John Miedema, author of Slow Reading, will be speaking at a forum on the Future of Reading at the Library of Congress, on October 22nd. The forum is sponsored by … Read more John Miedema to speak in Washington, DC
“Verbiage” is a derisive word describing prose that uses many words to say not a lot, or more particularly, prose that uses words carelessly, to create impressions without attending to … Read more “Verbiage,” “Intuitiveness,” respect for language, respect for users
Something to notice when Facebook, Myspace, and other social networking sites address concerns about privacy is the way they focus on users’ ability to control other users’ access to their … Read more Privacy smoke-and-mirrors
Two recent articles in the mainstream press are telling us that paper books and physical libraries are dead (Boston Globe and CNN.com). One of the easiest things to forget about … Read more Death of a thousand paper cuts
Just a brief note on a topic I will return to later… I find that librarians think of change in one of two ways: Change is happening to the profession; … Read more Professionalism and attitudes toward change
There is a common assumption that trends should be identified quickly so that we can more quickly and more fully adapt to them, in order to stay competitively ahead-of-the-curve and … Read more Interior space as a social cause
John Buschman sent a link out this morning to this article by Chris Dede in the current EDUCAUSE Review, “A Seismic Shift in Epistemology. The article examines the deep changes … Read more A Seismic Shift in Epistemology
I attended Media in Transition 6: Stone and Papyrus, Storage and Transmission in Cambridge, MA, April 24-26. (Follow that link for a summary of what the conference was about.) Here … Read more Media in Transition 6… Reactions…
“Exploring the Ethical Implications of Technological Change through the Thought of Walter Ong and Other Media Theorists” That’s the title of my paper for the conference coming up this weekend … Read more Exploring the Ethical Implications of Media Technology Through the Thought of Walter Ong
This is going to be my obnoxious post for the year, the kind of post I write periodically that leads to ugly Google results on my name. There are things … Read more Library 2.0 talk enters backwardation
Library of Walls: The Library of Congress and the Contradictions of Information Society Author: Samuel Gerald Collins Price: $32.00 Published: April 2009 ISBN: 978-0-9802004-2-3 Printed on acid-free paper “The experience … Read more New from Litwin Books: Library of Walls
In the most recent issue of ALA’s email newsletter, AL Direct, there is an item (“More authors turn to web publishing”) about the growing popularity of author services companies like … Read more POD vs. author services publishing
I’ll be at the [Midwest] Library Technology Conference 2009 next week. I’ll be presenting a poster on our library’s widgets along with Doreen Hansen, a member of our Computer Work … Read more Library Technology Conference 2009
Interesting post at Stay Free! commenting on a New York Times story about kids using YouTube as their primary search engine for information about topics assigned for homework. Carrie McLaren … Read more YouTube, the search engine?
Since the second half of last year I’ve been reading a lot of financial news, where the major theme of the financial crisis is the “crisis of trust” – banks … Read more The Other Crisis of Trust (and a question about what it means for Info Lit)
The services of electricity to libraries, however, are by no means exhausted by the electric light. It is capable of rendering aid even more important, and the more so in … Read more Library Tech, circa 1899
I am a big Netflix user. Netflix has a library of about 100,000 movies that users can watch. Because of the size of the library, much of their business comes … Read more The Netflix Prize – not what’s needed
Edited Clean Version: Technology and the Culture of Control, by Raiford Guins. This new book from University of Minnesota Press is about how media technologies are being built for consumers … Read more Book of note: technological censorship
Just noting a book review in First Monday, of Lee Siegel’s Against the machine: Being human in the age of electronic media. According to the review, this book is a … Read more Against the machine (book review)
Media in Transition 6: stone and papyrus, storage and transmission International Conference April 24-26, 2009 Massachusetts Institute of Technology CALL FOR PAPERS (MIT site) In his seminal essay “The Bias … Read more Call for papers: Media in Transition 6: stone and papyrus, storage and transmission