Friday, May 25, 2007

David Weinberger :: Metacrap and Flickr Tags: An Interview with Cory Doctorow

Originally posted on David Weinberger’s Wired News Podcast on May 3, 2007.

In this new series, which is cosponsored by Wired News and the Harvard Berkman Center for the Internet and Society, David Weinberger, author of the new book Everything Is Miscellaneous, talks with some of the leading businesspeople, scientists, and thinkers who are coming up with innovative new ways of putting ideas, information and knowledge together. Now that the digital age has blown apart traditional ways of organizing information, what’s next? Suddenly, everything is miscellaneous.

David kicks off the series by interviewing novelist, BoingBoing co-editor, digital rights activist and entrepreneur Cory Doctorow. For Cory, piling up information without strict organizational rules can be workable provided that we have sufficiently reliable metadata. The problem is that people don’t all use metadata the same way or use tags consistently, and that can be a real obstacle to making coherent sense of piles of information.

David and Cory discuss the advantages and pitfalls of explicit and implicit metadata, tags and the rules governing the use and re-use of content in commerce and culture.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

NPR's Science Friday :: Encyclopedia of Life / Digital Libraries

Originally broadcast by NPR's Science Friday on May 11, 2007.

Want to flip through the pages of every book in the world? Several efforts are working to digitize and make available online all the information that might be hiding on the shelves of libraries around the world. We'll talk to leaders in the digital libraries community, and talk about just how they intend to go about bringing every book published into the online world.

Plus, this week scientists announced a new effort to create an online encyclopedia of life. Pulling information from labs, libraries, and museums around the world, the project aims to make a multimedia web page for every known species on the planet. We'll talk to one of the project's leaders.

Guests:

Gary G. Borisy - Member of the Steering Committee, Encyclopedia of Life Project

Brewster Kahle - Digital Librarian, Director and Co-Founder The Internet Archive

Michael S. Hart - Founder, Project Gutenberg

Michael Keller - University Librarian Director of Academic Information Resources Stanford University

Dan Chudnov :: Library Geeks 011 - Gary Price

Originally posted by Dan Chudnov on May 10, 2007.

Gary Price of ask.com is like that great reference librarian you remember from childhood or with whom you used to work who *always* knows seven great answers to any question that starts with "Where would I go to look for...", and tells you which ones to try, in which order, and how they complement each other, and is always right. Except Gary and his colleagues do this for everybody on the whole web through his sites ResourceShelf and Docuticker, and for the past year through his job at Ask. Gary and I met several years ago, and we're new neighbors now, so we sat down together at a local coffee shop to catch up and to talk about his career and how he approaches his work.

There's a bit more ambient noise on this recording than usual, which means our recording levels are uneven sometimes, and I'm sorry about that. I hope you'll agree, though, that we have so much to learn from Gary about politely getting in the faces of our users to teach them what's out there and how to get the most out of it while saving them time, effort, and aggravation that it's worth listening through the noise.

Some of the many resources Gary mentions included:

This is one to listen to when you're sitting at your machine, or at least with a notepad nearby, because for everything listed above, he mentions at least two more resources worth your time and attention, and you'll want to try them out.

Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Access 2006 :: Roy Tennant - Getting the Goods: Libraries & The Last Mile

Talk given at the Access 2006 conference on October 13, 2006.

Keynote Talk - MP3 (46:46)

Roy Tennant is User Services Architect for the California Digital Library. He is the owner of the Web4Lib and XML4Lib electronic discussions, and the creator and editor of Current Cites, a current awareness newsletter published every month since 1990. His books include Managing the Digital Library (2004), XML in Libraries (2002), Practical HTML: A Self-Paced Tutorial (1996), and Crossing the Internet Threshold: An Instructional Handbook (1993). Roy has written a monthly column on digital libraries for Library Journal since 1997 and has written numerous articles in other professional journals. In 2003, he received the American Library Association’s LITA/Library Hi Tech Award for Excellence in Communication for Continuing Education.

Access 2006 :: Ross Singer - The Ümlaut and Ü: Öpening the OpenURL

Talk given at the Access 2006 conference on October 13, 2006.

MP3 (9:43)

Ross Singer is an application developer at Georgia Tech Library, creating web services for both the public web presence, maintaining the library’s intranet, and working to create an R&D lab for library apps. He founded the Metro Atlanta Library Technology Association (MALTA) in 2005. Earlier, he worked in library IT at both Emory University General Libraries and University of Tennessee Libraries and had a short stint in the corporate world at internet.com (now JupiterMedia) in New York City. Ross has a B.A. in Theatre from the University of Tennessee. See his website for more on his projects, papers and presentations.

Access 2006 :: Tito Sierra - Improving the Catalogue Interface using Endeca

Talk given at the Access 2006 conference on October 12, 2006.

MP3 (25:14)

Tito Sierra is a Digital Technologies Development Librarian at North Carolina State University Libraries. Before NC State, he worked as a Program Manager and Web Developer at Amazon.com. He has a BA in Government from Harvard University and a MS in Information Management from Syracuse University.

Access 2006 :: Stan Ruecker - Experimental Interfaces for the Dynamic Visual Grouping of Data During Browsing

Talk given at the Access 2006 conference on October 14, 2006.

David Binkley Emerging Technology Award Presentation :: MP3 (60:58)

Dr. Stan Ruecker is an Assistant Professor of Humanities Computing in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta. He is a graduate of the University of Regina (BA Hons English 1985, BSc Computer Science 1988), the University of Toronto (MA English 1989), and the University of Alberta (MDes 1999, PhD 2003). His PhD research was on the affordances of prospect for computer interfaces to large, interpretively-tagged text collections. His postdoctoral research dealt with browsing interfaces for electronic documents. His current research interests are in the areas of computer-human interfaces, text visualization, and information design.

Access 2006 :: Paul Miller - Transforming Libraries the Library 2.0 Way

Talk given at the Access 2006 conference on October 13, 2006.

MP3 (40:56)

Paul Miller, Technology Evangelist, Talis. Paul joined Talis in September 2005 from the Common Information Environment (CIE), where as Director he was instrumental in scoping policy and attracting new members such as the BBC, National Library of Scotland and English Heritage to this group of UK public sector organisations. Previously, Paul was at UKOLN where he was active in a range of cross-domain standardisation and advocacy activities spanning Government, education, libraries, museums and archives. At Talis, Paul is active in raising awareness of new trends and possibilities, as well as working to nurture a community of developers around an emerging Library 2.0 Platform. Paul has a Doctorate in Archaeology from the University of York.

Access 2006 :: Mark Jordan - Drupal Hacks for Libraries

Talk given at the Access 2006 conference on October 13, 2006.

MP3 (11:55)

Mark Jordan is head of Systems at Simon Fraser University and maintains drupaLib.

http://drupalib.interoperating.info

Access 2006 :: Anne Christensen - Library Chatbots in Electronic Reference

Talk given at the Access 2006 conference on October 13, 2006.

MP3 (25:57)

Anne Christensen is a Web Services Librarian at the State and University Library in Hamburg. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Library and Information Science from Hamburg University of Applied Sciences and is currently enrolled in the MLIS program at Humboldt University in Berlin.

Access 2006 :: Peter Binkley - Faceted Search with Solr

Talk given at the Access 2006 conference on October 13, 2006.

MP3 (9:59)

Peter Binkley is the Digital Initiatives Technology Librarian at the University of Alberta where he is currently responsible for, among other things, the Peel Prairies Portal digitization project. He has also worked at the Alberta Library as a TAL Online Developer where he was the first developer of the virtual union catalogue TAL Online. He holds an MLIS from University of Western Ontario and a Ph.D., M.A., B.A. in Medieval Studies from the University of Toronto.

Access 2006 :: Annette Bailey - LibX: A Firefox Extension for Libraries

Talk given at the Access 2006 conference on October 13, 2006.

MP3 (20:20)

Annette Bailey received her MLIS degree in 2001 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Annette is the digital Assets Librarian at Virginia Tech’s University libraries. Before joing Virginia Tech, she was a research librarian at SRI International. She is the co-developer of LibX.

Monday, May 7, 2007

Talking with Talis :: Richard Cameron talks about Citeulike

Originally posted on Talking with Talis on May 4, 2007.

In our latest Talking with Talis podcast, I talk with Richard Cameron about Citeulike.

Citeulike started as a personal project to help Richard with work towards his PhD. On the day he turned it on, nine people found it and signed up. Today 37,000 others have joined them.

We discuss the site, its users and uses, now and in the future.

Listen Now | Download MP3 [29 mins, 20Mb]

During the conversation, we refer to the following resources:

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

MediaBerkman :: Teresa Hackett on Digital Libraries in Developing Nations

Originally posted in MediaBerkman on May 2, 2007.

The role and mission of libraries is to collect, organise, preserve and make available the world’s cultural and scientific heritage for current and future generations. Publicly funded libraries operating for the public benefit support access to knowledge, as well as education and training, critical to developing nations whose human resource is central to their advancement. Digital technologies are transforming the way that libraries work. What new opportunities are being created? What challenges do we face and how is eIFL.net addressing them?

Teresa Hackett runs eIFL-IP “Advocacy for Access to Knowledge: copyright & libraries”, a programme to raise awareness in copyright issues for libraries in 50 developing and transition countries. The goal is to build capacity and expertise amongst the eIFL.net library community and to represent the interests of members in key international policy fora such as WIPO, UNESCO and the WTO. Previously, Teresa was the Director of the European library association (EBLIDA), provided technical support to the European Commission library research programme and was part of the team to establish electronic information centres at the British Council Germany. Teresa is currently an Expert Resource Person on the Copyright and Other Legal Matters Committee of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA-CLM). She is a chartered librarian and in 2004 completed a post-graduate diploma in legal studies at the Dublin Institute of Technology.

AudioBerkman is a production of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 2.5 license. Download the audio podcast (time: 1:14:10). Also available as a QuickTime video (Runtime: 1:14:10, size: 320×240, 208MB, QuickTime .MOV, H.264 codec).

Jon Udell's Interviews With Innovators :: Bob Glushko & AnnaLee Saxenian

Originally posted on Jon Udell's Interviews With Innovators on April 13, 2007.

This week I got together with Bob Glushko and AnnaLee Saxenian to discuss their new program in services design at UC Berkeley's school of information. I had earlier interviewed Bob Glushko about the book he co-authored, with Tim McGrath, on document engineering. Now a professor in the school of information at Berkeley, Bob headed up Commerce One's XML architecture and technical standards activities from 1999 to 2002, and is now a member of the OASIS board.

AnnaLee Saxenian is the dean of Berkeley's school of information. Her 1996 book, "Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128", is the classic and often-cited study of how gregarious engineers in the Valley created social capital that produced a competitive advantage for the region. In 1996 she followed that with "The New Argonauts: Regional Advantage in a Global Economy."

To commemorate the announcement of their new program, Information and Service Design, a symposium was held in early March. Graduate students gave presentations based on papers they'd written, and in preparation for this podcast I watched more of the videos of those presentations than I had planned to. These are mostly older students who have returned to school with a combination of work experience and an appreciation for the contemporary digital lifestyle. Now they're learning how to apply those perspectives to the new interdisciplinary science of service design. You can see, in those videos, that they're having fun learning about this stuff. And you can hear, in this podcast, that Bob Glushko and AnnaLee Saxenian are having fun figuring out how to teach it.

Resources:

Jon Udell's Interviews With Innovators :: Art Rhyno

Originally posted on Jon Udell's Interviews With Innovators on April 27, 2007.

Art Rhyno is a systems librarian at the University of Windsor, in Ontario, Canada. He's a self-proclaimed library geek with a passion for innovative ways to make library information systems more useful.

In this conversation Jon Udell and Rhyno discuss the themes that emerged from the recent code4lib conference. They also talk about Rhyno's ongoing interest in making connections between systems that live on the desktop and systems that live in the cloud.

Rhyno and his wife are also the owners of the Essex Free Press, a weekly community newspaper that's been published since 1896. They reflect on the mission of local newspapers, and on how emerging Internet technologies can support and extend that mission.

Resources:

Talking with Talis :: Bess Sadler talks about eIFL and Library-in-a-box

Originally posted by Talking with Talis on April 25, 2007.

In our latest Talking with Talis podcast, I talk with Bess Sadler of the The University of Virginia Library, about her involvement with eIFL and the Library-in-a-box project.

Library-in-a-box is the first project of the Free and Open Source Software division of eIFL. It seeks to enable the development and use of Open Source Library Systems in developing and transition countries.

Listen Now | Download MP3 [36 mins, 25Mb]

During the conversation, we refer to the following resources: