Author: rdlankes

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New Website

I’ve just changed my web site rather radically. I did this to make it easier to find things (hopefully) and easier to maintain. The blog remains pretty much untouched (for now) except for the addition of some posts. I had to do this because now the entire site is pretty much run from the WordPress database.

The biggest change is the collapsing of the Participatory Librarianship site into my own site. Since this is my major research focus, I figured it was time to put myself on the line and closely associate my research with the project. I’m hoping it makes my site more useful than just going to get a copy of a vita or a presentation. Now when I update the participatory site or my own, both are updated. In a few days going to PTBed.org will show you the same splash page minus my information. If you go to www.DavidLankes.org you get the splash page plus my professional information.

My former site looked minimalist, but in fact the search engine behind it made things complex and the pages for presentations a bit overwhelming. I hope this makes it simpler.

So, major changes:

  • Participatory Librarianship site and Personal site have been collapsed
  • Standard list displays for publications and presentations
  • Interactive timelines added for most personal pages
  • RSS feeds integrated into pages to highlight relevant news and announcements
  • Expanded biography…now with more bragging
  • Targeted search on relevant pages
  • Quick link to see and add comments to most sections of the site

As always if you see something screwy please let me know. I highly recommend using Firefox over IE. IE is still flakey with CSS and the timelines simply work better in Firefox.

I’m sure I’ll be tweaking for some time, but let me know how I can make it better.

For those technically oriented (or my digital library students) some tech details:

Bog Software: WordPress
Search Engine (and Web Links): Sphider
Timelines: Simile (http://simile.mit.edu/timeline/)

All of these packages were tied together with PHP. The individual non-blog pages were created with PHP tapping directly into the WordPress database.

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A Few Changes (for the future)

In the interest of full disclosure I wanted to let you know about a few changes I will be making to the blog. I will be adding some backdated blog entries for publications and presentations. I’ve also cleaned up categories adding entries for just bibliographic information, and a new category, “Participatory,” for items related to participatory librarianship.

As you may guess, more changes for my whole site are coming.

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More Pubs, More Fun

This is what one does with sabbaticals I suppose. Publish like crazy. My latest article has just been published online:

“Participatory Networks: The Library as Conversation” Lankes, R. David, Silverstein, J. L., Nicholson, S., Marshall, T. (2007) 12(4). Information Research. [Available at http://informationr.net/ir/12-4/colis/colis05.html]

It is a variant of the tech brief geared more towards an academic audience.

I’ve also put a few more recent and older publications online. Added to:

Journal Articles

Book Chapters

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Another Pub

I forgot, I have an article in the current issue of Searcher Magazine:

Library Association 2.0:
“Will That Be a Name Badge or a Wiki?”

Building on the concepts from a technology brief on the subject for ALA, David Lankes further explores the idea of collegial librarianship, defining what the phrase “participatory librarianship” means and how it connects to librarians and even patrons.

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Paperback Writer

So things on the blog have been a bit slow because I have been pushing out a raft of articles related to participatory librarianship. Within the next few months the following articles should start changing from “forthcoming” to actual dates and issue numbers:

“Virtual Reference to Participatory Librarianship: Expanding the Conversation” Lankes, R. David (forthcoming). ASIS&T Bulletin

“Collecting Conversations in a Massive Scale World” Lankes, R. David (forthcoming). Library Resources & Technical Services

“The Ethics of Participatory Librarianship” Lankes, R. David (forthcoming). Journal of Library Administration

“Participatory Networks: The Library as Conversation” Lankes, R. David, Silverstein, J. L., Nicholson, S., Marshall, T. (forthcoming). Information Research

“Credibility on the Internet: Shifting From Authority to Reliability” Lankes, R. David (forthcoming). Journal of Documentation.

“Participatory Networks: The Library as Conversation.” Lankes, R. David, Silverstein, J. L., Nicholson, S. (forthcoming). Information Technology and Libraries.

Also, the last VRD book should hit the presses very soon.

Not bad for two months into a sabbatical.

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Massive Scale Indeed

I ran across this picture today, and I think it says a lot about massive scale computing. What you are looking at is a gigabyte drive from about 20 years ago. What you might miss is that the hand in the upper right is holding a gigabyte of flash memory from today for about $20 (click picture to enlarge).

Pic 11905866446435