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.
New Year’s challenge for all you funny folks: take this photo, and come up with the best LOL caption you can. Upload your photo to the site of your choice and put a link up in the comments, and I’ll choose the best one and blog it just after new years.
Why? Oh, why not…its fun!
For those who are image manipulation challenged, there’s a tool that will help you out: http://kscakes.com/LolCats/
For those following along via feedreader, you may notice a temporary hiccup while I transition my feeds through Feedburner. I believe this will happen automagically, and that no one should notice a thing…but I’ve been wrong before.
Thanks for subscribing, and if you notice anything truly strange, please leave a comment and let me know. I hope to be back to regularly scheduled blogging very shortly.
I’m about 10 days from heading back to the library after taking a three week break in order to get settled with Eliza. We’re 11 days into Eliza’s life, and I can’t imagine going away for 10 hours a day from her. Everyone told me this would happen, and of course I knew it would, but the reality of the situation is beginning to surface.
We’ll see how the next 10 days go, but I’m betting that the first bit back into libraryland is going to be disorienting. Those of you with kids, how do you manage?
Here’s the first picture of the Griffey clan all together for the Holidays, grandchildren included.
Here’s hoping that your holiday is great.
I just realized that I’d been busy over on Brand New World, but that I hadn’t actually posted a picture here on Pattern Recognition. For the whole story, check over there.
Welcome to the world, Eliza!
There aren’t likely to be many posts here at Pattern Recognition for the next little bit, as Betsy is laboring even as I type to give birth to our first child.
Follow along over at Brand New World, or the live stream at Twitter.
Besides being way too long since my last post (it is getting busy around here, and Eliza hasn’t even shown up), it’s about time for an update on the Library Building Project.
If you take a look at the wiki, we’ve basically filled it with information about all our existing square footage, projected square footage, and basic collection decisions. At the last building committee meeting, we received the go ahead from the committee to look at compact shelving for our entire collection. This was a huge concern, we weren’t sure that everyone would see the benefits…the numbers are there in the wiki, but it saves us nearly 20,000 sq ft that could be used for patron-centered services.
I’m particularly happy with the feedback form. People are starting to use it to tell us what they want out of the new space, and we’re marching ever toward a shiny new patron centered library.
I can’t believe that it’s already December.
That is all.
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Now playing: The Ramones – Chinese Rock
Ok, so we’ve all seen the press, read the Newsweek story, and if you’re reading this you probably read my take on the Amazon Kindle. Here’s a new feature that wasn’t heavily marketed for the Kindle, that has a direct impact on library efforts…and the surprising thing is, it has nothing to do with reading a book.
I’m talking about Amazon NowNow.
It’s an “experimental” feature on the Kindle, but NowNow is a human-powered answer engine that uses the Amazon Mechanical Turk group to search and answer questions for users. The service is in beta, and has been for a year or so (Jessamyn blogged about NowNow back in January).
So what’s the big deal? Well, the Kindle is an always-on internet appliance…anywhere you can get a cell signal, you can be online with the thing. Which means that you can ask a question and get an answer, from nearly anywhere, from a human, emailed directly to the device you used to ask the question in the first place. And this is built into the device…yes, Amazon might decide to charge for this, but right now they aren’t.
Is this Reference 2.0? Imagine being asked a research question by a patron, finding the perfect article for them, and being able to send that article to the device they are going to use to read it. Yes, I realize that laptops sort of fill this goal already, but the Kindle is certainly a more user-centered way of getting at this process. The patron doesn’t have to find a way to ask us questions…the device they are using is a direct line to us. It might not be that distinct from a webpage with a meebo widget…but I think it is qualitatively different somehow.
How?
Discuss.
Got a beta invite to Hulu.com today, the new video sharing site backed by the actual media conglomerates…NBC, FOX, ABC. More thorough review as I play with it.
Surprisingly, there’s an embed function. This post is just to test it, see how long it lasts, and if eventually they time-phase these out.
