Multi-Purpose Librarian
Posted in Copyright, Orphan Works on Mar 29th, 2008
So it looks like we might get an orphan works bill after all. Finally.
I’ve been interested in the orphan works problem since my first year of grad school, when I gave a presentation about it in my copyright class. This was right around the last time it looked like we might get an Orphan Works [...]
Posted in Libraries on Mar 21st, 2008
I spent yesterday afternoon at the Ann Arbor District Library, attending Library Camp. I joined the group discussing how to sell Web 2.0 to our colleagues, administrators, and patrons. Overall, I was pretty proud of how the group managed not to devolve into a whine fest about how hard it is to get libraries [...]
Posted in Conferences on Mar 15th, 2008
Here’s a quick round-up of how I spent the four days of my first SXSWi
Sessions attended: 15
Parties attended: 3
Business cards collected: 16 (it seemed like more – I probably lost some)
Moo cards collected: 5
iPhone sightings: I lost count
Minutes spent waiting in line for the bathroom: 0 (the best part of attending a heavily male-dominated conference)
Most [...]
Posted in Conferences, Copyright on Mar 12th, 2008
This was supposed to be a panel about piracy, and how to handle it when fans stop paying for your stuff and start filesharing. Instead, the panelists talked a lot about copyright and fair use, and how to draw the line when fans make potentially transformative, possibly infringing new works. It probably had to go [...]
Posted in Conferences on Mar 12th, 2008
At the heart of Kathy Sierra’s entertaining and enlightening talk was the question “How do we help our users really kick ass?” Her focus, on web and software development, doesn’t directly apply to libraries, but the question resonated with me, and probably all the other librarians in the room. As individuals, especially in face to [...]
Posted in Conferences, Copyright on Mar 11th, 2008
The panelists talking about Textbooks of the Future represented a nice diversity of perspectives, though they’re all strongly in the Open Educational Resources camp. We had Melissa Hagemann from the Open Society Institute as moderator (she didn’t say much, unfortunately), Richard Baraniuk from Rice University, Samuel (SJ) Klein from One Laptop per Child, and Erik [...]
Posted in Conferences on Mar 11th, 2008
The panelists at this session all work for organizations or on projects that aim to attract girls to math, science, and technology and then retain them in math/science/tech professions once they become women. They were mostly preaching to the choir, and I didn’t hear much I didn’t already know: girls begin to lose interest [...]
Posted in Conferences on Mar 10th, 2008
The keynote was actually a conversation between Henry Jenkins (Convergence Culture, Fans Bloggers and Gamers) and Steven Johnson (Everything Bad Is Good for You), which is apparently how all keynotes work at SXSW. I got caught up in watching two really smart guys talk about the creativity of fan culture, new media, and the need [...]
Posted in Conferences on Mar 9th, 2008
This panel was made up of actual teenagers, ranging in age from 12 to 17, with a grown-up moderator who did a great job of asking them questions about what they do online and on their phones. There was also time for the audience, which seemed to be mostly marketers, to ask questions directly to [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Mar 1st, 2008
I’ve been meaning to get back on the blogging wagon for quite some time, but hadn’t felt like I had much to share. I kept getting stuck on choosing a header image, and never actually managed to write anything. Lately, there have been a few different things – news items, events, random observations – that [...]
