Library 2.0 and Jaron Lanier and You

I interviewed Jaron Lanier for Library Journal between Holidaytime and New Years. An excerpt of the interview is now in print and also available on Library Journal’s website: Jaron Lanier on the limits of Web 2.0, intellectual property, and libraries as a place of refuge. You can also read the unabridged interview with Jaron Lanier on my site.

To me there’s clearly something missing in the formula that we’re developing for civilization. There’s something missing and I think that the library will naturally come to fill that gap. And making the library into some sort of alternate facebook access point is exactly the wrong way to achieve that.

what is the cloud, please

People at drop-in time who are just learning to use email have been asking me if I know what “the cloud” is lately. I assume the NY Times wrote something about it. I know it well enough to explain it to someone who also doesn’t know what Bcc is, but I wasn’t sure I understood it enough to be talking to other librarians about it. Here is a good First Monday article that spells out a lot of it: Where is the cloud? Geography, economics, environment, and jurisdiction in cloud computing. Some more discussion about how this affects libraries from the latest Library 2.0 Gang podcast. [thanks justin!]

Why Kansas is my favorite state I will never live in

Kansas is too far from my family, and from the ocean. That said, I love my travels to Kansas and while I try not to pick favorites I think they are doing some great things with libraries and technology statewide. I just got back from a flyby visit to Lawrence where I gave the keynote presentation at a NEKLS’ Reaching for Excellence Training Program. Much love to the NEKLS people, they let me give a keynote in the afternoon. I also got to eat a ton of BBQ with Josh Neff and family which was another trip high point.

The notes for my talk are here. They are available in Keynote slides, PowerPoint slides, and printable pdf format. I made a custom theme for Keynote so the slides might look weird, the pdf might be easier to read. As with the last talk, I have also included hyperlinks to most of the websites that I discussed, and credit links to all the photos that I used. My talk was beamed to two other sites using an HDTV setup and while it was a little tough getting all the bugs worked out, we persevered and I think it went really well. Big thanks to Shannon from the state library for inviting/hosting me and Heather for doing all the awesome tech work.

You may have noticed that I’ve been travelling at a breakneck pace this year. Since my drop-in time and teaching were curtailed thanks to budget cuts, I’ve been spending more of my free time on the road. I enjoy travelling a great deal and think that getting the word out about sensible new technologies is really a good use of my time and efforts. It’s always a balance between staying put and working within your community and travelling to tell other communities about what works in your own community. I’ll be back in Kansas in a few weeks.

continuing ed class: web 2.0 search tools

I’ve been MIA the past few days because I’ve been preparing and presenting a Continuing Ed class called Beyond Google: Using Web 2.0 Search Tools. I gave this class at the NAHSL conference in Lowell, Massachusetts yesterday. It was a long class, four hours, and while I was putting it together I was a little concerned that it might be too short, but it wound up maybe being a little too long (I breezed through some stuff at the end that I would have lingered on, but did end everything on time).

While the documentation for creating the class required me to prepare a “handout” I mostly made a slide show and then a corresponding page of every link I’d mentioned during the talk. It was time-consuming work, but ultimately more useful to participants than a printed page full of URLs. I gave out handouts that were mainly for note-taking in addition to some short lists that I thought would be good takeaway points. I’ve said it before but I really think empasizing handouts over web resources when we’re talking about the web is a smart way to move forward. That said, my handouts are downloadable in PDF format in case anyone wants to repurpose them.

The class itself was a mixture of some talk about Google and what sort of things they do besides their basic search portal, looking at what I think of as “2.0 search” and why I think some sites fit the description and a discussion of collaborative information tools like wikis, question and answer sites and “ask an expert” sites. I finished up with a talk about Firefox and why I think librarians should be using it. At least a few class members were unable to use any other browser in their workplace so I put in a plug for Portable Firefox as well as listing my favorite add-ons, themes and plug-ins. We even installed a script just to show how terrifically easy it was.