When libraries needed space

In 1978, Appleton, Wisconsin, library officials argued for an upgraded library space. This video is from the 1978 slide show, with new narration, but it is a good overview of traditional library functions and the perennial problems of space limitations due to growing collections, added staff.

"There is little room for modern technology..."

Libraries of the future: "urban information bar"

This video, posted last year, is based on an architectural thesis about how the concept of a library may look in the future. The video covers much of what we are reading about and learning in the first-term Pitt MLIS classes. It's all here -- the transformation of data from analog to digital, the digital divide, and networked communities.

File under #inevitable: price of e-readers cut

According to a New York Times story today, Barnes & Noble and book selling rival Amazon.com are reducing the price of their digital book readers by $60-$70.

Barnes & Noble, the national bookseller, announced Monday that it was dropping the price of its six-month-old Nook e-reader to $199 from $259 and introducing a new version of the device, which connects to the Internet only over Wi-Fi networks, for $149.

Responding rapidly, Amazon.com then cut the price of its popular Kindle e-reader below the Nook, to $189 from $259.

The companies are competing with Apple's iPad. The move signals another shift toward an all-digital world replete with increasingly affordable platforms that will enable us to easily access news and information.

For library professionals, this also means funds may have to be spent on purchasing these to loan to patrons or to use on site. These Internet-ready devices, which have surface dimensions the size of your average book, could clear not only book shelving space but clunky computer space, too.

YouTube and Guggenheim partner for cultural populism

YouTube and the Guggenheim Museum have partnered in a project to pick 20 YouTube videos that will be included in a museum show, according to The Washington Post.

Nancy Spector, chief curator of the Guggenheim Foundation, calls the collaboration an opportunity to see how new technology platforms might change the video art form. "We are, in a sense, inviting people to raise the standards" of YouTube, she says. "This is aspirational for people who are interested in seeing their work be taken artistically."

YouTube brought musicians together from around the world last year in the first collaborative orchestra and the arts project runs along the same mission: Discover talent where you normally would not find it and make art where you normally would not. This project signals a positive trend in building relationships on the Web and pushing the boundaries of artistic inclusion.

What happened to my followers?

That's weird. I was tooling around with the "followers" function -- checking out who was following me, trying to follow Pitt Cohort 10 students -- and I somehow lost the collection of people following me.

Hopefully this gets restored. I would like to start engaging with other students going through the same assignments as me.

Technology.

Are humans necessary for info "serendipity"

The Neiman Journalism Lab broke the story this week that Google was introducing an editor feature with some partner news sites that introduces "Editors' Picks" to the Google News aggregation site.

Google, which has been under fire for sucking readers from newspaper sites with its high-powered aggregation system, appears to be experimenting with putting humans back in story and information selection for readers.

What does this mean for librarians? I think it says information specialists may actually be either in demand as information navigators, using humanly intuition and reasoning functions, or they may still offer a gatekeeper role. Although the gatekeeper role would be optional. People still need shortcuts with all the information in the digital age (add all the info from the analog age, too) that will need sifting through.

Here is a blog post by Matthew Ingram "In defence of newspapers and serendipity" who argues that newspapers serve a legitimate function in serendipity and there is a method to the madness of myriad story selections and newspaper features.

Ingram was responding to digital age information thinker Clay Shirky's claim that the news editor rationale in story selections make no sense.

And third — deepest down — the coherence of newspapers is not intellectual, it’s industrial. Which is to say, if you’re running a website and somebody’s on your website and they just done a crossword puzzle and they seem to really like it, what’s the next thing you’re gonna show them? Is it news from Tegucigalpa? No. It’s another crossword puzzle, because that’s the only thing you can [inaudible]. The idea that someone who is doing a crossword puzzle may also want news about the coup in Honduras or how the Lakers are doing — it doesn’t make any sense. It’s never made any sense, in terms of what the user wants. It’s what — it’s what print is capable of as a bundle. What goes into a print newspaper is the content that, on the margins, produces commercial interest in the least interested user. So, in the language of my tribe, the aggregation of news sources has gone from being a server-side to a client-side operation — which is to say, the decision about what to bring together into a bundle is made by the consumer and not at the level — and not by the producer.

Geotagging New York tourist areas

Gawker.com posted the above image, "This Map Shows You How to Avoid Tourists in New York," that was created by geotagging photos collected on Flickr. The photos were sorted by ones posted by locals and ones posted by tourists, then the data was coded for a color key (blue for locals, red for tourists).

The result is a striking visual of Manhattan from above that suggests all kinds of information: Where to avoid crowds, where the action is, what part of the city is most visited.

This project is a great example of presenting information easily available online. How can librarians use Flickr to tell a story about local information. What kind of information can be presented in the library setting using geotagging and Flickr or some other vast socially networked database?