Author: rdlankes

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They Named the Building after Us

“They Named the Building after Us” Northern New York Library Network 2009 Conference, Potsdam, NY.

Abstract: The mission of librarians is to improve society through facilitating knowledge creation in their communities. Through service, innovation, and leadership, librarians facilitate conversations in schools, communities, colleges, government, businesses, and beyond. It is this act of facilitation of knowledge in partnership with communities that makes a library, not collections, blogs, catalogs, or ivy on walls. This is the central premise of participatory librarianship. This discussion will explore the new role of librarians as a passionate and powerful force focused on the social good.
Slides: https://davidlankes.org/rdlankes/Presentations/2009/NNYLN.pdf
Audio: https://davidlankes.org/rdlankes/pod/2009/NNYL.mp3

Screencast:

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Google and CCTVs = Real Time Maps

Below is an amazing video showing what a group out of Georgia Tech did by combining Google Maps with real time public CCTV data. Now you can see car going down the roads, clouds in the sky and people at play in real time. It is both really cool, and really scary at the same time. Who needs spy satellites?

To me this video is about a lot of things, but one that may not jump immediately to mind is information organization. I gave a talk at the last ALA on the Death of Documents. Part of that argument is that more and more of the data folks are going to use/create/look for is not bound and static like our current perceptions of documents.

Take a look at what these folks have down. They have mashed up (mind you with some very high-level programing) all sorts of geospatially encoded data (video, maps, etc) and even added real time interpolation (i.e., not all the data being shown is “real” data – some of it is simulated), to create a fascinating (and slightly creepy) information space for folks to navigate.

Does it make sense to put this in that catalog? How would you even do it? Not the paper they are presenting, but the actual system.

As librarians we must greatly broaden our concepts of the services we provide, and how we organize them. One could imagine a transportation library where this is the primary interface for members. Add to this real time world links to planning and environmental data (click on that road, up comes the construction records – click on that bridge and access the inspection schedule).

Anyway, plenty to think about.

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Where’s Dave?

So I noticed my last blog post was August 25th. The short answer to the title’s question “Where’s Dave” is: writing. I can’t go into too many details (yet), but I’m working on my next book. It has been a pretty intensive experience and taken some quiet contemplation. Also, since I’m taking on the role of director of Syracuse’s LIS program I’ve cut back on speaking gigs, so fewer screencasts.

Things will be picking up in the next few weeks. I’m still here, and really cool stuff is happening. Stay tuned.

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Podcast Feed Consolidated

So it doesn’t make sense to have two RSS feeds anymore, one for the all blog entries and one just for podcasts. I’ve consolidated everything into just one feed: https://davidlankes.org/rdlankes/blog/?feed=rss2.

If you subscribe to this in iTunes or any podcasting tool you will still get all my presentations and screencasts. Please update your feed readers (note just if you subscribed to just the podcast one). If you are reading this, then you have the right link already.