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
Digital Culture

Reading: Song of Ice and Fire

So, on the advice of my friend Trav, I picked up the audiobook for the first book in George RR Martin‘s series “A Song of Ice and Fire“. The book, A Game of Thrones, really took me by surprise. As we all know, 90% of everything is crap, and genre fiction can sometimes have a higher percentage than that.

Well, I’ll eat some crow on this one..I’m completely hooked. I finished the audiobook, and I’m now 536 pages into the second book, A Clash of Kings. The series deals with politics in ways that I’ve never seen in a fantasy novel, with complex characters and a seeming disregard for many of the typical genre rules. As well, the Wikipedia article on the series says:

Numerous parallels have been seen between the events and characters in A Song of Ice and Fire and events and people involved in the Wars of the Roses. Two of the principal families in A Song of Ice and Fire, the Starks and the Lannisters, are seen as representing the historical House of York and House of Lancaster, respectively.

I’m going to finish this book easily this week, and hopefully begin on a Storm of Swords. So for anyone that hasn’t discovered them, and has a soft spot in their heart for good fantasy that’s light on magic and heavy on story, character, and plot…pick up Game of Thrones, and see what you think.

Categories
Library Issues

Facebook + Library = good

Just a few ideas for the academic libraries out there. If you’re in an academic library, you probably know (I hope!) that Facebook is the site of choice for social interaction on a university campus these days. Just a couple of ideas that I thought of this week, and approached my dean to potentially implement.

1. Facebook just included a new feature they are calling “Pulse”, where they list the top 10 movies, books, tv shows, etc…on your campus. How cool would it be to do a display of the top 10 FaceBooks every week? The interaction of this virtual world being represented in the library would be very cool, and I think it would draw students to become more interested in the library as a whole.

2. The new advertisement option in Facebook could also be used to the libraries advantage. Got a program you want students to know about? Want to boost your gatecount for a speaker? Advertising on Facebook is really cheap, given the number of eyeballs on it. I’m going to see if we can do a handful of random advertisements, and just see how they effect gatecount.

Categories
Digital Culture

links for 2006-01-15

Categories
Digital Culture

links for 2006-01-13

Categories
Digital Culture

WP2 categories = broken?

Is anyone else having issues with WP2 and their categories not working? I can’t seem to get my posts to categorize anymore. I choose a category, and it always posts with the default rather than the one I chose.

Thoughts?

Categories
Digital Culture

Flickr + Goatse = funny

From BoingBoing, a hilarious photoset from Flickr of people’s reaction to seeing Goatse for the first time. (link SFW)

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you are much better off that way. Trust me. Really. The people’s reaction in the photoset should tell you something.

Categories
Digital Culture

links for 2006-01-10

Categories
Digital Culture

Presentation and interview

Well, I had decided to hold off on posting about this, but…oh hell, I figured why not. I am interviewing on Wednesday for the position of Head of Reference & Instruction at UTC.

As I understand it, I am one of three that is interviewing for the position, and I am the only internal candidate. I don’t know anything about my competition, which is one reason that I hadn’t talked about the interview and such before. You never know how much research they are doing on UTC, and it just felt ethically…icky….to talk about it without really knowing who was reading. But I’m interviewing on Wed., and my presentation is done, and there’s nothing really that will change twixt hither and yon. If my competition finds the blog, and uses the access to my presentation, well then…so be it.

So here it is, if anyone is interested: Information Literacy & the First Year Student, my presentation to the faculty.

Wish me luck on Wednesday!

Categories
Uncategorized

Join the Space Force!

Spindle

Author: Ian Taylor

Year: 2005

ISBN: 1419608738

Just wanted to draw some eyes towards the Home of the Space Force, the website of the novel of a good friend of mine, Ian Taylor. The novel is called Spindle, and it’s a phenomenal first novel…funny as hell. It’s a sci-fi comedy, very British (although he’s not). It reminds me of Douglas Adams/Terry Pratchett/Monty Python sort of stuff, but in space.

If you’ve got some left-over money from Christmahanukwanza, this would be a great place to drop some of it.

Categories
Digital Culture

links for 2006-01-06