Accept no substitutes

Category: Information Commons (Page 18 of 26)

Information Commons, Copyright, Censorship and/or withdrawal of public information, Libraries: Digital and other

Long on Horns, Short on Books

The University of Texas Library has found a way to decrease library costs — eliminate books.

Kris Axtman of The Christian Science Monitor reports:

When students wander into the former University of Texas undergraduate library this fall, gone will be the “Quiet Please” signs, the ban on cheeseburgers or sodas, the sight of solemn librarians restocking books.

The fact is, there will be no more books to restock. The UT library is undergoing a radical change, becoming more of a social gathering place more akin to a coffeehouse than a dusty, whisper-filled hall of records. And to make that happen, the undergraduate collection of books had to go.

This summer, 90,000 volumes were transferred to other collections in the campus’s massive library system – leaving some to wonder how a library can really be a library if it has no tomes.

[more at the Christian Science Monitor site]

Pirate alert from 1974

“Next time you’re out shopping for records or tapes — watch out for pirates. Not the kind with skull and crossbones and crusty cutlasses–watch out for music pirates. There are plenty of them around and, like their 18th Century colleagues, they’re breaking the law, to the tune of $200 million a year.” So begins the alert, the “Buyers Bulletin,” on the record sleeve of the Vassar Clements LP from 1974 that I was revisiting. Besides describing how to tell an official versus a pirated 8-track cartridge, we are treated to a tale of extra-legal and sociopathic behavior by the Killer Jerry Lee Lewis as he finds himself at a gas station in the south with rack of illegal 8 tracks as told by John Polk an RIAA investigator. It’s not clear what behavior is being celebrated as legal what which as morally wrong. Obviously the target is the right one. Massive amounts, allegedly, of 8 track tapes suddenly showing up for sale is definitely a negative market force, but then we have the Killer who smashes what he deems to be a rack of illegal tapes and drives off saying “Tell him ‘Killer’ was here.”
The confusion persists to this day. Bands and rappers are presented as outlaws up until there’s product involved. Then when the distribution systems fails and that structural hole is filled by entrepreneurs as indifferent to norms as the bands the name calling starts. And even then “Killer” is held up as an example of “taking the bull by the horns” — without irony.
The confused message does not serve the industry well and worse for all of us, we have become numb to it after 30 years of handwaving.
I too oppose massive illegal file trading and the more harmful cousin counterfeit recordings, but clarity here is a persistant problem.

Rex Libris Public Librarian

I, Librarian
Jeff Pomerantz points out (over lunch but not on his blog) a new comix from Slave Labor, Rex Libris, Public Librarian. The peek at the book online is worth your time. Should be out this month.

Just spoke to our School of Information and Library Science Librarian, Rebecca Varga, and she tells me that she ordered Rex Libris a few weeks back. If you are in Manning Hall, there is a good chance you can get the book right here!

Note:
After posting this I went to the book store to try to buy or order the book and they couldn’t find it in their inventory (okay) nor could they find it in the suppliers list (not so good). May have to be ordered on the net.
After Jeff, Rebecca and I are done with it of course.

Monkees make it a Billion

WorldCat from OCLC announces that they have cataloged their 1 billionth entry into their 34 year old shared catalog of library holdings.

The Monkees : The day-by-day story of the ’60s TV pop sensation
joins over 61
million unique catalog records representing 1 billion items in more than 54,000 libraries in 96 countries. The Bible, Mother Goose, Huckleberry Finn, and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland are among the Top Ten holdings in the catalog. Entirely unique items such as a Babylonian temple receipt for cattle and sheep used
in temple services around 2350 B.C are also in the catalog. The Monkees will not be entirely unique nor in the Top Ten I predict.

Note: My collegue, Fred Kilgour, founded OCLC in 1967 and was its President until 1980 then was Permanent Founder Trustee until 1995.

ibiblio-mania various

Besides the SlashDot article posted below, ibiblio has received some other very good and varied attention in the past few hours.

Rain and Netscape IPO

August in Chapel Hill is usually dry. I recall several summers in the past decades when we were under water restrictions. Today we are simply under water. When I walked in this morning, water wasn’t rushing out of the grates; it was shooting up out of the grates! I had on a poncho and was carrying an umbrella but from the knees down I was soaked. Megan reports that Franklin Street was/is flooded down toward Panzanella (and the Wicked Burrito).

This week is the 10th anniversary of the Netscape IPO. Some people are claiming that should be the anniversary of the Internet or the Web, but of course things were longer in the making than that. Kevin Kelly has a good essay in Wired this month on the subject with an amusing projection into the next decade.

Podcasting and iTunes delight

We tuned up Roger McGuinn’s Folk Den and registered the podcast with iTunes lately. We’d been podcasting it for a while, but the iTunes subscription service makes it really easy to get new audio into your player — if that player is iTunes.
I have the about 100 songs from the Folk Den in my player when I saw a new song just show up! This is exactly what is supposed to happen, but it was still amazing. Roger had just added the song to the Folk Den about 5 minutes or so earlier. Without any effort other than subscribing to our RSS feed, I had the song there and ready to play and/or transfer to my iPod.

We have some work to do on the metadata, but we’ll be working on that and on a WordPress version of the Folk Den next.

Other podcasts I enjoy are Harry Shearer’s Le Show from KCRW (also easy to subcribe to on iTunes) and Brian Russell’s AudioActivism.org.

Bonus: Catch up with Roger and Camilla at Roger’s blog.

GILS is going….

After spending years and mucho $$$, feds have decided to recall the Global Information Locator Service (GILS) standard (according to Federal Computer Week). For those of us involved in searching via WAIS and other now decade old searching schemes (back in the day when they were new), this is not a surprise but a relief. Eliot Christian has had a very long ride on GILS (he declined to comment on the story linked above), but will now have to consider how work done for GILS might fit with W3C standards and with current searching standards used by Google and Yahoo! Could these old school GILS problems point to similar problems with the semantic web? And what does this mean for state standards based on GILS like NC GILS?

What say you old school searchers?

ibiblio = memex authority says aussie rag

The Aussie “multiple medium” magazine, Gizmag, in print form is “distributed in environments where affluent males congregate.” This may be the reason that I’ve never seen it. That and that I think they are limited to Australia in the print edition.

Nonetheless I was delighted to discover that in their article on the 60th anniversary of the publication of Vannevar Bush’s “As We May Think” essay, they included two links to ibiblio sources. ibiblio link and the link to Ted Nelson in the article [they should have used this link for Nelson] go to a JOMC master’s project by Scott Griffin from 2000 on Internet Pioneers. Unfortunately, they misspell Dr. Bush’s name regularly.

Anniversary of Vannavar [sic ] Bush’s famous essay describing the MEMEX machine

[…]
Bush was a visionary and his work in creating the environment which nurtured
the development of what became the internet is well documented in several
excellent articles in Wired magazine and ibiblio.
[…]

Marchionini-isms

Poet of a sort or at least a creator of bon motes. My collegue Gary Marchionini has a gift or a curse for creating oddly specific words for the field of Information and Library Science. He has not been as widely recognized for this gift/curse as he deserves. In order to rectify that, I present this short list.

ibiblio = national model?

I’ve always thought of ibiblio as international going back to our original sunsite proposal in 1992. But when you get in good company on a list of things appreciated, it’s not polite to whine.

As Barbara Solow leaves NC, she writes one last Independent article about
what she will miss
. ibiblio is included under the heading of National
Models:

[…]
National Models: What is it about the Triangle that has us so chock full of nationally recognized institutions and model programs on a host of social-change issues? Maybe it’s that the region is still small enough so that grassroots organizing feels doable. Or maybe it’s because our economy has kept us on the cutting edge–tobacco manufacturing to RTP to the City of Medicine. But I think it goes deeper, to the progressive element that’s in the water around here. Among some of the leaders in this arena: The Self-Help Credit Union, Ladyslipper Music, The Institute for Southern Studies, Full Frame documentary film festival, Public Allies, Smart Start, ibiblio, The Triangle Community Foundation, Lincoln and Piedmont Community Health centers, The Coalition for Family Peace–and for that matter, the University of North Carolina and its 16 campuses.
[…]

Blog Teach-in – Saturday July 30 noon – 2

MisterSugar alerts us to A significant community event:

  • What: Chapel Hill BlogTogether Teach-in
  • When: Saturday, July 23, 2005, 12 noon to 2 p.m.
  • Where: UNC-CH Health Sciences Library Biogen Idec Classroom.
    Park in the UNC Hospitals parking deck, or find free street parking in the area. The Health Sciences Library is on Columbia St. near the intersection with Manning. Directions.
  • For anyone who wants one-on-one help becoming a blogger
  • For new bloggers who want one-on-one help improving their blog or making the most of their blogware

Download this poster [pdf] for more information.
RSVP to anton@blogtogether.org or 919.225.0969.

Folkstreams documentary site – survey

Our IMLS funded initiative to build up the collection of films streaming from the Folkstreams.net site is going full steam ahead.

We’re up to 36 films online now including a great one on herbalist and healer Tommy Bass

At the time of his death in 1996, “Tommie” Bass, was probably the most well-known herbalist in the United States. The subject of scholarly and popular books, television features, a front-page essay in the Wall Street Journal, and numerous articles in newspapers and magazines, Tommie Bass lived his entire life in the Ridge and Valley region of Alabama where he devoted himself to “trying to give ease” to the many people who sought his advice.. “Tommie Bass” is a biographical portrait of Mr. Bass, told almost entirely in his own words.

Painted Bride

This 1990 video features the exquisite mehndi body painting tradition as it is practiced among Pakistani immigrants living in Queens, New York City. The film follows a mehndi artist, Shenaz Hooda, as she prepares a henna paste and paints intricate designs on the hands and feet of a bride-to-be, while the bride’s friends sing humorous songs mocking the groom and the future in-laws.

Sadobabies: Runaways in San Francisco

A 1988 8mm video documentary about the street children of San Francisco. The video documents the expressive traditions of a group of young runaways who formed an alternative family in an abandoned high school building near Golden Gate Park. Shot in an urban setting with a “one-person crew,” Sadobabies demonstrates small-format, low-budget production.

And many others.

When you visit the site, be sure to fill out our simple and fast survey.

Net.independence (NYTimes bidnez)

Today’s NYTimes Business Section is full of stories, seemingly unrelated in some cases, about how the net is opening up new opportunities for involvement in news, entertainment and other areas of communication. Among the articles is the center cover about citizen journalism featuring the Greensboro News and Record (with great image of their front page), an article on podcasting (there have been several over the past few days), an article about legal movie downloads, an article on AOL and Live 8 and the remaking of AOL to be less of a gated community, an opinion piece that says that whatever the Supreme Court decided about file sharing it will not change behaviors — this is supported by quotes from Hilary Rosen, and that’s just what I remember just now.
The common link between the articles is not just the net, but the social use of the net and the demands placed on our commercial structures by the people using the net. Will they get on the cluetrain or has it already left their station?

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