Blake

Reading Project – Take My Books Please

Piles of books were left in high-traffic locations around NYC which were all taken and have now travelled to more than 30 countries as part of The Reading Project.

Part-commentary on the way we live today and part-experiment, the project saw stacks of books accompanied only by a simple note that encouraged passers-by to take a book for free, read it and on completing the book, email me.

From Reading Project — MADE BY SHERRY

Piles of books were left in high-traffic locations around NYC which were all taken and have now travelled to more than 30 countries as part of The Reading Project.

Part-commentary on the way we live today and part-experiment, the project saw stacks of books accompanied only by a simple note that encouraged passers-by to take a book for free, read it and on completing the book, email me.

From Reading Project — MADE BY SHERRY

March 30, 2016 by Blake Books

The Future of Academic Style: Why Citations Still Matter in the Age of Google

Academic style, however, is another thing entirely. This is not to say that there is not “style” in academic writing, contrary to both popular belief and a lot of self-skewering academic jokes. Academic style is dull, jargon-filled, overly ornate, hubristic, timid, and generally bad, and no one says so more than academics themselves. Eric Hayot dug into this reflexive disdain in a recent essay in the journal Critical Inquiry, exploring the oddities of the ways that literary scholars seem to think about scholarly writing, pointing out that “it’s weird for a profession to have one theory of language for its objects and another for its products.” If scholars genuinely care about academic writing, Hayot suggests, we might begin by giving up our contempt for the aspects that make it uniquely our own.

From The Future of Academic Style: Why Citations Still Matter in the Age of Google – The Los Angeles Review of Books

Academic style, however, is another thing entirely. This is not to say that there is not “style” in academic writing, contrary to both popular belief and a lot of self-skewering academic jokes. Academic style is dull, jargon-filled, overly ornate, hubristic, timid, and generally bad, and no one says so more than academics themselves. Eric Hayot dug into this reflexive disdain in a recent essay in the journal Critical Inquiry, exploring the oddities of the ways that literary scholars seem to think about scholarly writing, pointing out that “it’s weird for a profession to have one theory of language for its objects and another for its products.” If scholars genuinely care about academic writing, Hayot suggests, we might begin by giving up our contempt for the aspects that make it uniquely our own.

From The Future of Academic Style: Why Citations Still Matter in the Age of Google – The Los Angeles Review of Books

Google BigQuery Public Datasets Includes GDELT HathiTrust and Internet Archive Book Data

Google BigQuery Public Datasets

A public dataset is any dataset that is stored in BigQuery and made available to the general public. This page lists a special group of public datasets that Google BigQuery hosts for you to access and integrate into your applications. Google pays for the storage of these data sets and provides public access to the data via BigQuery. You pay only for the queries that you perform on the data (the first 1 TB per month is free, subject to query pricing details). It includes the GDELT HathiTrust and Internet Archive Book Data. This dataset contains 3.5 million digitized books stretching back two centuries, encompassing the complete English-language public domain collections of the Internet Archive (1.3M volumes) and HathiTrust (2.2 million volumes).

From Google BigQuery Public Datasets — Google Cloud Platform

Google BigQuery Public Datasets

A public dataset is any dataset that is stored in BigQuery and made available to the general public. This page lists a special group of public datasets that Google BigQuery hosts for you to access and integrate into your applications. Google pays for the storage of these data sets and provides public access to the data via BigQuery. You pay only for the queries that you perform on the data (the first 1 TB per month is free, subject to query pricing details). It includes the GDELT HathiTrust and Internet Archive Book Data. This dataset contains 3.5 million digitized books stretching back two centuries, encompassing the complete English-language public domain collections of the Internet Archive (1.3M volumes) and HathiTrust (2.2 million volumes).

From Google BigQuery Public Datasets — Google Cloud Platform

March 29, 2016 by Blake Archives Books Google Internet Technology

Library Leadership for the Digital Age

To understand the demands for digital leadership, they conducted a comprehensive
study of successful digital organizations, as defined by the extent to which they met their
mission and achieved profitability. They found ten surprisingly consistent practices
among these digital leaders, and for purposes of making the case for digital leadership in
libraries; I am borrowing their ten descriptors of successful digital organizations as my
headings and adding some interpretation to connect these practices from a broader context of organizational types specifically to academic libraries. . So what are these successful digital organizations doing?
1. Building a comprehensive digital strategy that can be shared broadly and repeatedly
across the organization.
2. Embedding digital literacy across the organization.
3. Renewing focus on business fundamentals
4. Embracing the new rules of customer engagement.
5. Understanding global differences in how people access and use the Internet.
6. Developing the organization’s analytical skills.
7. Focusing on the customer experience.
8. Developing leaders with skill sets that bridge traditional and digital expertise.
9. Paying close attention to cultural fit when recruiting digital leaders.
10. Understanding the motivations of top talent.

From

To understand the demands for digital leadership, they conducted a comprehensive
study of successful digital organizations, as defined by the extent to which they met their
mission and achieved profitability. They found ten surprisingly consistent practices
among these digital leaders, and for purposes of making the case for digital leadership in
libraries; I am borrowing their ten descriptors of successful digital organizations as my
headings and adding some interpretation to connect these practices from a broader context of organizational types specifically to academic libraries. . So what are these successful digital organizations doing?
1. Building a comprehensive digital strategy that can be shared broadly and repeatedly
across the organization.
2. Embedding digital literacy across the organization.
3. Renewing focus on business fundamentals
4. Embracing the new rules of customer engagement.
5. Understanding global differences in how people access and use the Internet.
6. Developing the organization’s analytical skills.
7. Focusing on the customer experience.
8. Developing leaders with skill sets that bridge traditional and digital expertise.
9. Paying close attention to cultural fit when recruiting digital leaders.
10. Understanding the motivations of top talent.

From ithaka.org PDF

March 29, 2016 by Blake Internet Librarians Libraries

When our culture’s past is lost in the cloud

We tend to think of memory as a purely mental phenomenon, something ethereal that goes on inside our minds. That’s a misperception. Scientists are discovering that our senses and even our emotions play important roles in recollection and remembrance. Memory seems to have emerged in animals as a way to navigate and make sense of the world, and the faculty remains tightly tied to the physical body and its material surroundings. Just taking a walk can help unlock memory’s archives, studies have shown.

From When our culture’s past is lost in the cloud – The Washington Post

We tend to think of memory as a purely mental phenomenon, something ethereal that goes on inside our minds. That’s a misperception. Scientists are discovering that our senses and even our emotions play important roles in recollection and remembrance. Memory seems to have emerged in animals as a way to navigate and make sense of the world, and the faculty remains tightly tied to the physical body and its material surroundings. Just taking a walk can help unlock memory’s archives, studies have shown.

From When our culture’s past is lost in the cloud – The Washington Post

March 29, 2016 by Blake Uncategorized

Don’t mourn the loss of libraries-the internet has made them obsolete

We can, and should, still love books, but we should not be sentimental about libraries, because they are a means to an end. Access to information is now widely available via smartphones: three quarters of us have one, it was one in five in 2010. Library and information services have to be designed with that reality in mind.
The true inequality remains access to books and reading. Children who grow up with and around books do better educationally than those who don’t. That is where childcare, nurseries and schools are the key. Libraries must adapt to the changing habits of adults, where there is a clear and irreversible trajectory there. But they must never abandon children. As Groucho Marx once said: “Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”

From Don’t mourn the loss of libraries – the internet has made them obsolete – Telegraph

We can, and should, still love books, but we should not be sentimental about libraries, because they are a means to an end. Access to information is now widely available via smartphones: three quarters of us have one, it was one in five in 2010. Library and information services have to be designed with that reality in mind.
The true inequality remains access to books and reading. Children who grow up with and around books do better educationally than those who don’t. That is where childcare, nurseries and schools are the key. Libraries must adapt to the changing habits of adults, where there is a clear and irreversible trajectory there. But they must never abandon children. As Groucho Marx once said: “Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”

From Don’t mourn the loss of libraries – the internet has made them obsolete – Telegraph

March 29, 2016 by Blake Internet Libraries School Libraries

Publicly Funded Research Should Be Publicly Available #FASTR

When you pay for federally funded research, you should be allowed to read it. That’s the simple premise of the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (S.779, H.R.1477), which was just passed out of a major Senate committee.

Under FASTR, every federal agency that spends more than $100 million on grants for research would be required to adopt an open access policy. Although the bill gives each agency some flexibility to develop a policy appropriate to the types of research it funds, each one would require that published research be available to the public no later than 12 months after publication.

From Tell Congress: It’s Time to Move FASTR | Electronic Frontier Foundation

When you pay for federally funded research, you should be allowed to read it. That’s the simple premise of the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (S.779, H.R.1477), which was just passed out of a major Senate committee.

Under FASTR, every federal agency that spends more than $100 million on grants for research would be required to adopt an open access policy. Although the bill gives each agency some flexibility to develop a policy appropriate to the types of research it funds, each one would require that published research be available to the public no later than 12 months after publication.

From Tell Congress: It’s Time to Move FASTR | Electronic Frontier Foundation

March 29, 2016 by Blake Uncategorized

How libraries can save the Internet of Things from the Web’s centralized fate

Everyone thinks libraries have a positive role to play in the world, but that role differs greatly based on whether you’re talking to a librarian or a patron. Ask a patron what libraries have in common and they’d probably answer: they share books with people. Librarians give a different answer: they share a set of values. It’s time for libraries to step up to those values by supporting access to the Internet and taking the lead in fighting to keep the Internet open, free, and unowned.

From How libraries can save the Internet of Things from the Web’s centralized fate / Boing Boing

Everyone thinks libraries have a positive role to play in the world, but that role differs greatly based on whether you’re talking to a librarian or a patron. Ask a patron what libraries have in common and they’d probably answer: they share books with people. Librarians give a different answer: they share a set of values. It’s time for libraries to step up to those values by supporting access to the Internet and taking the lead in fighting to keep the Internet open, free, and unowned.

From How libraries can save the Internet of Things from the Web’s centralized fate / Boing Boing

March 29, 2016 by Blake Internet Libraries

Thinking Out Loud About Patron Privacy and Libraries #nisoprivacy | Librarian by Day

There are many reasons people relinquish person information, perhaps they don’t know how it will be used or they don’t have a choice or they do it willingly, none of this is an indication that expectations about privacy have changed. The argument that this behavior is an indication that people no longer expect privacy and therefore it is acceptable to collect and use data is deeply problematic. The idea of reasonable expectation of privacy reinforces the status quo and ignores the needs of minorities. It benefits large corporations and an elite few. Instead we should endeavor that policies, rules, and guidelines reflect what we want, not what we have come to expect.

From Thinking Out Loud About Patron Privacy and Libraries #nisoprivacy | Librarian by Day

There are many reasons people relinquish person information, perhaps they don’t know how it will be used or they don’t have a choice or they do it willingly, none of this is an indication that expectations about privacy have changed. The argument that this behavior is an indication that people no longer expect privacy and therefore it is acceptable to collect and use data is deeply problematic. The idea of reasonable expectation of privacy reinforces the status quo and ignores the needs of minorities. It benefits large corporations and an elite few. Instead we should endeavor that policies, rules, and guidelines reflect what we want, not what we have come to expect.

From Thinking Out Loud About Patron Privacy and Libraries #nisoprivacy | Librarian by Day

March 28, 2016 by Blake Librarians Libraries Privacy

Mass surveillance silences minority opinions, according to study

A new study shows that knowledge of government surveillance causes people to self-censor their dissenting opinions online. The research offers a sobering look at the oft-touted “democratizing” effect of social media and Internet access that bolsters minority opinion.

The study, published in Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, studied the effects of subtle reminders of mass surveillance on its subjects. The majority of participants reacted by suppressing opinions that they perceived to be in the minority. This research illustrates the silencing effect of participants’ dissenting opinions in the wake of widespread knowledge of government surveillance, as revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013.

From Mass surveillance silences minority opinions, according to study – The Washington Post

A new study shows that knowledge of government surveillance causes people to self-censor their dissenting opinions online. The research offers a sobering look at the oft-touted “democratizing” effect of social media and Internet access that bolsters minority opinion.

The study, published in Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, studied the effects of subtle reminders of mass surveillance on its subjects. The majority of participants reacted by suppressing opinions that they perceived to be in the minority. This research illustrates the silencing effect of participants’ dissenting opinions in the wake of widespread knowledge of government surveillance, as revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013.