Category: Links

Here is a great story (thanks for the find Shifted Librarian) about the impact libraries can have.

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.

While I am guessing this more about getting incoming links than “thanking the academy” it turns out it is a good list of library-related blogs. So:

I’ve been listed on the Learn-gasm’s 100 Best Blogs for Librarians of the Future

http://www.bachelorsdegreeonline.com/blog/2009/100-best-blogs-for-librarians-of-the-future/

In some of my presentations I talk about the danger of libraries ignoring massive scale information and the dangers of letting the commercial sector solve the problem. While not massive scale, the following story still highlights the danger and shows that using functions (providing reading materials) to define what you do over a worldview (why you do what you).

It seems that folks who bought and paid for a few books (ironically George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984) suddenly found the books missing from their Kindles. Amazon, at the request of the publisher, remotely wiped them. Yup, you thought you bought the book, but instead bought access. While Amazon seems to have credited accounts, it does re-open the whole question of first purchases.

From BoingBoing:

David Pogue. writing in the New York Times, reported that hundreds of customers awoke to find that Amazon remotely deleted books that they’d earlier bought and downloaded. Apparently, the publisher determined that it should not offer those titles, so Amazon logged into Kindles, erased the books, and issued refunds. This was aptly compared to someone sneaking into your house, taking away your books, and leaving a stack of cash on the table.

Also see the New York Times.

Here is an awesome graphic visualizing a petabyte from Mozy (http://mozy.com/blog/misc/how-much-is-a-petabyte/). Great for all those of us concerned with massive scale information and librarianship:

You know, I do a lot of talking about how librarians need to be less anonymous, and more personal. I should do my part as well. I not only do a lot of talking about reference, I use it too. I’d like to take the opportunity to give a shout out to a librarian who demonstrates the best of our ideals in her daily tasks.

So, today’s hero is Nicolette Sosulski. Over the past weeks she has gone well above and beyond the call of duty on some reference work I have had. She not only e-mailed me follow-ups, but, as she is a friend of mine on Facebook, IM’ed me to confirm information and the question. A very public thank you to Nicolette. You make us all look good.