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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I promise not to turn this into a baby blog, but I had to share.
We’re over at a friend’s house this past Saturday for his birthday party, and Betsy and I and a friend are just lounging in the yard eating. Beautiful day, with maybe, oh…30 people eating in various places around the yard.
Guy walks up to us and says “Don’t freak out, but there’s a big snake just behind you.” I don’t think anything of it, really…country boy, seen plenty of snakes…so we stand up to take a look.
That’s the “after” photo…it was at least a 4 foot timber rattler. Biggest one I’ve ever seen, hanging out right at the edge of the yard. Lots of kids, boys playing football…I shudder when I think about one of them tossing the ball just a little too far.
See if you can spot him in the “before” shot on flickr. Or how about just the head (again, an “after” shot).
One other shot, from a different angle:
After discussing the book today with some friends on Meebo, I came up with the perfect turn-of-phrase for the collective sadness enveloping all of us who have spent 10 years following these characters. We all suffer from:
Post-Potter Depression
Thanks everybody, I’ll be here all week. Try the veal.
I’m a bit late in pointing this out, but Open Library launched it’s public beta.
I feel that I can say with little hyperbole that this is the future of libraries.
After hearing about the project from Casey Bisson at ALA Annual, I was excited. But seeing this thing in the flesh is a whole other level….my hat goes off to Casey, Aaron Schwartz, Karen Coyle, and the rest of the OL team. This is a huge step for libraries…now, give us a nice, tidy, easy to use API and we’ll be happy. 🙂