a sometimes blog about mostly libraries
i just ran across an awesome pictorial cataloging project out of the u.k. - the visual dictionary is a "collection of words in the real world": you can view entries as images or as a cloud: the creators also have a mashup that combines twitter and the visual dictionary:
I was recently contacted by Dennis Clark, head of Reference at the Texas A&M Libraries, about OU's Skype a Librarian pilots. He expressed interest in how video is working in terms of public services, which is unfortunately not a question that can be answered in a few words - I'm still working on a series... Continue Reading →
OCLC just released "Sharing, Privacy and Trust in Our Networked World", a monster of an international survey-based report on socially networked information, privacy, and how information sharing affects libraries and patron services. I'm just delving into it, but it's already obviously well worth the time if you're at all interested in the libraries and electronic... Continue Reading →
In a few minutes I'm off to the Mid-Atlantic Radical Bookfair in Baltimore, MD to do a bit of work with Radical Reference, the best social justice-oriented volunteer librarian collective ever. Learn about RadRef immediately if you're not already in the know. Better yet, volunteer.
equals a ton of potential exposure for the already-dominant web calling client, which has gotten a bit of bad press lately when Ebay admitted it massively overpaid during Skype's acquisition in 2005. I'm interested to see if a partnership between Skype and MySpace (which will allow MySpace users to call each other via Skype while... Continue Reading →
Since the passage of the Patriot Act in 2001 librarians have become increasingly expert at protecting information freedoms from an unprecedented degree of governmental scrutiny - aptly described by K. G. Schneider as "antispeech legislation" in 2002, the Patriot Act was reinstated in 2006 with few revisions. In libraries, privacy is paramount. We offer open... Continue Reading →
The University of Canterbury Libraries in Christchurch, New Zealand are running a Skype-based video pilot for their national Library Week. I've been communicating with Engineering Information librarian Deborah Fitchett about the experiement - she initially contacted me about potential Skype security and bandwidth concerns from her campus IT department (we've not had any issues, by... Continue Reading →
I was recently interviewed for a short Chronicle of Higher Ed article by Scott Carlson that came out today - it profiles some youngish librarians and their perspectives on the profession, the future of the book, what's going right and wrong, etc. I like what other folks have to say and I think this piece... Continue Reading →
Last week O'Reilly Radar discussed the potential for developing "interoperability" between social sites and services - or, using stored data to transform the current ask-and-confim personal network model into a more intelligent and automatic one: "The move from manual confirmation to automated recognition is one of the major trends that has allowed the web to... Continue Reading →
In collaboration with the Digital Library Federation, if:book has announced preliminary plans for the Really Modern Library project, which has two components: a) inviting "an eclectic assortment of creative thinkers from the arts, publishing, media, design, academic and library worlds" to a series of three discussions on the trajectory of mass digitization, the accessibility of... Continue Reading →
info-mational 