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.

Categories
Digital Culture

Democracy

I’ve been paying more and more attention lately to easy-upload video hosting sites like YouTube and Google Video. These two seem to have stood out from the crowd for ease of use and clean design…but I’m just baffled as to how they’re still around. If someone tried this business model (upload your favorites! we’ll host them!) with music, the RIAA would have gone insane. There are dozens of movie trailers up on these sites, which are owned by the studios. Why isn’t the MPAA going apeshit to get these under control? Isn’t it disingenuous of them to allow this, but complain about people sharing movies? Should we apply the legal resources of copyright evaluation evenly?

With all of that said, the point of this post: Democracy kicks ass. It’s a player/browser for video, easy to use, intuitive, and open. If you have a broadband connection, download this now and play with it. It’s addictive. Between the software and their open source hosting service, Broadcast Machine…this is my pick for “gonna be huge this year.”

Categories
Digital Culture

A Scanner Darkly

Wow. I can’t wait for this movie….the effects look incredible. Is this the first time that an animation technique has been used as an effect over an entire film? The only thing that I can think comes close is Tron…other examples anyone?

Categories
Personal

I missed my blogiversary!

As a cow-orker pointed out, I missed celebrating my blogiversary! On Feb 10, this thing has been around for 3 years. Over the course of those years, this is the third software system I’ve used (started in Blogger, moved to Radio Userland, then to WordPress). Since Feb 10, 2003:

Seems really odd to have that many years behind me since I started this. Even more odd? It looks like people actually read it. 🙂 This year, I’ve averaged 161 people per day hitting my RSS feed, and 1100 or so Sessions per day. Raw hits are over 6000 a day, which blows my mind, and has to be hugely because of spambots and such. The rest of the stats are equally interesting, though:

stats

So thanks to everyone who reads, subscribes or just wanders by occasionally. I do this mostly for me, but I certainly appreciate the fact that others think it’s worth their time.

Categories
Digital Culture

Heavy Metal Curling

In honor of the 47723468 hours of curling that NBC is giving us during their Winter Olympics coverage, I give you: Heavy Metal Curling with the Swedish Women’s Curling Team.

No, I’m not joking.

Categories
Digital Culture

Google Trusted Tester

Check this out….Google has a private alpha tester network of people invited by current Google employees. The Trusted Tester program can be seen as a login option here, and there’s a Tester FAQ online here. Interesting to know how the first draft of stuff gets looked at. Would be really interesting to see all the different things they have tested, but never make it to public beta.

Anybody out there wanna invite me along for the ride? 🙂

Categories
Digital Culture

Hacking a fireplace

This is by far the coolest fireplace ever.

Tiki Fireplace

Complete photoset here, with step by step shots of how it was done. All I know is, it’s freaking cool. Makes me want to mod our fireplace into something cool, which is always the sign of a good hack. It makes others want to do it.

Categories
Personal

Odd search engine result…

Inspired by Walt’s recent ego surfing, I decided to see what a few search engines thought of me. In doing so, I came across a really odd result….Yahoo has, as the 20th hit for the search “Jason Griffey“, a Yahoo Local page on Science and Technology.

Except that I’m not actually on the page. That is, there’s no mention of me anywhere.

Take a look for yourself.

Now, it’s true that Cowan is local…I’m just a few miles from the town. But why link me to science and technology in the area when there’s no direct textual referent?

Thoughts?

Categories
Library Issues Personal

They like me! They really like me!

HigherEdBlogCon 2006

I was just notified that I’ve been accepted in the 2006 HigherEd BlogCon!

I’ll be doing a presentation on how we’ve leveraged/are leveraging blogs here at UTC to fulfill some not-so-straightforward information needs. My proposal says:

This presentation will walk through the installation, configuration, and customization of WordPress 2.0, with a discussion of the benefits of the Structured Blogging plugin, an RSS aggregation plugin, how to use PHP inside of WordPress Pages to create dynamic content. All of this will be framed in the context of outreach to patrons and interaction with academic departments, with discussion of what we’ve found useful, potential for integration with the larger University IT system, and a look at future uses of the technology.

Between this, an invitation from LITA to speak on a blog panel at ALA Annual, a presentation at the TLA/SELA Conference in April, and acceptance at the ACRL Immersion program…damn I’m going to have a busy year. But I’m thrilled!

Categories
Personal Sewanee

Sewanee in Spain

Cool blog from one of Betsy’s former students, now taking part in the Sewanee study abroad program in Spain:

Stranger in a Strange Land

Some great pictures, and a nice insight into college life abroad.

Categories
Digital Culture

Fight Club goes Bollywood

While I’m not sure this has any ties at all to the David Fincher film of the same name, nor to the Chuck Palahniuk book….the fact that it might is enough to make me giggle like a school girl.

Bolly fightclub or here for more trailers and music videos.