Sunday Morning at Computers in Libraries 2009

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Why we are here at Computers in Libraries 2009 featuring Nina and Matthew.

Class Practice IL 2008

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Why we're here at the conference.

Isaac Hayes Was A Bad Mother...

As you've probably heard, soul legend Isaac Hayes passed away yesterday. I got to see him live once in Memphis and it was a badasssss show. It's kind of a shame that he is probably most well known now for being a voice on South Park, because as funny as Chef is, Hayes was an incredible songwriter, piano player, producer and performer.

I couldn't find any live clips from Hot Buttered Soul quickly, so here's a nice version of "Shaft." But make sure to track down HBS for probably the best example of his talent. His 18 minute cover of "By The Time I Get To Phoenix" is amazing and "Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic" may be the funkiest song ever. Just ask Chuck D. or the Bomb Squad or whoever had the idea to sample the piano riff for "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos."



RIP.

Happy Birthday Joe Tex

Yesterday was the anniversary of the birth of 60s/ 70s soul singer Joe Tex. He is somewhat underrated, but lays down a mean groove. Check out this video of his hit "Show Me" for evidence.



Somebody show Joe. If you're a fan of fairly down home soul, he is definitely worth seeking out.

2008 West Coast Tour

Here's a full list of my upcoming presentations for the Fall. They're all in California, but West Coast Tour sounds more impressive than California Tour. Anyone want to make t-shirts?

September 25, 2008: Practical Podcasting and Videocasting (Infopeople Workshop). Alameda County Library, Fremont, CA.

October 19, 2008: Podcasting and Videocasting Bootcamp (Preconference Workshop w/ David Lee King). Internet Librarian 2008.

October 24, 2008: Practical Podcasting and Videocasting (Infopeople Workshop). California State Library, Sacramento, CA.

November 6, 2008: Practical Podcasting and Videocasting (Infopeople Workshop). Buena Park Library District, Buena Park, CA.

November 7, 2008: Practical Podcasting and Videocasting (Infopeople Workshop). San Diego County Library Headquarters, San Diego, CA.

December 3, 2008: Practical Podcasting and Videocasting (Infopeople Workshop). Mountain View Public Library, Mountain View, CA

December 5, 2008: Practical Podcasting and Videocasting (Infopeople Workshop). Monterey Park Brugemeister Library, Monterey Park, CA.

I'm pretty excited about the Infopeople podcasting workshops. They'll be very hands-on, all day affairs. So if you are in any of the above areas of California and would like to learn about podcasting and videocasting, head over to the Infopeople website and register. They're remarkably affordable as well.

Also, if you have any tips for food/ drink in any of the above areas, please let me know.

New Lessig Book!

Sweet! Lawrence Lessig has a new book called Remix coming out on October 16 (according to Amazon). Just in time for the IL+ leg of my Fall West Coast Tour. Description from the man:

Dedicated to Lyman Ray Patterson and Jack Valenti, it pushes three ideas -- (1) that this war on our kids has got to stop, (2) that we need to celebrate (and support) the rebirth of a remix culture, and (3) that a new form of business (what I call the "hybrid") will flourish as we better enable this remix creativity.

Lessig is one of my heroes and probably the best speaker I've ever had the honor of seeing.

Internet Librarian Props

Hello again. I've been meaning to kick the proverbial blog tires lately and see if it'll still start. I was incredibly overwhelmed by work in the time leading up to Annual and it has taken me a little bit of time (and a few well earned vacation days) to get back to semi-normal. And honestly, my interest in blogging, and most online social activity really, has waned in the past few months. Although it is starting to return. But more on that another time.

I do have another round of presentations coming up, including another edition of the Podcasting and Videocasting Bootcamp that Mr. David Lee King and I have done for the last few Internet Librarian and Computers in Libraries conferences. Sam over at infodoodads talked about our session at the last IL the other day, saying it was the inspiration for his One Minute Critic videoblog. Very cool! I'm always excited to hear about new podcasts and videocasts that come out of our sessions. The post also gives some great reasons to use blip.tv, aside from it being Dave and Dave Show approved. Thanks very much for the nice words, Sam, and great job on the videoblog!

I'll have several more West Coast Fall Tour dates available in the near future when they are officially online.

SSP2008 – New Content and Business Models in the New Publishing World Order

1. Online Communities: A World of Opportunity (Sharon Mombru – BlueInsights)

Online community functions: networking (Facebook, LinkedIn)/ info sharing (YouTube, Limewire)/ info organizing (Connotea)/ social discovery (Twine, Plum, BlueInsights) – people prefer to get info from someone they trust or know, networks filter and distribute info

Benefits of sharing: visibility for brand/ content, drives traffic back to site, alternative sources of revenue

Business models should shift to article based search/ recommendations instead of journal based. Free promotion for content owners through sharing.

2. AACR Publishing: Portals as Products (Mike Beveridge – Am Assoc for Cancer Research)

Market journals to institutions as package covering breadth/ depth of cancer research. Add value to existing subscribers and try to find new customers – trying to do this through portals.

Portals: aggregate content of all types/ enable production of meta-content

Cancer Reviews Online – pulls review content from original journal sites, free access for subscribers to at least 1 journal, showcase reviews from all journals, expand audience for all reviews

Cancer Prevention Journals Portal – aggregates prevention articles, based on article topic not type, free to all currently – will move to sep product in 2009

Portals position publishers for article economy.

3. iTunes for Scholarly Publishing? Debate
Geoffery Bilder (Cross Ref) + David Durand (Tizra)

Bilder:
Development of iTunes by Apple was very disruptive to music industry. What would happen if someone did the same for publishing industry, especially someone other than publishers?

Assumptions about publishing: “Publishers and librarians are conspiring to annoy researchers.” – our interfaces are terrible.

Have to break out of publisher/ institutional silos. Only place that orgs content by publisher is Frankfort Book Fair. Researchers collaborate w/ others outside institutions and geographic area.

We don’t know who our audience is.

PPV pricing model is mental. iTunes model might help with pricing and distribution of topic specific content like disaster relief articles – stuff in one place/ pricing simple and cheap/ interface easy to use. Simple and cheap pricing harder in iPub, but content aggregation is possible.

“We have the equivalent of the iPod – it’s called paper.”

Publishers should move into this area before someone else (Microsoft/ Google) does.

Durand:
{This guy is like 8 feet tall!}
{I saw him later and he isn't 8 feet tall.}

“Books are not sausages.” – different points of view,

Sales doesn’t have to be tacky. Figure out what people want and give it to them.

Customer relationships are changing.

Work with competitors to find customers - likely to buy things on specific topics regardless of publisher.

You can organize and make content attractive to your audience better than someone larger like Google can. Work in smaller groups to be more nimble and respond better to market.

SSP2008 – The Deep History of the Information Age

Alex Wright - New York Times

{From his website I learned that Alex Wright is speaking at Tilburg University in the Netherlands this August. I spoke there last year! Cool. This talk was quite good. I'm going to have to pick up his book Glut soon.}

Old habits from old technology often get transferred to new technology. Library online catalogs are based on same principles as old card catalog.

People tend to think in hierarchies like folk taxonomy from oral traditions of past. Top down, nested systems as opposed to networks/ lateral associations. People also think in and create networks, New tech makes tensions bet hierarchy and networks – Internet creates tension/disruption to hierarchies.

Ice Age Info Explosion – mythic systems from hierarchies/ symbols beget wider networks/ release from social proximity

Age of Alphabets – writing began for accounting purposes and developed into other uses/ institutions developed around lists of stuff (laws, rituals etc)/ schism between oral and literate cultures

The Codex – networked book/ random access, pagination, index/ early mass production

Gutenberg – proliferation of books/ rise of secular literacy/ schism between “book” and “work”/ disruption of old institutional hierarchies/ period of drastic change

Industrial Info Explosion – development of what we think of as libraries (volume of books led to new framework of organization)/ mass literacy

Post-Industrial Web – look further back in history than last 15-20 years to understand development of web
*Cutter article in LJ from 1883 – describes something like Internet
*World Brain (HG Wells)
*Teilhard de Chardin – described info sharing membrane that would cover earth, work banned as being heretical (he was Jesuit), big influence on McLuhan
*Paul Otlet – universal decimal classification, Monde: Traite de documentation, Mundaneum (1934 installation in Belgium meant to be new library type, tried to make world depository of all human knowledge available to all, destroyed by Nazis and replaced by exhibit of 3rd Reich art). {He showed a clip from a video about the Mundaneum. The whole video seems to be available on the Internet Archive.}
*Vannevar Bush – “As We May Think” (1945 article in Atlantic) – Memex=desktop system that allowed associations between documents, blur distinction between reader and writer, election by association, two way links, visible pathways {There's an open source Memex simulation program available on Source Forge.}
*Eugene Garfield – citation ranking, SCI
*Doug Englebart – oNLine System (NLS), “Augmenting Human Intelligence”, tools for small group collaboration
*Xerox PARC
*Ted Nelson – inspiration for Berners-Lee, coined “hypertext” (1965), “Literary Machines,” today’s web=”vacuous victory of typesetters over authors” (he’s not a fan)

Today’s web has lots of rhythms/ patterns of oral cultures (additive, aggregative, participatory, situational).Wikipedia is literate object (encyclopedia) edited in oral way w/ discussions over edits etc. Same with online newspaper sites like nyt.com (readers have voice) and Amazon (editorial and user reviews).