Category: Library Issues

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Library Issues Technology

December Techsource post

In my December Techsource post, I decided to do my Year End Top 5 Technologies list. Head on over and take a look, and tell me if you agree. 🙂 Here’s the teaser:

In the spirit of the bazillion other  year-end lists you will see over the coming weeks, I decided to list my Top 5 Most Influential Technologies of the year. These are the technologies that I think librarians need to be aware of, examine, and find uses for in their library. Not all of these started this year, but 2008 was  the year they broke out and became necessities in many people’s lives.

Categories
Library Issues MPOW

Live Desktop and Libraries

I hadn’t mentioned one of my favorite things we’ve done at MPOW here on the blog, because I assumed that it was an obvious thing to do. However, I’ve told a few people about it, and it seems not as obvious as I thought, so here ya go.

In trying to decide where our Meebo widget should live, I realized that it didn’t have to live on a webpage. That is, it does, but that webpage can be, on a Windows machine, part of the desktop. We have our student systems set up to use the Windows Live desktop functionality. We point the desktop at a page on our server, that we use to rotate banners, give instruction (Your files WILL be deleted when you log off) and other things. Since it’s a webpage, the Meebo widget lives happily among the other web content.

So students don’t have to navigate anywhere to reach us. The box is right there on the desktop. Putting the widget there has also increased our question count, and seems to be working really well for us.

Hope that’s useful for someone out there in library land!

Categories
Legal Issues Library Issues

Google Magazines

Google is now indexing AND displaying magazines in Google book Search! Here’s the blog entry where they describe it:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/search-and-find-magazines-on-google.html

There’s no mention of a titles list, and there’s clearly some limitations on these (Check out Jet, for instance…they only have every 5th year of the mag). Popular Science is there in its entirety, but only 2000-Feb 2008.

But in any case…it’s an interesting development. If Google decides not to provide a titles list, is anyone interested in crowdsourcing it? Where can we dump the resulting data so that it’s harvestable?

Categories
Gaming Library Issues Media

Techsource – Alternate Reality Games

Just published a new post over a ALA Techsource about Alternate Reality Games. If you don’t know what they are, or just want to see who I think is doing good stuff with them in LibraryLand, go take a look.

Categories
Digital Culture Library Issues Media Personal

Stranger garnering some attention

My recent article in NetConnect, Stranger Than We Know, is garnering a little attention online, although I haven’t heard any feedback directly. I’d love to know if the digiterati think I’m just wildly off base with some of my crazed ramblings.

Mentions thus far in:

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Library Issues

The Pictures, They Move!

Here are the slides from my part of the Academic Library 2.0 preconference from Internet Librarian 2008.

Internet Librarian 2008

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: library2.0 library)
Categories
Digital Culture Library Issues

Stranger Than We Know

My article Stranger Than We Know was just published by NetConnect! I’m really very happy with the way that this turned out. One of my favorite articles that I’ve written…all about mobile technology, and speculation on where it’s going over the next 5-10 years.  Here’s the intro, go take a look if this seems interesting. And leave some comments, since I’d love to hear what others think, and if I’m on or off track on this stuff.

Arthur C. Clarke once famously said that any sufficiently advanced technology was indistinguishable from magic. The technology that is now a routine part of our lives would have been nearly unfathomable just a decade ago. Moore’s Law has ensured that the two-ton mainframe computer that once took up an entire room and nearly a city block’s worth of cooling now comfortably fits in your hand and weighs only ounces. It is difficult to put the truly amazing nature of this shrinkage into perspective, but consider this: you have in your mobile phone more computing power than existed on the entire planet just 60 years ago.

These new devices are changing the way we interact with information. Their capabilities are even changing how we conceive of information and information exchange, adding significant facets such as location and social awareness to our information objects. The physicist J.B.S. Haldane once said, “[T]he Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.” So while librarians are aware that the next five to ten years will bring radical changes to books, publishing, and the way we work with the public, we must remember: the future isn’t just stranger than we know—it is stranger than we can know it.

Let’s see how close we can get to knowing the unknowable.

Categories
Library Issues Personal

Off to Monterey

In just a couple of days, I jet off across the US to lovely Monterey, California, for Internet Librarian 2008. I’m presenting on Sunday as a part of a preconference called Academic Library 2.0 with a host of really amazing people. As it turns out, I’m ALSO doing a preconference on Sunday with my old friend Karen Coombs as a last-minute fill in. So if you see me Sunday night, I’m likely to be exhausted.

On the other hand, I’m so looking forward to seeing friends, and seeing what the rest of the remarkably talented librarians bring to the conference. I always learn an extraordinary amount at these conferences, and I can’t wait to see what’s out there.

Categories
Library Issues Technology

The Open Library Environment

Sat through a webcast today updating people on the Open Library Environment project, a joint effort between a ton of amazing libraries to build a modern, open source library system. While I wish them the best of luck, I have to say that I have my concerns about the project.

My largest concern is that too many cooks really do spoil the soup. I’ve never seen anything truly great come from committee, and I worry that there are far too many hands in this to really push it where it needs to go. Really amazing breakthroughs and products are almost always the design of one or a very few people, pushing to make the thing inside their heads real.

With that said, I hope this project produces something amazing and proves me wrong. What would I want out of a ground-up library system? A modular design, with logical connectors that allow for data sharing…and that data sharing uses open, web standards (not another “library” standard). Support for a centralized cloud database, with local records being limited to unique, archival items in the library’s special collections. Support for open sharing between catalogs, as well as sharing data between other websites and services, built in. A standards-based OPAC. Built in support for mobile use, including the backend systems. A repository system built in, to hold digital objects of any sort…if I want to catalog a video, let me embed the digital copy right into the system.

There’s lots and lots more. I’m hoping they get it right…I’ll be watching, and hopefully helping where I can.

Categories
Library Issues Media Technology

Marketing in the 2.0 on Slideshare

Finally got my slides up on Slideshare…got to say, I love Slideshare a lot, but the fact that it won’t take Apple Keynote files is just wrong. If you use Keynote, you have to export as a PDF, and upload it.

In any case, here’s the Slideshare. You can download the PDF from them as well.

Marketing in the 2.0 :: Libraries and the Cluetrain

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: marketing library)