Group items tagged

Libraries already act like Google in many ways. Or I should say instead, Google acts like libraries. It is the mission of both to organize the world's information, to make it openly accessible, to find and present the most authoritative (by many definitions) sources, to instill an ethic of information use in the public, to act as a platform for communities of information, to encourage creation. So how could libraries, in turn, think like Google? Some libraries act as platforms for community content creation (one of my first efforts in hyperlocal community journalism, GoSkokie.net, made with the Medill School of Journalism, is now run by the library). In how many ways could a library act as a platform for the community to inform itself by providing tools and training for content creation? How can libraries collect the wisdom of the crowd that is their communities (e.g., creating collaborative town wikis and maps made by the community)? Librarians and their expert patrons could curate the web and create topic pages that would rise in Google search as valuable resources for the world (if your library is in Florida, it could maintain the best collections of sources for information on manatees or sunburns). What I'd really like to do is brainstorm this question with your readers on my blog: How could they be Googlier?

A lot of headlines and blogs to the contrary, publishing isn't dying. But it is evolving, and so radically that we may hardly recognize it when it's done. Literature interprets the world, but it's also shaped by that world, and we're living through one of the greatest economic and technological transformations since--well, since the early 18th century. The novel won't stay the same: it has always been exquisitely sensitive to newness, hence the name. It's about to renew itself again, into something cheaper, wilder, trashier, more democratic and more deliriously fertile than ever.

This is a chapter of book from the series "Advances in Library Administration and Organization, Volume 26, pages 71-149. ISSN: 0732-0671. This chapter discusses a study at an academic library in Illinois that looked at how well librarians adapted to changes in formats of information.

Another article that can be accessed in full through Science Direct. This article outlines discussions from the 2008 presentation at the NETSL conference. Not an article per se, but perhaps a source for topics to explore and people to interview.

2006 San Jose State University study discussing the preferences of print vs. electronic resources in the university's library. Different disciplines prefer different formats. Access the full article through ScienceDirect.

1996 book about technology in library

Brantley on rationale for libraries in digital age. Key question: "What issues would cause this institution - the Library - to be created today?" Innovative thinkers weigh in. Role of IT, avoiding replication.

As anyone who has worked in optimization recently knows, stripping the randomness out of a computing system is a bad idea. Harnessing randomness is what optimization is all about today. (Even algorithms designed for convergence make extensive use of randomness, and it is clear that library research in particular thrives on it.) But it is evident that much of the technologization of libraries is destroying huge swaths of randomness. First, the reduction of access to a relatively small number of search engines, with fairly simple-minded indexing systems -- most typically concordance indexing (not keywords, which are assigned by humans) -- has meant a vast decrease in the randomness of retrieval. Everybody who asks the same questions of the same sources gets the same answers. The centralization and simplification of access tools thus has major and dangerous consequences. This comes even through reduction of temporal randomness. In major indexes without cumulations - the Readers Guide, for example - substantial randomness was introduced by the fact that researchers in different periods tended to see different references. With complete cumulations, that variation is gone.

Includes chapter on value of libraries

Head of NY PL explains value of libraries in future: "brilliant research collections such as ours will always be relevant to students, writers, and scholars who need to exploit all of our unique collections - manuscripts, archives, and so on - that will not be on the World Wide Web."

Audio. "Panelists Helen Tartar, Editorial Director at Fordham University Press; Sanford Thatcher, Director of Penn State University Press and past President of the Association of American University Presses; and Ree DeDonato, Director of Humanities and History and Acting Director of Union Theological Seminary's Burke Library of Columbia University Libraries/Information Services discuss the economics and process of scholarly publishing and the future of the monograph. Columbia's Deputy University Librarian and Associate Vice President for Digital Programs and Technology Services Patricia Renfro introduces the panel, which is followed by a question-and-answer session."

Video: "...discuss the economics and process of scholarly publishing and the future of the monograph. Columbia's Deputy University Librarian and Associate Vice President for Digital Programs and Technology Services Patricia Renfro introduces the panel, which is followed by a question-and-answer session." (quoted from webpage.)

This is an in-depth study conducted by the Library of Congress over a period of years to discover and address the issues raised by conversion to digital media. Interestingly, this study is published as an e-book that is freely readable on the web, but must be purchased for download. I just tagged this with each of the main headers because there are chapters in this book that discuss all aspects of our project.

This lengthy New York Times Magazine article discusses mass scanning projects and their impacts in many areas: linking, tagging, and accessibility, among others. Ultimately, author Kevin Kelly imagines that all digitized books will be linked together as on universal book. He discusses the impact of copyright law on existing works and the inevitable out of print "orphans," and Google's plan to scan all the orphans and allow snippets to be accessed under the fair use doctrine. This assumption by Google that it can scan first and find copyright owners later results in a lawsuit that the author describes as a "clash of business models." Business models based on copies are obsolete as business models based on value and searchability take their places.

Historical perspective on research library--access vs ownership.

This is just the conclusion chapter of the book, "The Academic Library in the American University" bu Stephen Atkins and Charles Lowry. The recommend librarians become better advocates of the library in order to increase the stature of the library on campus.

access vs ownership

Volume 64 of the Encyclopedia of Library and information Science: Access Versus Ownership discussion. There are articles in this volume that touch upon all aspects of our project.