LISNews: Librarian News

According to the Pew Internet & Amercan Life Project, e-reader ownership outpaces tablets:

"The share of adults in the United States who own an e-book reader doubled to 12% in May, 2011 from 6% in November 2010. E-readers, such as a Kindle or Nook, are portable devices designed to allow readers to download and read books and periodicals. This is the first time since the Pew Internet Project began measuring e-reader use in April 2009 that ownership of this device has reached double digits among U.S. adults.

Tablet computers—portable devices similar to e-readers but designed for more interactive web functions—have not seen the same level of growth in recent months."

Any librarians using an iPhone or iPod Touch as part of their library work? Any specific apps you run or recommend?

Apple recently applied for a patent for a technology that would disable the recording functionality of the iPhone and other Apple devices when at certain events (concerts and movies, for example.) This disabling is accomplished via a transmission that tells them to not record. The goal is to prevent piracy via illegal recording, although Apple has not officially announced that this will be included in future iterations of their products.

The news was responded to by librarians on Twitter, who began a discussion of digital rights management and new devices and culminated in a decision to create a librarian-created user guide to guide our patrons as they make choices about which new gadgets to purchase. Details are available on this blog post.

The guide is a publicly-available Google document that all librarians and info pros are encouraged to add their thoughts to. It is available here.

The dpla as a generative platform
My take-away from the Amsterdam meeting was that the DPLA needs to think about how it wants to align itself with the Web, and work with its grain … not against it. This is easier said than done. The DPLA needs to think about incentives that would give existing digital library projects practical reasons to want to be involved. This also is easier said than done. And hopefully these incentives won’t just involve getting grant money. Keeping an open mind, taking a REST here and there, and continuing to have these very useful conversations (and contests) should help shape the DPLA as a generative platform.