Author: griffey

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.

Categories
Books

Philosophy at 2:30 am

Thought before collapsing into bed:

Librarians have always been concerned with informational objects that have metadata associated with them that enhance findability…for example, a Book and it’s equivalent Catalog card or MARC record. We’ve layered metadata on top of our physical objects for years. We’re only now in the very recent past began scratching the surface of metadata for digital objects.

When we digitize a book, which is the “object” and which is an instantiation of that object? What is Primary? Where is the Real when you have a physical book and the digital copy both in existence? And what does the metadata describe then? I think Plato may have some answers, maybe.

Or maybe it’s way too late for me to be thinking about this.

Categories
Digital Culture

My favorite piece of writing this evening

Here’s my favorite tidbit from my writing fest this evening.

…links are the currency of the web. In network theory, Metcalfe’s Law says that the value of a system grows as approximately the square of the number of users of the system. That is, for any network, adding a node increases the value of that network. As well, adding a link to any piece of information on the web increases the value of that piece of information from the perspective of search engines, and increases its findability. Every bit of content that you re-purpose and link to becomes more valuable simply by the fact that you have chosen to do so.

Is that a law of the internet yet? “The value of any piece of information increases geometrically in relation to the number of links pointing at it…”

Categories
Digital Culture Legal Issues Media Music

In Rainbows is LAME

no really its up to you

Not only is Radiohead releasing their newest album at whatever price their fans are willing to pay, and not only is the digital release completely DRM free and 160kbps MP3, but it looks like it was ripped to MP3 using LAME 3.93. An exploration of the MP3’s in a text editor reveals:

Radiohead uses Lame

They need to upgrade…LAME is up to 3.97 now.

Looking at the header and footer of the files in both a text and hex editor doesn’t show any tracking numbers or codes tying the songs to a particular download. It really does look like these are regular old MP3s.

Thanks, Radiohead, for showing the recording industry how business should be done these days.

Categories
Library Issues Technology

Academic Library 2.0

In my last conference attendance for some time, I’ll be at Internet Librarian 2007 at the end of this month. It’s been a long time since I’ve been so excited about a conference, and it’s not just that it’s in Monterey in October. It’s that I have a chance to lead a workshop with the most exciting bunch of librarians I know:

Workshop 11 — Academic Library 2.0
9:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. FULL DAY
MODERATOR:
Amanda Etches-Johnson, User Experience Librarian, McMaster University
FACULTY:
Chad Boeninger, Reference & Instruction Technology Coordinator, Ohio University
Michelle Boule, Social Science Librarian, University of Houston
Meredith Farkas, Distance Learning Librarian, Norwich University
Jason Griffey, Head of Library Information Technology, The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

What do the terms Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 mean for academic libraries and librarians? Join our panel of 2.0 practitioners and experts for a day of exploration and discovery as we navigate the 2.0 landscape, exploring what 2.0 tools and technologies can do for academic library users. Through a combination of presentations, discussion, and hands-on activities, our dynamic speakers introduce you to technologies such as blogs, wikis, RSS, mashups, social bookmarking and online social networks. This interactive session provides practical examples of academic libraries that are using these tools and technologies, arms you with the expertise and techniques to introduce these technologies in your own library, and share strategies for getting buy-in from staff, administration, and patrons. A worthwhile day for those interested in implementing changes to keep up within the Web 2.0 world.

If you know anyone attending IL for a preconference, this one is going to knock their socks off.

Categories
Library Issues Technology

5 Minute Madness @ LITA Forum

Follow along, or go and take a look:

http://twitter.com/griffey

Too fast for blog, must twitter it!

Categories
Library Issues Personal

Heading out to LITA Forum

Tomorrow I’ll be hitting the road, heading off to LITA Forum in Denver, CO. I’ll be heading up the LITABlog blogging effforts, pushing posts through, editing like mad, and capturing audio for the ever-popular LITABlog Podcast series.

If you’re in Denver for the Forum, say “hey”. Myself, Michelle, Karen, and Jonathan of BIGWIG will be in attendance…if you’re interested in throwing your lot in with us in hopes of changing ALA and LITA for the better, definitely stop one of us. Our plans have slowed, but not stopped. We’ve still got some rebellion in us…and we never run out of good ideas.

Categories
Library Issues MPOW

Metasearch aka Federated Search aka The Mind Killer

This is the period during the year at MPOW that we are reviewing our goals, and really looking at what the next 6 months will bring. As a portion of that, it’s up to me to try and figure out how our IT department fits in with this, given that we are mentioned in no less than 99.999999943% of the Library Wide goals. Pretty much every overarching goal for the library as a whole has some part of it that IT is going to support, or design, or maintain, or drive.

This makes for job security. It also makes for many hats.

After looking at where we are headed (new building, re-thinking the library, focusing on the students) we decided that the area that could most impact the way that we do things is metasearch. No one is happy with their ILS, and patrons just aren’t using our catalog at all…circulation statistics for books is through the floor. But foot traffic, website visits, database use, reference questions…all are up from previous years. So we’re definitely being used, just not for books. Given that the library “brand” is books, that’s worrying.

As an attempt to bridge this gap to the books, the library IT council decided unanimously to pursue Metasearch over the course of this year. The idea is, of course, to have books presented to patrons side-by-side with all of our other resources.

The gap between theory and practice in this case seems like the Grand Canyon.

Is anyone happy with a metasearch product? I know that most of us agree that the technology isn’t mature yet, but at this point implementation of a metasearch solution seems less daunting than trying to roll to another ILS. Especially since I can give LibraryFind a try without signing away my soul to the Library Corporate Masters.

Categories
Library Issues

Help me build a new library

Ok, library gang: I need some help.

As I’ve mentioned before, we’re building a new library here at UTC. We are in the planning stages now, and are in the process of putting together a program plan.

Here’s the rub: the program plan that we’re coming up with is based on, of course, current processes.

My challenge to you, library bloggers (and feel free to answer on your own blogs, just linkback so I can follow): if you had a new building, 16-18 full time librarians, and roughly 20 staff members, how would you put together the best academic library possible? How many people doing what? How do we deconstruct “Systems” into something useful? Same for “Reference”? We’re not tied to existing paradigms, and are looking for radically out of the box thinking…give me your best shot at a library for the 21st century.

The point is to ignore existing skillsets of the people here, and instead build the ideal set of positions…we can fill them afterwards. But that’s hard to do from the inside. Give us your best shot!

Categories
Legal Issues Library Issues Technology

Technophobia or payola?

Welcome to the gang from Digg! I think the site is finally stable now (thanks Blake). Thanks for stopping by…

In an article today on CNet, the Register of Copyright of the US, Marybeth Peters (who, let me remind you, is an Associate Librarian for Copyright Services for the Library of Congress) admitted that she was a:

…self-proclaimed “Luddite,” who confessed she doesn’t even have a computer at home. “In hindsight, maybe that’s not such a bad thing.”

boggle

I’m sorry, but I thought that just said that the person responsible for administering Copyright law in the US doesn’t own a computer.

Oh wait, IT DOES SAY THAT THE PERSON RESPONSIBLE FOR COPYRIGHT IN THE US DOESN’T OWN A COMPUTER.

keyboard-smash-o

She goes on to say things like:

Peters indicated she was less thrilled, however, about a portion of the DMCA that generally lets hosting companies off the hook for legal liability, as long as they don’t turn a blind eye to copyright infringement and remove infringing material when notified. That’s one of the major arguments Google is attempting to wield in fighting high-profile copyright lawsuits, including one brought by Viacom, against its YouTube subsidiary.

“Shouldn’t you have to filter? Shouldn’t you have to take reasonable steps to make sure illegal stuff that went up comes down?” she said. She added, without elaborating further, “I think there are some issues.”

No, you shouldn’t, Marybeth. Filtering means that we are placing the responsibility of policing onto the providers of the service, and not on the people ultimately responsible for the infringement. It also means that we move farther from Net Neutrality, because there is a slippery slope from “monitor everything” to “oh, since you CAN monitor everything, prioritize something”.

Is there anyone at all in the actual copyright process that understand that the law is broken beyond repair right now, and that the digital world really does change the rules? Or is it just that all of our media laws are now being written and propped up by corporate interests instead of being written for the good of the people?

Categories
Digital Culture

Yahoo Mash

Yahoo recently launched a new beta service, mash.yahoo.com, which seems to be their attempt to enter the social networking fray.

mash.yahoo.com

Similar in style to iGoogle, you have blocks of content (modules) that are available to add to your page. These act as you expect AJAX sorts of pages to work: you can drag and drop them around your two-column layout. To customize your page you can also add a background image (similar to Twitter) and manage the colors of your modules (background, border, text). All the expected modules are around: Flickr, Twitter, a generic RSS module.

Here’s where it gets weird. Your friends, by default, can edit your page…move modules around, etc. They can also affect it in other ways…one of the default modules is a “pet” (represented by a line drawing) that you can interact with…feed, pet, etc. You can also lick, smack, kill, and snorgle it. And you can do so to other people’s as well.

In the end, this ends up being a sort of aggregator for your virtual life, but others have tried that (correlate.us) and failed to gather speed online. The addition of a social networking component to that is interesting, but I’m not sure whats gained other than the potential strength of viral growth from spread from friend-to-friend.

It’s interesting to see what Yahoo is doing here, trying to leverage their way into the social networking world. They own two of the most popular (and most original) social sites on the ‘net…del.icio.us and flickr. I would expect them to do more cross-pollination, but at the same time I hope they don’t. Del.icio.us and flickr are two of my favorite things online, and I don’t want to see them change too much. I’m already frightened by the upcoming delicious 2.0.

If anyone wants an invite, leave your email in the comments.