LISNews: Librarian News

The Internet will be a fad
He thought the Internet had no future. Merely a fad. A passing fancy.
We were reminded of scientist Clifford Stoll yesterday when we posted a photo from when the Internet first came to NPR. MPR News reporter Curtis Gilbert recently stumbled upon a gem from the MPR archives, a 1995 interview with Stoll by MPR host Paula Schroeder. Stoll was promoting his book Silicon Snake Oil (at the same time he also published a Newsweek article titled, "The Internet? Bah!")

"STOLL: I'd say it's not that important. I think it's grossly oversold and within two or three years people will shrug and say, '"Uh yep, it was a fad of the early 90's and now, oh yeah, it still exists but hey, I've got a life to lead and work to do. I don't have time to waste online." Or, "I'll collect my email, I'll read it, why should I bother prowling around the Worldwide Web or reading the Usenet" simply because there's so little of value there."

More interesting than the beta launch of a news aggregator called Wavii, is the recap of of such things in Science Fiction novels and stories of the past at Technovelgy.com
"This same idea was first explored in science fiction decades ago. In his 1978 novel The Fountains of Paradise. Arthur C. Clarke described the personal interest profile that could be used to gather all relevant items of information from news feeds."

Some Notes on Tweeting for Public Libraries
I've been thinking a lot about public libraries/organizations and social media lately, especially on the differences between Twitter and Facebook. I wanted to jot down some notes about what I think works and what doesn't, & figured I'd share them publicly so that folks can do anything from heartily disagreeing with them in the comments to potentially benefiting from them. I've had a personal Twitter account and followed libraries with it since fall of 2007, but have only recently started tweeting for a library system (about a month now). I still have a lot to learn, but I've also learned a lot. These notes take the form of advice, and it's advice I stand behind, but I'm not claiming to be an expert (highly recommended, by the way: this Geek Girls Guide podcast episode on The Cult of Social Media, which covers, among other things, how often "social media expert"/guru/maven is invoked and why it is often a misapplied phrase).

With no further ado, some thoughts (gentle and otherwise) on tweeting for public libraries...

The next cyber security bill is even worse than SOPA
Just when you thought it was safe to go out on the InterWebs comes a new effort by Congress to put a snoop on every cellphone and two spies in every cable modem. Contrary to what you may have read, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act is not SOPA II. But in many ways, it's worse.