and importance in relationships, society, and in the world.
The works do just that.
The author can be an idiot…hell, it could probably be argued that most artists of any sort are damaged in some significant way. Insanity, adultery, substance abuse, and yes, crazy beliefs…all crop up in the pantheon of artists. Just because the author is nuts doesn’t mean that the work is nuts.
Would I give OSC an award? No. Would I honor the work? Yes, I would. It’s a fine line, but otherwise I find myself having to question every piece of art by examination of the artist.
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Diary of the Dead
Romero! The Living Dead!
As most of you know that have been reading for any length of time, I’m a huge sucker for zombies. Romero is the king of the zombie film, so this is a must-see for me. I’m a little worried about it coming out near Cloverfield, which takes the first-person-Blair-Witch style storytelling to a major motion picture, and it looks like this might be seen as a rip off. In any case, Romero + zombie = The Win.
There, I said it. Zotero should warm the heart of any academic, but somehow it escapes me. I’ve been loath to admit it for a long time, especially since I was part of the beta, and tried it for a long time. Plus, it’s exactly the sort of tool that I should really love.
Except I don’t.
Why not? Well, after examining my prejudice, I came to one conclusion: I no longer have any patience with applications that are local. Unless the application I want AND my data live in the cloud, I just won’t use it. I’ve found myself, over the last 6 months to a year, moving nearly everything I do online. Documents are created with Google Docs, I prefer Gmail to any local mail client I’ve tried, heck, I’ve even started using Flickr’s editing deal with Picnik to do my photo edits, and I luuuuuuurve me some photoshop.
What’s up with this change? I really only use two computers; my work PC and my Macbook. It wouldn’t be that hard to use local programs, and sync my documents. The problem is that it’s any effort at all. Syncing my documents shouldn’t be something that I think about, it should just happen…Mac nearly has it right with their .mac syncing, but the PC world just doesn’t operate like that without some serious effort on the user’s part. If Apple would move hard into this space, perhaps with Google as a partner…I think they could revolutionize computing yet again, especially if they leveraged their media power as a part of the cloud storage.
But I digress…
After using Zotero for awhile, I found myself cursing the fact that I had two different databases of information…the “macbook” stuff and the “desktop” stuff. This is why the third lobe of my brain is del.icio.us…I don’t have to think about where I might need that information. It just goes to the cloud, and I pull it down no matter where in the world I may be. I know that Zotero has listed on it’s homepage:
Remote library backup
Shared collections
Access your library from anywhere via the web
Give me that, and maybe it becomes a tool that is useful to me. But until then, local just doesn’t cut it anymore.