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).
Google Video
I was looking to find a good streaming server for the video of my Philadelphia presentation. YouTube limits uploaded videos to 10 minutes, so that was out. Instead I tried Google Video. While not as social as YouTube, and a step harder to embed video, it works pretty well. See below:
Librarians Invade the Boards
This is too cool:
From http://answerboards.wetpaint.com/page/Slam+the+Boards%21?t=anon
Slam the Boards!
Librarians invade the “Answer” sites
Monday, 9/10/07–All Day
Supporting Wiki: http://answerboards.wetpaint.com
I’d like to invite any and all interested librarians to be a little bold and have a little fun by going to online “Answer” sites, such as:
* Yahoo Answers
* Amazon’s Askville
* The WikiPedia Reference Desk
(see a list of others at http://answerboards.wetpaint.com/page/Registry+of+Answer+Boards?mail=1127)
Once there, let’s answer!
I envision a day-long answer fest. Answer as many questions as you feel you can. 5…10…20…you decide. Just try to do what we do well–provide answers from authoritative resources.
…and then MARKET!
This means making it clear that this question was answered by a librarian/library professional/etc. End each answer with the mention your own library, your VR service, etc. Add the link. Mention that readers should consider their own libraries, too. Promote it to local media. Keep in mind how many people don’t even realize that libraries offer reference services. Let’s surprise and delight them with our quality.
I’d like hundreds of librarians to do this. Thousands? Why not?
Be clear…you’ll almost certainly be helping patrons who aren’t yours, but I see this as an opportunity to make the reference librarian community more visible. I’d like to see a number of us remain engaged in the answer services, on the chance that the users will have us in the backs of their minds when they have questions they don’t want everyone to see. As such, I’m not expecting to see a huge “blip” in our reference/VR stats because of this. But who knows?
The point is to meet some folks where they otherwise wouldn’t expect us.
What to do next?
First of all, pass this message along to anyone who might remotely be interested.
Second, this is a very informal “action,” so you can just mark the date and start answering, but you may also want to visit the Wiki and put your name up as a participant: http://answerboards.wetpaint.com/page/Participating+Librarians. I’m very lonely there right now!
While you’re on the wiki, share. Think of good marketing “tags,” signatures, etc. that we can use.
Most of all, visit the various answer sites, see if you need to set up an account. Try answering a few questions. A couple of us have already done this and we’ve already got a few “Best Answers” under our belts. See the “Exemplary Answers” section of the Wiki. Post one if you’ve got one!
Then, on September 10, get ready to “Slam the Boards!”
–Bill Pardue
Conversations
Yesterday (a day late…sue me I got a new iPhone and had to play) we changed the Participatory Networks tech brief page to a participatory librarianship test bed site. It’s not very interactive…yet. Take a look and get involved. Below is the video introduction for the site posted on YouTube.
Interview in Biblioteche Oggi
A Conversation with Professor David Lankes about the Future of the Library for “Biblioteche oggi”, by Fabio Metitieri is an interview I did a little while back on participatory librarianship. It’s online in English:
http://www.bibliotecheoggi.it/
or directly at
Thank God for YouTube
DREW in Informed Librarian Online
Received a nice e-mail from the RUSQ folks today:
Dear Journal Editor or Publisher,
The Informed Librarian Online, every librarian’s favorite service for keeping up with their professional reading, has selected an article from your journal as Editor’s Picks. Each of our monthly issues, in addition to linking directly to the latest tables of contents of 280 journals (yours included), with links to full-text as available, selects a few journal articles to highlight for our many thousands of readers.
Our June issue highlighted your article:The Digital Reference Electronic Warehouse Project: Creating the Infrastructure for Digital Reference Research through a Multidisciplinary Knowledge Base by Scott Nicholson and R. David Lankes
For more information about The Informed Librarian Online, go to http://www.informedlibrarian.com
To see the list of titles we cover, go to http://www.informedlibrarian.com/ilojnltitles.cfm
Too Cool
You have to check this out:
Great Minds
Isn’t it amazing how you can run across kindred spirits separated by time. I just ran across an article by Joan Bechtel called “Conversation, a New Paradigm for Librarianship?” written in 1986 (full citation below). It is a great read. I see a lot of crossover ideas here with our paper on Participatory Librarianship. She didn’t necessarily have the theory piece, or the tools, but she laid a very strong foundation. I wish I could find it online to point to but here’s a link to its ERIC entry.
Some great quotes:
“”Libraries, if they are true to their original and intrinsic being, seek primarily to collect people and ideas rather than books and to facilitate conversation among people rather than merely to organize, store and deliver information. TO be sure, libraries have traditionally collected the documents of human imagination and action. In doing so they have preserved the ideas and events of history and have become centers for ongoing conversations in which people speak their opinions, criticize others’, and enlarge or restrict the scope of discussion.”
“Conversation, essential to the quality of life of Homo sapiens, provides the occasion and m ode for intimate, significant, and ongoing engagement of human beings with each other in society.”
“Focusing on the enlargement of conversation in the educational environment demands that librarians ask questions about the needs of faculty and students…THe answer to such questions concerning collection development and services will necessarily come out of continuing conversations with faculty and students, both individually and in the governance structure of the college. Surely the whole range of possibilities – reference service, database searching, term paper consultations, bibliographic instruction, and, one hopes, new possibilities for services not yet envisioned – will be explored in order to bring about the widest participation in the intellectual inquiry.”
Did I mention this was written in 1986!!!!
Here is the citation:
Bechtel, Joan M. 1986. Conversation, A New Paradigm for Librarianship? College & Research Libraries 47: 219-224.