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Harvard librarians learned that lesson when they set up Twitter feeds broadcasting titles of books being checked out from campus libraries. It seemed harmless enough-a typical tweet read, "Reconstructing American Law by Bruce A. Ackerman," with a link to the book's library catalog entry-but the social-media experiment turned out to be more provocative than library staffers imagined.

This is a cool idea-- basically, it's a way to link the data in Wikipedia across languages to cut down on redundancy and help the information flow across language barriers.

Amazon is acquiring Goodreads. They already own Shelfari and a portion of LibraryThing.

"The main floor looks more like a sleek Apple showroom than a stuffy library. And instead of a Genius Bar, there's an Ask Me alcove, where you can get help on everything from laptops to flash drives. Rather than the Dewey system, color-coded walls, stairs and elevators help you find not just books and research papers, but also media rooms, video game collections and even a 3-D printing lab to create plastic models. But the best part? Built with state funds and private donations, it's open to the public. Welcome to the library of the future."

An article that mainly repeats many current trends in libraries but is notable for appearing in a mainstream publication (Time Magazine) and being surprisingly aware of some new developments such as maker culture.

I think I have a Tumblr account (?) but obviously I don't use it. Anyone have one? Tumblr got me a job. Being intimidated by the prospect of a "full-size" blog, I joined Tumblr in February 2011. Since then I've shamelessly promoted my "name" and stalked down as many libraries/librarians on the site as I could find. I've connected with libraries, librarians, library students, publishers, writers, readers, Doctor Who fanatics, and cat lovers.

A bit too much of a fan piece but a general description of how librarians can use Tumblr as networking. The basic function is similar to Twitter--namely microblogging, but post aren't limited to 140 characters of text and can include image, videos, and audio clips.

Big brother indeed. This article talks about using RFID tags to track students for attendance so schools can get funding, which is good. But then they go on to say the cards aren't encrypted so it would be super easy to clone one, which is bad. The first thing I thought of was, why not just hand it off to somebody you had your first class with then you would present and accounted for-doesn't seem hard. I also liked that the parents were up in arms some places about their kids being tracked, but kids are used to it. If they aren't tracked by their parents, they are most likely online via social media and are being tracked there too. Also the only health risk mentioned is radiation not the fact that you have to carry this thing every where-gross, I hate to see what these cards look like at the end of the year.

LendInk was a site that facilitated legitimate ebook lending by putting people with books to lend in touch with people looking to borrow. This was all done at Amazon and Barnes & Noble's websites LendInk merely put the people in touch. The site was shut down because of their host receiving hundreds of Cease and Desist letters from ebook publishers who didn't even take the time to see what the site actually did or who didn't understand that their books were even lendable. 

After the opening keynote at our conference, this seemed relevant.  I think the need for data curation will become more and more relevant as we move to a paperless society.  Though, given the challenges of what to preserve and how, that day may be long in coming.