Interview that I did with Lauren Pressley for ACRL on advice for academic librarians.
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Catching the Wave
No sooner do I mentioned the thinking I’ve been doing about Proactive Reference, and Google throws all my thinking into a tailspin. Just a few days ago, Google announced a brand new product, called Google Wave. So what is Google Wave? It’s not easy to grok at first glance, but a the elevator pitch might be: Communication for the 21st Century. It takes the most popular communication formats (email, IM, Txt) and mashes them together with the new, real-time web (Twitter, Friendfeed, etc) and you get something that is greater than both parts.
There’s a TON to say about this, and at first blush I’m going to bet that it’s the biggest revolution in communication online since the invention of email. It’s both a platform and protocol, and will push existing thought-leaders like Twitter to open up in ways they might not be ready for.
Here’s a video of the launch preview…I’m trying hard not to gush about the possibilities. Look for much, much more on this from me over the next few weeks.
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Wolfram|Alpha post at TechSource
Forgot to mention here that I have a new post up over at ALA TechSource about Wolfram|Alpha and how libraries can use it.
Check it out! I’m playing with W|A and still thinking a lot about proactive reference these days, while I put the finishing touches on my Mobile Technology and Libraries book for Neal Schuman that will coming out sometime in the Fall as a part of a 10 book “Tech Set”. Once I get the manuscript turned in, expect to see a lot more rambling in this space.
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Proactive reference
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about something I’m calling “proactive reference.” The way I’m thinking about it, proactive reference is the monitoring of the real-time web (Twitter, Friendfeed, Seesmic, etc) by librarians who answer questions relating to their area or specialty, whether subject or geographically based. Public librarians who answer questions by searching for mentions of their city, county, or library, and Academic libraries who monitor for mentions of their university are two examples, but are many more possibilities.
I’m doing a bit of it now, just to see how effective it is at marketing the library’s services and such. Is anyone else out there actively monitoring these communication channels right now? My instinct is that this is going to be a HUGE market in a very short time, and that libraries should dive in fast and get used to it.
She is almost a year and a half old! To celebrate, and because she has been feeling terrible with a fever and sinus infection, we took her to a local ice cream place. She insisted on eating it all by herself, like a big girl.
Favorite foods: Ketchup. Asks for it at almost every meal and will dip absolutely anything into it. Ice cream (vanilla). Pizza. Applesauce (more for spoon practice than for filling her belly). Peanut butter.
Favorite music: Still completely obsessed with the Laurie Berkner band, as featured on Jack’s Big Music Show. She also now loves to sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Old McDonald, Itsy Bitsy Spider, and Clean it up (Laurie Berkner), as well as some songs she has apparently invented or learned elsewhere.
Favorite toys: Anything like an action figure, especially her family dolls from Melissa & Doug and her Elmo and Ernie figurines; magnets; water table with shovels, scoops, and sponges; books (see below); Foofa doll (from the Noggin show Yo Gabba Gabba); gel window clings
Favorite hobbies: Singing, talking, dancing, marching, stomping, wiggling, throwing, tickling, scooping, digging, climbing stairs, climbing into and out of chairs, taking baths and “swimming” in the tub.
Favorite books: “Flip a Face” book called Colors; Froggy Green; Fifteen Animals (Sandra Boynton); anything with Elmo or Zoe from Sesame Street
Dislikes: Too much sun. Getting too hot. Sitting still in her high chair to eat breakfast. Someone trying to help her do something she insists she can do by herself (“Eliza do it!!”).
What she knows and can do is scary sometimes. She now recognizes and says most colors (and tells us her favorite is pink), several shapes, and quite a few letters, and can count to ten. She can accomplish just about anything with phrases like “See it.” “Hold it.” “Do it.” and “Want some.” The other day she looked at her piece of toast and told me, “Cut it,” because she wanted it in triangles.
Her social understanding is also amazing lately. She is great at saying “thank you” and “you’re welcome,” unprompted. We’re working on “please,” which she will say when told to do so, but not on her own yet. Is now telling people to be careful, like when we’re carrying her down the stairs (“Careful, Daddy.”). And she checks on everyone’s well being: “Happy, Mommy?” “Happy, Daddy?” “How doing?” “Where Nanny go?”
Eliza the baby, I think, is all but gone. Eliza is now our little girl. And that’s pretty special.
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InfoLink Tech is IT Day 2009
On Thursday, I’ll be speaking on the campus of Rutgers in New Brunswick, NJ for InfoLink’s 6th Annual Tech is IT day. I was asked to talk about podcasts and videocasts, and given two and a half hours total to try and educate people about practical how-to stuff about both.
This will be the first speaking gig where I’m going to try and do the trip with my Hackintosh (a Dell Mini 9 running OSX). I’ve tested the video-out, and aside from a minor glitch it works well. Keynote runs well on it, and I’m curious how it will hold up displaying Keynote and recording audio at the same time, but we’ll see!
As long as the recording holds out, I’ll post my talk, along with slides and such, next week. If you’re going to be at Tech is IT day, make sure you say hi!
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Let’s Get Physical
Eliza has started catching up with her playmates in terms of physical prowess. Suddenly she wants to climb onto anything and everything: stairs, chairs, boxes, computer monitors daddy leaves lying the floor. It’s a little scary.
She’s also trying to jump, which basically means she stands up on tip toes with her arms in the air and yells “jump!” Once in a while, one foot will come up off the ground.
Besides climbing, her favorite movement is stomping. She goes around yelling “Stomp Stomp!” while she does it. Also does “march march march,” which is a little disconcerting. And of course, there’s “wiggle wiggle” and “shake shake shake,” which she gets from the only TV show she watches these days, Yo Gabba Gabba.
And, she now runs like crazy. It’s amazing to hear her giggle so hard she nearly falls down as she’s getting chased by the daddy monster.
Sometimes, it’s just nice to laugh at industries that are desperately attempting to hang on to their relevancy in a changing world. Exhibit A for today is the Copyright Clearance Center, and their interesting attempt to educate users about copyright via their Copyright Basics video. Let’s examine the ways in which CCC fails at modern web usage.
First: here’s the opening screen of the video
I think that’s enough said, yes? Among the nearly-unreadable text is the prohibition to “distribute copies of the Program to persons outside your company, or post copies of the Program on any public website (including any video sharing or social networking site).” Â Yep, that’s the CCC…all about education. Wouldn’t want those non-paying people to easily get your content that explains why they should pay for your content.Â
Second: To get a copy of the video to use internally, on a non-public server that is limited to only your employees, you have to fill out a form on this page. Or, you know, just look at the page source:
Where the FLV file is handily linked for anyone who might want to use it.Â
If ever there was a direct example of how the modern web breaks copyright, the CCC just gave it to us. The answer, of course, isn’t to ignore the de facto standards for the distribution of video on the web, to limit the ability to share and distribute content, and to generally treat people who want to use your content like criminals. The way to make yourself valuable and heard is to share what you make as widely as you possibly can…something that the CCC can’t bring itself to do. It’s really hard to participate in the modern conversation when your very business model is tied to archaic and irrelevant legalese.
I forgot to blog about her checkup the other day.
She is enormous. 97th percentile for height (!) and 90th or a little higher for both weight and head circumference.
And while the average for her age is saying about 10 words, I lost count at 75 and I’m pretty sure she says over 100, including “sentences” like “Mommy hold it,” “Daddy do it,” “mas (more) appy sauce (apple sauce),” etc. She’s also starting to sing, and it’s recognizable enough that we can identify “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” (sounds like “tickle tickle li sa” but with the right melody), the alphabet song, and “Ashes ashes we all fall down!”
The doctor joked that she would be a genius basketball player.
She has had a runny nose and watery eyes for almost three weeks now. And yesterday she was extremely cranky at daycare, so I finally took her to the doctor. It doesn’t seem that anything is infected, so we got the green light to try Zyrtec. Although her doctor thinks she is technically too young to have allergies, it seems that once again she is ahead of the curve. So we’re going to try it and see what happens.
It was an eventful weekend for little E: National Cornbread Festival in South Pittsburg and Sewanaroo music festival on Saturday; Chattanooga zoo complete with carousel ride and a visit to the farmer’s market on Sunday (see picture of her playing in the kids’ area). We all had a great time, but we were exhausted by Sunday night.