Group items tagged

"Everyone's buzzing about Pinterest, a new social media tool that connects people through the things they like-but for a growing number of users in classrooms and media centers, it's fast becoming a powerful resource where teachers and students share images, store lesson plans, read about current events, watch video clips, and collect their favorite apps."

An article about the outrage when Elsevier bought a social media research platform called Mendeley, and the parallels to when Amazon bought GoodReads. Points are made, that open social media is best, but at a certain point the data produced is valuable enough that corporate interests will step in.

One of the quotes from this post that stands out is "Of course, sifting through vast quantities of information in order to show people the important stuff is what newspapers are supposed to do..." Substitute the word 'librarians' for 'newspapers' and we are talking the same language.

Is the Social Web being integrated into our public libraries? This installment in ReadWriteWeb's Social Books series aims to find out.

People are turning to libraries with tech-fueled questions about everything from e-readers to social media - and librarians have the answers.

People are turning to libraries with tech-fueled questions about everything from e-readers to social media - and librarians have the answers.

Researchers found a nearly linear relationship between time of sharing of the resource and the percentage lost, with a slightly less linear relationship between time of sharing and archiving coverage of the resource. From this model we conclude that after the first year of publishing, nearly 11% of shared resources will be lost and after that we will continue to lose 0.02% per day.

I'm not certain if all these are necessary (such as a personal voice in social media) but others are (creating a basic mobile website) and show some of the ideas currently in vogue.

An opinion piece about the erosion of privacy in social media and the lives public figures. While it offers a summary of the status quo, I'm not too sure if the idea we're moving to "Global Village" is correct.

An article covering the online legacy we leave behind once we've passed away, and who or how it is managed. Companies are gradually becoming more aware and making some concessions towards "digital estate planning" but there are still legal concerns or grey areas, such as a surviving parent using an accessing the social media account of a child who had died.

The second of four New York Times articles, written by a librarian and therefore supportive, but he made several good points. Most learning centers offer computer skills in only English, but to offer those in four foreign languages is impressive, along with the move to circulating digital media and devices.

A taped college lecture about how large scale social media has connected millions of people, but many of the promises of the early Internet have been lost, such as people owning their own identities and websites.

Predicted for a long time, this may be either good or bad for libraries. Good as it may drive some traffic back to libraries, bad as it may end up shutting off the archiving of online news articles and aggregation services that allow a quick overview of what the media is talking about. If news articles continue to be archived in services libraries have access to then it would be a win-win.

An interesting although perhaps idealistic view of what could happen. The author contends that Google faltered in paying and making arrangements with publishers rather than defending Book Search as fair use, although I'd argue it led directly to the Google Play store for selling media including books. Libraries cooperating to make a Digital Public Library is to me a much more agreeable plan than getting materials digitized and put online by means of a corporation.

We have to get these! We can create our own little MOBIUSbots!

http://littlebits.cc/ Ayah Bdeir is from the MIT Media Lab. I love the Media Lab - it produces the coolest of cool ideas. I'm not sold on using these to make a bot, but I'm definitely going to get some for Freya.

Wow, I cannot wait until Henry is old enough to play with these!

The chart in this article shows an interesting anomaly. Initially it appears that print ads only take up a small amount of a user's attention, yet the money spent on those ads is considerably more than all other media. However, another chart shows the revenue per user for newspapers is almost 10 times that of Google and 50-100 times that of several websites, so there's a convincing argument that advertisers still see print as a viable medium.

Pretty amazing and scary how effective it was. It could have so easily offended instead. It does once again show the power of social media.

Pricewaterhouse Coopers' Global Entertainment and Media Outlook predicts that E-books will make up 50 percent of the U.S. trade book market by 2016. Total book spending is predicted to be relatively flat, with the total spending on print books declining while e-books will grow fast enough by 2013 to offset the decline. E-book spending is predicted to skyrocket in North America, but will grow slower in Europe and Asia, with Japan and South Korea as notable exceptions.

The article offers an interesting model of a "Book Place"-- a sort of combination library/bookstore of the future that offers things like printed books on demand if they're not in the store (thanks to the awesome Espresso machine and the 7 million titles it has on EspressoNet), and rental/subscription services for users-- including DRM free options for electronic media.

"Our online history is disappearing at an astonishing rate, creating a black hole for future historians. "

In a report released today, Tuesday 6 November 2012, the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee says that some local authorities, under considerable pressure to quickly find cost savings, have drawn up plans without taking proper account of local needs for library services and the variety of options available to provide them, and are therefore in danger of failing in their statutory duty to provide a 'comprehensive and efficient' library service. Other councils, however, have found innovative and cost-effective ways of continuing to supply - and in some cases improve - their library service.