A blog is a species of interactive electronic diary by means of which the unpublishable, untrammeled by editors or the rules of grammar, can communicate their thoughts via the web.

What jumped out at me, though, is whether Gorman broke his own rule in Our Singular Strengths: “Respect all forms by which knowledge is communicated.” This is according to a wikipedia entry, and therefore I am not sure of how well it reflects what Gorman actually wrote.

Since I have not read this work and cannot answer it for myself, but I have just placed a request for the book at my library. To be continued…

The first few hundred titles in the OCLC list are mainly titles we might associate with classic canonical literature, with some classic children’s lit thrown into the mix.  These would be books held widely in both public and academic libraries, I suppose.  Is there anything on this list that does surprise you?  Did you expect popular culture items to rank higher on the list?  And why did Garfield catapult to the top?  Weirdness.

The arguments for and against other recent hot topic issues that have met at the intersection of libraries with technology, such as blogging, wikis, tagging and folksonomies, seem to be over before they are begun (yes, they are all great, just take them in moderation and know both their strengths and their perils). However, this one, I believe, is very important. It is important because it has implications for the way that patrons will (and in many cases, already are) interact(ing) with information and how to make the Internet experience much better.

In reading up on this somewhat fuzzy area, I was glad to have finally found the website for the recent d.Construct 2005 conference. So my fellow circulators, I just wanted to pass on a snippet of recommended reading/viewing as we approach the new year:

Go read Andy Budd’s “What is Web 2.0″ presentation. I predict that any of us who have anything to do with the web will need to understand these concepts in the year of the dog…

Last week’s ALA feed included the article “Good Designers Redesign, Great Designers Realign,” a great piece on the importance of moving away from web design for design’s sake only. What jumped out at me, though, was an analysis of Apple’s iLife software:

The new iLife packaging wasn’t just a redesign for the sake of redesigning. It seemed to represent much more than that. Personal computing was no longer something done to accomplish something else more efficiently, but rather a part of everyday life, even critical to communication and social interaction. The iPod, for example, was no longer only for the technorati; it was quickly becoming mainstream for coder and soccer mom alike. And that’s what the new packaging seemed to portray—less about technology, more about people.

What struck me as relevant to librarianship is the way that the highlighted sentence in this passage could be adapted for the realm of library services, especially instruction. In instruction sessions that I have participated in I find that one of the greatest challenges is getting across to students the point that what I am saying to them is relevant to their lives as students (remember the adage by Zweizig). The way that the author frames the transformation in the perception of Apple’s software has a counterpart for library materials. We need to present our collections and deliver them to patrons in a manner that puts them squarely in the middle of the patrons’ lives. I would try to appropriate the crucial sentense above for libraries by stating: library collections and services should not be used as a last resort when Google and Amazon don’t suffice. Rather, they should be a part of everyday life within your given community as a student, citizen.

Consequently, the challenge that I have been seeing in my own experiences is one of presentation.

Yahoo! is boasting that its project, unlike Google’s, will respect copyright laws, and therefore has earned the support of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers. Onboard for this collaborative effort are Adobe, Hewlitt-Packard, and other big names (and big wallets).

The program will begin with the scanning of 18,000 American literature books, thereby affirming the fears of European scholars and librarians that these initiatives will privelege the English language (thus re-inscribing the language of an imperial and neo-colonial history). There seems to be hope, though, that the inclusion of Canadian library material will result in the incorporation of French materials, at least. Daniel Greenstein, executive director of the California Digital Library (University of California) says, “The focus of this thing is really open access.” Access, though, always assumes the ability to comprehend the available materials.

Does anyone have thoughts on this new race between Yahoo! and Google?

Pursuant to the past discussion about the eradication of “new books” shelves in libraries in favor of online lists, this came in an email from my library’s access services head:

“After complaints from readers and a conversation with the Chair of the Library Board, we have put in place a consolidated Selected New Acquisitions display in the Current Periodicals Reading Room. This physical display of selected new books is meant to complement the New Acquisitions web page.”

And so: new books, regardless of subject, are now displayed in a single location, whereas they used to be displayed on the relevant floors of the library. Meaning, they’re still essentially invisible. The books remain there for one calendar week.

This is food for thought when it comes to assumptions about how our patron-base – and our boards – will respond to certain initiatives. Even if we can’t survey the patrons about every issue, and even if we can’t run every decision past our board members, I think this is an interesting example of those two powerful groups speaking up for something important to them and making us accountable.

Thoughts?

My favorite is this: the library as compost. I’m stealing this idea from Jed Rasula, literary critic and eco-thinker. By this paradigm, the library is an organic heap. Each book is a reprocessing, a digestion, of the books that came before it: thematically, grammatically, politically. Our sentences are recombinations of previous sentences, and our ideas chew up the thought of elder authors. It suggests that somewhere down the line there’s an Ur book, the one book that began all books. Maybe that isn’t such a wrong-headed approach. In a world where inflated neo-conservatives can easily publicize the “ten most dangerous books,” it’s refreshing to think of thoughts and writing as all inter-related.

I like the idea of language being recycled. Recombined. Reusable energy. Nothing is completely original in the sense of being “transcendental,” not even a cornerstone like Marx or Darwin. After all, they had their context. I like the composting image with its dirt and worms – Mr. Darwin studied worms. And the suggestion of richness, a richness that provokes growth in such a healthy way. Of course it might sprout the Flowers of Evil, like the Human Events Online people. But even evil think tanks are part of this dialogue, no? Part of this compost?

How to reconcile neo-cons with Howard Zinn being on literally the same shelf? Call it mud. Call us all worm farmers.