For my own record, mostly

Earlier this year, Michael Wesch (a professor at KSU) posted a video definition of Web 2.0 on YouTube: The Machine Is Us/ing Us. As a quick overview and discussion starter, it's absolutely perfect.

This year, he's done it again: Information R/evolution focuses on the change in organizational thinking and behavior moving from paper to digital media, creating a video explanation of Weinberger's Everything is Miscellaneous. I'm hoping he cleans it up as he did with the first, but right now it gets the point across.

Neat! I may have to download all of his stuff to watch and comment on while flying out to Monterey...on Saturday! Yikes!

My Home Institution in the News

It's lovely to walk into work on an unseasonably warm day and be greeted by excellent front-page coverage of my place of work:

Boston Public Library (and other libraries) move with the times. A focus on "new" programming initiatives to keep libraries relevant. Nothing genuinely new, but some good front-page publicity at any rate.

Libraries Shun Deals to Place Books on Web is a misleading title, because what they're "shunning" is the commercial deals. BPL and other libraries are choosing to go with Open Content Alliance over Google and Microsoft.

Mail Call!

And, while writing up the above, I received my complimentary T-shirt for registering as a presenter with PBWiki. That is neat in and of itself, but the T-shirt "was imprinted at Rebuild Resources, a place where men and women struggling with drug and alcohol addiction come to change their lives through work, hope, and courage." (from the hang tag)

Promoting a 2.0 resource and supporting socially responsible companies. Twice as much awesome and double the fun!

PoliticalBase - a new take on wiki workings

Techcrunch reports that CNET founder Shelby Bonnie has a new startup: PoliticalBase. From the article:
"PoliticalBase is a structured Wiki that encourages research and debate. Users can edit most of the text but can’t change the underlying database structure. That allows the site to slice and dice data for comparison purposes (something that can’t be done with the free-for-all Wikipedia) but still gives the site’s community the ability to create and edit content."

Obviously timed for the 2008 presidential race, this would be a great resource to promote to our politically active and interested patrons. It's also a very interesting example of a seriously moderated wiki, where the content is available for editing but the underlying structure isn't. This allows the site maintainers to use stable pages for remixing information and efficiently comparing like things.

Fascinating tech development, useful resource and all-around neat idea. Let me know if you play with it and what you think, eh?

An eclectic moment

Yup, we love wading through Bloglines, we do. Here's a few of today's standouts:

So You Think You're An Expert Academic Librarian over at the ACRL blog. It's an analysis of a Harvard Business Review on 'being an expert,' as interpreted by librarians. Good for folks doing professional development/CE work.

Legal and Ethical Link Blogging": what looks to be an excellent primer on this topic.

Learn to Blow Your Own Horn, from the Performancing blog. It's targeted to bloggers, but librarians usually aren't the best at this aspect of their jobs, either.

Still here, still busy

Yes, I have been remarkably busy over the past few weeks. And, as I mentioned previously, I prefer to write articles worth reading rather than spamming your feed readers with links.

You see the problem here, no?

I'm not sure how often I'll be able to post in the coming weeks, though things seem to be slowing down a bit. For now, I just have to share this with you:

A TED talk with Blaise Aguera y Arcas on Photosynth, an astounding new photo tool.
"Using photos of oft-snapped subjects (like Notre Dame) scraped from around the Web, Photosynth (based on Seadragon technology) creates breathtaking multidimensional spaces with zoom and navigation features that outstrip all expectation. Its architect, Blaise Aguera y Arcas, shows it off in this standing-ovation demo. Curious about that speck in corner? Dive into a freefall and watch as the speck becomes a gargoyle. With an unpleasant grimace. And an ant-sized chip in its lower left molar."

Link via Nicole over at What I Learned Today.

The possibilities for using this in a library setting are obvious and then some. First and foremost, this is the new Microtext platform. Forget the clunky readers or unprintable PDF images. This would have perfectly served a woman who asked for an entire issue of National Geographic (heavy on the photographs and she wanted to read multiple articles); with Photosynth she could view the whole issue from the convenience of her home computer, rather than have to be "happy" with a badly scanned printout.

Second, it makes image collections useful in a whole new way. Make all of your image collections available online and overlay Photosynth on them, and every image you have of the Mona Lisa -- regardless of the physical collection it's in -- is immediately accessible via a large image map surrounding the original image.

Third, far more mundanely, our intimidating Main Libraries can be showcased using a comprehensive virtual tour that reduces patron confusion, because Photosynth will take individual pictures and accurately translate them into a continuous panorama. Using an intuitive, analagous interface.

There are probably many more applications, but I haven't had my coffee yet and I've got to get the day on the move.

I can't quite say I wept at the beauty of this tool, but I came awfully close. Watch the video and ask yourself: how can you use this tool to help patrons of your library?

One quick link

My apologies for the radio silence, all. Life -- both professional and other-commitment related -- has gone completely off-the-charts-busy in the past few weeks. I've barely had time to breathe, let alone commit thoughtful words to the screen.

Tonight's no different, but I've got to share this one:

Copyright and fair use, explained using clips from Disney animated features. The amount of work that went into this is astounding, and while it's hard to follow, it's fabulously done.

Found via Boing Boing

"Librarian" video by Haunted Love

New Zealand-based Haunted Love has their first video up on YouTube: "Librarian". I'm a bit torn, as to be expected. They trot out all of the usual librarian stereotypes ("I want to wear glasses ever-y-day"), but they add an almost Secretary-like vibe to the idea. The exposure is good, but I still want to see the video featuring librarians on motorcycles, with tattoos and blue hair. There's the promotion to catch a few new faces in the profession.

A fun vid, regardless, and one worth the four minutes. Enjoy!

via The Laughing Librarian

Link soup morning

I've had a stack of links sitting in Bloglines for a while. Seems like today's a perfect day for Link Soup:

Quick, to the Book Cave! Having a 'cave' in the middle of a bookshelf wasn't quite what I thought that would be, but it's a fun idea, particularly for a teen reading area or a home library in a loft. Neat. (via LibraryStuff)

The Village Voice deconstructs 'the most popular song in America right now.' Any time Venn diagrams and flowcharts are used near the words "fly" and "hottt," you know it's going to be good. (via Seth Godin)

I've got an entire post on this topic brewing, but for now, here's one entry in the "If Libraries Don't Do It, A Business Will Do It For Us" category: LibraryThing for Libraries. I'm a fan of LT, though not a user so much, but things like this scare and thrill me at the same time. LibraryThing functionality on our stuffy library websites and online catalogs. Brilliant, but why didn't more of us come up with this on our own? (Hat tip to Hennepin and Charlotte-Mecklenburg County)

Also from LibraryThing: Will Libraries Die? Our competitor/allies are thinking about these things, and so should we be.

Finally, one from Walking Paper: The Future of Reading. References an Economist article and poses good questions about the future of books and libraries. Neat.