A Leg Up on Information

The digital communications technology that was once imagined as a universe of transparent and perpetual illumination, in which cancerous falsehoods would perish beneath a saturation bombardment of irradiating data, has instead generated a much murkier and verification-free habitat where a google-generated search will deliver an electronic page on which links to lies and lunacy appear in identical format as those to truths and sanity. But why should we ever have assumed that technology and reason would be mutually self-reinforcing? The quickest visit to say, a site called Stormfront will persuade you that the demonic is in fact the best customer of the electronic. pp. 86-87

Schama, Simon. 2010. Scribble, scribble, scribble: writings on politics, ice cream, Churchill, and my mother. New York: Ecco.

Simon Schama’s most recent book had many thought-provoking quotes in it - and this one in particular got me to thinking about the information that we share and consume online.

Thoughts on the Codex

I was looking at my clippings in Evernote last night, and read an article about the bookstores in San Francisco. Early in our relationship, Jen and I went to San Francisco for a furiously quick and intense trip - and ever since, I have longed to return there. While reading the article, this quote caught my eye and gave me pause:

An eBook Epiphany...

I felt as though I had an epiphany yesterday about eBooks. Someone else has probably had this thought before - I just haven't seen it. Anyhow - here it is:

The Semantic Web

This idea of the semantic or linked web is a concept I have been wrestling with over several months. It's a concept I see bandied about regularly in American Libraries, but I think it's something few people outside of the programming and IT world take the time to familiarize themselves with. As a librarian, I think it's my responsibility to at least be conversant with this new web initiative, and (as I think it's a great concept) it is something I would like to advocate for.

Art Books and e-Books

I spend a significant amount of my time at the Carter working with what are broadly referred to as "art books." Be it fielding a reference query, cataloging, or shelving, much of my time is spent with these types of books. They are wonderful to view - high quality images and quality binding and paper. They are, though, quite heavy and ungainly to move - something I recently discovered when helping Jon Frembling with a major shift in the stacks. That said, they do serve an important purpose - they offer high quality reproductions of artworks for those of us that cannot visit (or own) the works of art reproduced in the books. They offer a convenient and personal method by which individuals can study or casually view artworks reproduced in these books. You might think this type of "analog" book will be replaced by, or at least outmoded by, an electronic replacement. Well, an article I read last week by Jim Lewis titled iPad, Meet Your Nemesis : Why art books won't become e-books any time soon points out that this might not be the case at all.

Rex and the Disaster

Well, friends, I want to tell you my blogging has been less regular than usual because not only have Jen and I been sick, but on Thursday our Mac, Rex, cratered. He acted funny and then wouldn't boot up. We took him into the Apple Store on Saturday, so we should have him back sometime next week. All I can say is AppleCare is your friend. Anyhow, I will do my best to post every day - thanks for sticking around!

Jason

New Yorker iPad App

After months of patiently waiting and hoping... The New Yorker iPad app has finally arrived! It even includes a great intro video:

E-Books and Data Integrity

I started reading a new book this weekend that Jen was kind enough to let my buy at Half Price Books: The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, by Edward R. Tufte. I am working through the chapter on data integrity and thought it was apropos to share this article with you about E-Books.

Last Tuesday's post to the MIT Technology Review blog Mims's Bits had a wonderfully literary title: The Death of the Book has Been Greatly Exaggerated. I liked the reference to Mark Twain's remark upon reading his own obituary.

Technorati Code

Hi all,

Jen and I are getting out blog registered with Technorati. So, ignore this!!

CE537582J89K

Google Books and the Importance of Good Metadata

(It's Friday, and so it's time for me to wave the librarian/metadata flag once more. I wonder what a flag like that would look like? MARC fields? If you have a thought about that, let me know.)

If you keep track of any metadata-related librarian blogs, I feel sure that you've seen Laura Miller's article on Salon - The Trouble with Google Books. The Google Books project has been fraught with problems since its inception, chiefly licensing rights associated with the scanned works still under copyright. We've all heard about this, and I think that the issues surrounding rights resolutions will continue to be dealt with for years to come. What appealed to me about this article was that it takes one of the fundamental problems associated with Google Books - metadata and searching - and explains it in plain English. Librarians, and especially those of us that catalog, tend to use a great deal of acronyms and jargon in speaking to one another (MARC21, XML, DCMI, LCCS, DDC, LCSH, Authorities, Main Entry, Chief Source of Information, etc, etc.) so it's nice to see the problems highlighted and well illustrated in the article.

BOOK for iPad

It's hard to find a really cool and "good" iPad case. When we bought our iPad originally, I bought one of the little neoprene sleeves that the Apple Store was selling. It worked well enough, but getting the iPad into and out of the case was hard - as you had to stretch the case around the iPad. I started looking for a new case about a week after I brought our iPad home, but with it being a new product, I had limited success in my search. All of the cases out then looked like overgrown iPhone cases, and that just didn't seem to work well for me. The iPad is a device for information consumption, not for voice communication and such. There were a few slightly better cases available, but nothing that I really liked. So, I kept searching every few weeks without finding anything until I found the case I have now.

A Weekend of Reading Contrasts

I am not entirely sure as to whether I shared this or not but this weekend, but I went "Unplugged" again. I didn't really get on the internet at all this weekend, thanks to the kind assistance of Jen. I really enjoyed doing this, and I think it came at a perfect time.

Recently...

It's Friday morning, and Jen just dropped me off from taking our cat, Cosby, to the vet. He's doing fine, he just needed his regular checkup. Dr. Hotchkiss gave him a clean bill of health, but they have to get a sample of his "used water" so Cos is at the vet now. It's odd and quiet without him here - I usually write posts for you all with him in my lap. I miss him, but we will get to see him again at 5. (Although it is nice that he is not attacking the various papers and magazines out on the desk now.) I don't have any single thing on my mind I want to share this morning, so let me do some housekeeping and update you on a few smaller things today.

Unplugged Challenge Video

Not to toot my own horn, but check out my video in the Unplugged Challenge:

Your Brain on Computers - The Unplugged Challenge

Also, Michelle Francl's submission is pretty darn interesting!

Times for the iPad Thoughts

I received an email yesterday from Sam Duncan about a little app for the iPad called, simply, Times. Times for the iPad is another feed display app, so that it takes my favorite feeds from the web, and presents them in one easy to use, reference, and read spot. As a matter of fact, here's how The Dean Files looks in it:

Is Information More Valid in Print?

Most every morning I wake up, brew a pot of coffee, and check up on the news with the New York Times on the iPad, and I might look at the NYT crossword on my iPhone. I usually won't start the crossword until after my first cup of coffee, so I am a bit sharper. My news primarily comes from electronic resources, although Jen and I recently discussed subscribing to the Times daily delivery. (Man, that's expensive!) In the online content of the Times earlier this week, I read this article about the perception of printed versus electronically delivered news:

Bits: Readers Are Abandoning Print, Yet Don't Trust the Web, by Claire Cain Miller

This article raised the question in my mind: Why do readers see print sources (books, papers, magazines, etc) as being more authoritative over the same content found online? Take, for example, this quote from the article:

Digital Memory and Identity

Jen recently shared this article from the New York Times with me:

The Web Means the End of Forgetting, by Jeffrey Rosen

I'll be up front with you: this article really raised my ire. So if you will indulge me, good reader, let me share with you some of my thoughts (previously and briefly expressed here) about this article, and online social interaction in general. I have a question for you, reader, which I hope you answer in the comments: are people totally oblivious to what they and others post about them online? Or, do they not care? This question came up frequently while I was reading the article.

iPhone 4 Thoughts

It has been a few days since Jen and I received our new iPhones, and I want to share with you all my thoughts about the new iPhone, now that the dust has settled out there about this new product. To be honest, this is my third iPhone - I had the "original" 8GB model, and then a 16GB white model 3G. So then the iPhone 4 represents a big leap ahead as far as camera and speed for me.

New Phones

Well, Jen and I’s new iPhones come today. We’ll let you know what we think about them soon - and hopefully we will have lots of videos and photos to share. Have a great weekend!

Tools for Fighting the Information Flood

Obviously, I have been thinking a great deal about curating the content that you want from the vast seas of information available online. I think I was running an errand when a thought about digital curation occurred to me. As librarians in the 21st century, we are charged with helping people discern “good” from “bad” information, as well as the information they seek from the information that is unnecessary. If we cannot do this in our own (for lack of a better term) “information lives” then how can we be expected to do it well for others?

To this end, I want to share with you some of the tools and such that I use to see and use only the information I want to see online. If you want to know more, please let me know!

My first attempt at some form of digital curation was my use of Google Reader. It’s simply an online RSS feed aggregator that allows you to see all your favorite websites’ updates on one page. Here’s a screenshot of mine:



Of course, the problem with this is that one can add far too many feeds to the Reader, as I have done several times. If you consistently don’t read something (like news sites, for example) delete it! There is no point in constantly clicking the “mark as read” button if you don’t read the feed.

My next tool grew out of my deletion of my news feeds - the New York Times Editor’s Choice App for the iPad. I know I have mentioned this several times before, so I won’t harp on it here. I’ll just say that the app is my only source of news during the day, cutting down on my feeds and “website checking.” And, because I can, here’s a screenshot of the front page in the app from this morning:



Another relatively new tool in my toolbox is the app and service called Evernote. (Thanks, Sam!) As we go through information, how do we save the information we want to reference again? Web links are, frankly, unreliable, and it’s environmentally irresponsible to print everything out that one might want to save. That’s where Evernote comes in. And rather than have me blather on about the service, I’ll give you this nice video description:









http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlOLXWvaIy0












And here’s a screenshot of my Evernote, as of this morning:



It’s actually how I save most of the content I want to share with you on this blog, so it’s an integral part of that creation system.

Of course, you already know about my effort to cut down on the number of friends I have on Facebook, which is going well. Another suggestion is to use the “hide person from newsfeed” or “hide app from newsfeed” tool in Facebook. This helps my to have my newsfeed on Facebook cut down to the stuff I want to read from the people I want to know about. I tried making a screenshot of this, but once again, the video is better:








http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7wBqyw_LGs













I think that’s about it for now. I will be sure and share new tools with you as I use them! Any questions, please ask!