I loathe the jiggling at the start of the Voyage

I never did get the RSS feed 23 Things lesson. I tried as a duty to understand the process, but in the very disinterested manner of the school child who knows the lesson on algebra or the Battle of Salamis* is not for her. Tom helped me create a few links and I have looked at them rarely. This is mainly because I have my own methods of information retrieval that are immediate, relevant and referenced according to my requirements. I am glad Dana told me about the Annoyed Librarian which I have as an alert but irritated with myself that I did not limit it to the one feed for AL. There are an amazing number of items with “annoyed” and “librarian” in a multitude of articles. I keep it going as is, as I have come across some brilliantly written articles, often from the real Annoyed Librarian: http://annoyedlibrarian.blogspot.com/. I found out there is a blog for Librarians who swear profoundly(say F***) or something like that. I have lost the link but it was sharp and amusing and irreverent which I like when it is funny.


Google Blogs Alert for: Annoyed Librarian - 30 September 2008


--
Nursing Week Day 1- An unpleasant experience
By Esther(Esther)
I was annoyed. I dropped by the hospital library because I was looking for a book for my brother. I heard that it was there and so, I wanted to have a look at it because I thought at least, I would have an idea of it when I looked for ...
TYPE [89] - http://type89.blogspot.com/
busy busy!

By Julia Reina
I am hella excited, especially since Jay has an appointment to speak with a librarian Friday afternoon about an institution he has been interested in for quite some time (ie: if he impresses them on this visit and they're hiring next ...
"...no dead end in sight..." - http://lowyndcastleblog.typepad.com/no_dead_end_in_sight/

Angels and Demons
By Bala - Keep it cool(Bala - Keep it cool)
To Stan Planton, head librarian, Ohio University-Chillicothe, for being my numbersource of information on countless topics. To Sylvia Cavazzini, for her gracious tour through the secret Passetto. And to the best parents a kid could hope ...
The Da Vinci Code - http://balasolai.blogspot.com/

Comparison of Free Patent Databases
By Michael White(Michael White)
I get a little annoyed when I see claims such as this, especially when the database provider doesn't state the contents and dates of coverage. Having a great search engine doesn't mean much if the underlying data is incomplete. ...
- http://patentlibrarian.blogspot.com/







Well I have looked and looked at the instructions for Voyage RSS Feed and tried several times to work on the program to get experiential knowledge. I pressed the pink and I pressed the blue. The items for the hour or minute were boring to me. I had to peer through the bounces to try to identify an item I found interesting enough to take to the next step.

One quick click on one of my frequently used links, and I can find the up to minute news item on the NY Times site.


Bailout bill slapped aside; record stock plunge : http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/washington/AP-Financial-Meltdown.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Filed at 8:20 p.m. ET – that is NY Time and it was 10:20 am here.


The bonus with my “feed” is I do not have to watch bobbling items of no interest flicking like a 1960s era TV screen.

I have no use for Voyage RSS: I cannot work it out. I tried and failed to connect.

* I however loved Greek ancient history –
The Persian Wars (492 - 449 B.C.) were fought on land and sea. The Battle of Salamis was a decisive naval battle of these Persian Wars that followed the Battle of Thermopylae -- the one where the 300 Spartans and allies made a brave, but hopeless stand against the far superior forces of the Persians. After Thermopylae, the Persian forces destroyed Athens. But by the time the Persians arrived, Athens had been evacuated and the Greek military leaders were preparing to meet the Persians at Salamis. http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/salamis/g/Salamis.htm

Picture this.

http://images.swinburne.edu.au/handle/1111.1/1982

This is one of the 1.5 MILLION images on Picture Australia.( Click the link for a better view) It depicts Mrs Swinburne, in garden party regalia, hostess of a garden party at Shenton, the Swinburne family home in Hawthorn, 1945. The garden party for staff was an annual event.. The faded photo is in an album of photographs donated to Swinburne by one of the family. Like most photographs this, and the others in the album, offer viewers a wealth of information – fashion, hospitality, Swinburne family commitment to staff, formality and manners,language, collection habits…

These pictures would never have been seen again, but now can be through Picture Australia.

Web 2.0 is changing, no, has changed, the stately world of library and museum collections

I went to Canberra early this week and attended a meeting of participants in Picture Australia: http://www.pictureaustralia.org/

I just cannot work out whether I am enthralled by anything to do with giving the public a chance to look at wonderful things or I am enthralled that this is done so brilliantly, eloquently and idiosyncratically through the internet and Picture Australia.

I listened to presentations from new participants to P A, developers of new search engines talking in technical language I do not really understand but know what they are talking about and talks by eminent scholars in the field of communication between communities and the use of web 2.0 technology that is revolutionising this.

When I think about the swirling items of information I gleaned in that one day in Canberra, I find that I am definitely shouting hurrah to the people in museums and libraries who are working with the web 2.0 phenomena to make their collections available to searchers, even flickr and google searchers. There is now a new world out there where even the littlest (regional) library, when a participant in Picture Australia, is getting “web hits” from anywhere and everywhere because its staff have:
*gone to the public to suggest that their stories and photographs are important and had the public respond in droves with marvellous and perfectly valid material;
*added terms to their cataloguing of items, formerly languishing in archives, and in transferring their data to Picture Australia, brought a new admiring audience – the general public and researchers;
*been able to get grants from their own management, regional government and other such bodies to further enhance the accessibility of their collections because they are getting such rich feedback from their own and external communities (and the Councillors like their photographs on line, on flickr, on the www).

Research in earnest is now taking place within the institutions and in the academic world about connecting or being connected to popular sites like flickr to beef up the numbers of visits to their sites. Serious (re)searchers can always find most of what they want, whether they use popular sites or esoteric and little known search engines. But the public at large favour ease and easy, so they use google, wikipedia, flickr and others as well as a specific library or museum catalogue on line if they know the item is most probably in that institution.

I am quite amused by my own views post 23 things, my presumption of what a conference such as Picture Australia would have said even a short time ago, say 3-4 years, about all this acceptance of new audiences via the popular. I even sensed a small amount of reluctance to “give in” and a wish to remain pure.

One of the most interesting issues I have pondered on since my day in Australia’s capital is that Delta Goodrem’s dress is a very popular site for the Powerhouse Museum* and so is the Tyrrell collection**


Extract

“The Delta Goodrem dress was collected by the Museum as an example of contemporary fashion and in particular the influence of 'celebrity' on style, and thus it is entirely appropriate that this object be discovered by users searching in Google or linked from Goodrem fan sites. It also has a relatively complete object record with three available zoomable images (including one of Delta Goodrem wearing the dress), a full statement of significance, object description, production notes and history notes (totalling 865 words) written by curator Glynis Jones. The object has never been on public display. However, this is not the whole story.” Read more*

Extract
“Powerhouse Museum joins the Commons on Flickr - the what, why and how
What Flickr offers the Powerhouse is an immediate large and broader audience for this content. And with this exposure we hope that we will have a strong driver to increase the cataloguing and digitisation of the remaining Tyrrell glass plate negatives as well as many more the previously hidden photographic collections of the Powerhouse. **
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^


All is well with our world when a pop star’s dress and the Tyrrell collection are written about in learned articles about collecting, accessing, search engines, museums and the public view of them, as well as discussed at meetings of librarians and museum curators.



*Chan, S., Tagging and Searching – Serendipity and museum collection databases. In J. Trant and D. Bearman (eds). Museums and the Web 2007: Proceedings. Toronto: Archives & Museum Informatics, published March 31, 2007 at http://www.archimuse.com/mw2007/papers/chan/chan.html

**About this entry: http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/dmsblog/index.php/2008/04/08/powerhouse-museum-joins-the-commons-on-flickr-the-what-why-and-how/Author:
Seb Chan
Published:
08.04.08 / 6am

Kartoo: That was a bit scary

I thought I would give kartoo a bit of a challenge. I wondered if a photo on my flickr account of two sheep dogs in Dunkeld Victoria would be picked up. I put in Slim and Dusty + sheepdogs + flickr + Victoria and got waaay more than I bargained for. Parents should beware if their children find this search engine.

Here are some of the sites that came up:

• G'day,to all Country Music singers and songwriters. I have two programs that go to air at EMFM 104.7 the only local Community Radio in Echuca

• Nanotechnology world

• safari-magazine.ru

• A blog with many items including this :Writers, though - we’ve got the weekend song tomorrow with the latest volley in the fusilade of tunes I routinely fire off to scare of the crows, and I’ll close with Mark Twain, who called music: “that magician of magicians; who lifts his wand and says his mysterious word and all things pass away and the phantoms of your mind walk before you clothed in flesh.”

• And this – one of my favourites - Rodrigo Y Gabriela on YouTube

• A Greek site about something Greek with a You Tube entry for several men speaking Greek

• The Crusade of Varna

But I also was given a site which was for **** for **** for ****absolutely unmentionable/printable words. Oh dear me.

How could Kartoo have brought this up for Slim and Dusty and sheep dogs and Victoria and Flickr? I dared not look at the site. And why throw up the others? I can see the point of the Country & W site but - nanotechnology? A Spanish guitar duo? The crusade of Varna?*


I tried again with Sara Jervis + Slim etc and voila – up it came.

But that was scary and I became afraid to open sites as they may be obscene or tracked by the CIA.

I think I shall stick with google


*The Crusade of Varna was a string of events in 1443–44 between the Kingdom of Hungary, the Serbian Despotate, and the Ottoman Empire. It culminated in a devastating Hungarian loss at the Battle of Varna on November 10, 1444.
Wikipedia

Triple test on catalogue: VuFind and the others

National Library of Australia
I looked up George Swinburne and came upon several items that are very interesting for an insight into George Swinburne’s opinions outside of the Technical College:
• The League of Nations - the hope of the world – address delivered in Adelaide, South Australia, on April 27th, 1926
• Time limit v. monetary compensation – speech September 7, 1905;
• Small arms factory, Lithgow : report [to the Minister of Defence] / by Mr. G. Swinburne Inter-state Commissioner : re-dispute between the management and the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, 1914;
• Murray River Waters and Mallee Frontage Setlement (sic): parliamentary trip of inspection by steam boat from Echuca to Mildura and the Darling Junction, October 17th to 22nd, 1907; trip authorized by Thomas Bent, Premier of Victoria and carried out by George Swinburne


Buzziwig / by Mrs. George Swinburne also came up. It is a children’s book published in 1931 as part of RNB children's literature series

State Library of Victoria
I looked up the State Library of Victoria catalogue and found some entries but the few papers in the collection were listed in the separate manuscripts catalogue. (2 searches)

Swinburne University of Technology
I looked up Swinburne’s catalogue and found the main entries – the Sugden biography, artwork – reference to the G S bust in the Image Bank and a paper, The Boy : His Relation to Industry, a pamphlet written by G S in about 1927. I also found loads of books with Swinburne College of Technology/Institute of Technology as publisher, but nothing to do with George.
Three different types of entries – book; artwork; archival document; one search. Tick

My opinion - VuFind is excellent

Would I have found the same items in the one search in the National Library of Australia catalogue pre VuFind?

I am elated: new knowledge – Semantic web; mentor – Tom; helper – Dragan

Human thinks and works collaboratively and uses technology: concept for Semantic web

I listened to Tom then paused to search the example about the Seoul Olympics and the weather in Melbourne on the opening day.

I entered into Google - Seoul + Olympics + weather + Melbourne

I found out that the Seoul Olympics were in September 1988, opening day 17 September 1988. As the table of Olympics gave only dates, I guessed 1988. So the first reference was only to the Olympics, and I am glad for a future trivia night I know the year of the Seoul Olympics and the opening date.

I then entered weather + Melbourne + 17 September 1988 and found no useful reference.

Then I thought I would go to the newspaper records in the Library and hunt up the Age for 17 September 1988 and look at the weather report.

Dragan helped me load the “Age” newspaper tape in the old technology into the new technology reader and I printed the weather page from the PC. *

As I did this, I thought how familiar Semantic Web seems in relation to what I know about Artificial Intelligence. This is more than what I gleaned from the movie A I. Our previous Vice-Chancellor was a brilliant researcher in this field and as I worked in chancellery I got to know some of the research he was working on.

I note in the Andrew Walmsley, reference , he mentions Artificial Intelligence.

I never, ever say that anything to do with the developments envisaged for the new web world is futuristic gobble. Not any more.

But I see the issues with Semantic web are to do with humans anticipating how to write data to connect. One day there will be a website devoted to the weather in the world at the time of the Olympics. There will be a website about writers who write in the spring and who focus only on children’s books. Every time a brilliant internet site is created, it will have taken a brilliant person to work out how to create connections – weather and Olympics, children’s authors and spring. The creators of these websites will know to make sure that the weather in USSR is divided up in the different states - Georgia, Kazakhstan, etc. as the person looking up the weather in Kazakhstan pre perestroika may not look up USSR and there may be no records for the season Enid Blyton wrote “The Magic Faraway Tree.


* It was Cloudy with showers developing during the day. Wind tending cooler southerly and freshening. Max:16

To be in there and because I am essentially curious, I entered Linkedin.

As usual it was very simple. The tricky part is to remember your password. From experience I now print out the register details and write the password on the sheet. Trickier still is where to put the details, but I am a librarian.

The first of the new 5 is irrelevant to me. I do not want a job, consultancy, to meet people, to talk about myself, to describe my job. For others this may be just the link they have been waiting for.

My experience with the first 23 things has taught me to go into these projects to see what is there. I have and I am glad I am still curious. That knowledge is the key.

I can do it.

I did it

I do not need it

I exercised new-found expertise/confidence with the internet world

I may or may not brag to my family and friends by dropping a reference to Linkedin when people talk about networking

To quote Henry Jenkins*, guru from MIT on digital technology:

“…the design philosophy underpinning games in education was less about serious games than serious gaming: the content was less important than the way programs allowed students to explore and experiment.” **(my emphasis)

*Peter de Flores Professor of Humanities and co-director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Comparative Media Studies program

**From an article in the Australian Higher Ed section 2 July 2008

I love the Internet (2)* - because of serendipity

There have been posts along the way of 23 Things that have referred to learning through browsing. As my research penchant has infiltrated my professional and personal life for … my lifetime, I have come across items which thrill me, satisfy my curiosity, lead me to ponder indefinitely and cause me to say YES, I am correct, the latter as I try simultaneously to be humble.

My google alert has given me this blog which has given me the above and in spades:

http://libraryjuicepress.com/blog/

[I am not sure why the link does not work - shall try to correct later]


. There is so much intellectual quality and variety that I am overwhelmed. I want to share some of the gems with all my fellow travellers and will eventually convert the elements to T Card (transaction card) summaries. (My long conversations with my friends usually have agenda items, listed on the metaphorical t cards.)

Here are a couple of snippets:



George Steiner recently argued that progress in the “hard” sciences and technology (technosciences, Hottois would say, since he claims they are now inseparable) opens new paths into the future, while progress in the humanities and social sciences leads to deeper understanding of the past, which is to say of ourselves. Part of that work of understanding must be understanding technology, not just past technologies, but today’s and our imaginations for tomorrow’s as well. Only when we understand can we decide whether or not some change is progress or regress] Yet our understanding of what happens today will certainly change as the consequences of today’s actions gradually unfold. Like the inventors of DDT, the inventors of information technologies have almost no grasp of what they are actually doing and what these technologies will mean to future generations. Our understanding can never be “once and for all” because the future will reveal what we could not imagine, much less know, today.

For Hottois, Virilio and Ellul the development and use of technologies of any sort must be accompanied by critical examination from as many perspectives as life provides. Without that critical activity, we shall be submitting ourselves blindly to a truly archaic servitude; technology as a “god”is far more cruel and inhuman than the divinities, priests, kings and tyrants of the past precisely because of the power and efficacy of our technologies. It is not by accident that this activity—critical inquiry in pursuit of understanding—happens to be—or at least formerly was—the raison d’être for the existence of the academic library. And I argue and urge that librarianship be firmly rooted in that activity and not simply a chase to learn how to use the latest or the most popular technologies on the market As Andrew Abbott put it, ” the future of serious library scholarship lies in a critically constructive and intense engagement with technology, not a running from it or a welcoming embrace.” Librarianship always involves an interpretation, a symbolic accompaniment of technologies, not simply their use.
“Technology waits for no one” Ms. Mercado claims, but technology is not going anywhere. WE are going somewhere, even if we do not know where, and we make technologies to aide us in doing what it is that we want to do. It is that “we” that we must not forget, for it is that same “we” that brings us both GoogleBooks and the Gulag. Among librarians, discussions of the Internet, the Semantic Web, Library2.0 and so on are all too often evidence that we are not engaged in the lucid, critical examination of our ideas and their incarnation in technologies and techniques, but rather irrationally and archaically enslaved to the magic and miracles hawked in the marketplace.


At your leisure I recommend a viewing - it takes time.


• See: http://saraj23things.blogspot.com/2007/10/i-love-internet.html

Oh dear me: But yes we have come a long way baby?

I shall illustrate:


“No one can have anything but admiration for a girl or woman who works to maintain a home which is bereft of father or brother, but…surely an attractive girl of 22 or 23 should find something better to do than drive a lift. At present girls and women are employed on numerous jobs which should be reserved for men, and it is difficult to understand the outlook of a firm which employs girls to work a lift in preference to a man.
Countless homes would be much better were the daughter at home helping with household duties instead of throwing a man into unemployment and distress and then spending the money so earned on useless pleasures.
No-one questions that there are certain occupations for which female labour is more suitable than that of men, but the employment of girl labour in all kinds of positions is wrong, and calls for immediate attention on the part of the legislature. The longer action is delayed the worse it becomes. So long as girls displace men in this way, so long will the girls be unmarried and without proper homes of their own.

I feel sure The Herald would do a service to the community by calling public attention to what to my mind is one of the most serious problems of the present time.”


Extract from a letter to the editor, The Herald, 4 July 1935.

The writer is a very senior person at The Swinburne Technical College.

Do I feel a catharsis in writing this post? At first I wanted to show how, 73 years later, women are successful and “accepted” in the workforce no matter what nature the employment takes - http://www.swinburne.edu.au/corporate/marketing/centenary/events/research-lectures/
Then I recall that smart women or silly women are still expected to serve in the house. A superwoman is usually one who is a scientist or a Board chair and raises children and takes them to school while being intellectually brilliant. A superman scientist is never described for his multi – skilling or how many times he goes to his childrens' sports events.

New ideas: when are they ever…..new: Could I post an item similar to this in 2020?*

I am in 2020 mode




I keep seeing ideas that are modern; they are concerned with new science, come about as a result of research or following surveys.

Here are some ideas, most probably talked about at the 2020 summit.


“certain trades should start and finish earlier than others … relieving congestion [on public transport] during peak hours” (1)

Or

“…has just announced a scheme in which early risers will get free train travel to work.
In a bid to ease congestion on Melbourne's overburdened rail system, the 'earlybird' …card will allow commuters to travel free on any train scheduled to arrive at its destination by 7am. (2)
Or


“We build on the outskirts of the outer suburbs. Once more we are in the metropolitan area. So we see the solution [to transport congestion to the city] is not easy. One idea is to form separate communities. This means further extensions in suburbs are prohibited. It is then necessary to define various green belts and possible new centres.
All these ideas go readily to answering our problem of transport and if they are suitable we shall be doing our city a great service.”(3)

Or

"Melbourne’s green wedges are on the brink of destruction. While development has spread out along the transport corridors, there has been increasing pressure on municipal councils to allow development of the green wedges for urban, residential and industrial uses. At least one green wedge is about to be cut in two by residential subdivision: some are at risk of appropriation as transport corridors. Rates on green wedge farmers and conservationist landholders are becoming prohibitive as market valuations increasingly reflect their development potential and as speculators buy in and close down farms and other non-urban enterprises."(4)
Or

"For the first time in Australian planning history, the Victorian Government has announced it will legislate to define the boundary to the urban area and prohibit urban uses in Melbourne’s green belt.
This will make Victoria a world leader in city green-belt preservation. Rural and agricultural uses will be protected.
Australian cities have spread across more than one million hectares of rural land since 1945. On current trends, another 25,000 hectares of rural land will be lost to urban development by 2021." (5)

* Absolutely

(1) Open Door, Swinburne College Magazine, November 1937
(2) The Age , September 2007
(3) Open Door, Swinburne College Magazine, November 1937
(4) The Age, October 2002 – from article by M Buxton
(5) Ibid

Harsh - Hyperbole - True

Barry Jones was asked (by Crikey) for his 200 words about the 2020 summit. He is a member of one of the groups. He was also asked the following:

Issue you have changed your mind over in last 10 years. What is it? What changed your mind?


I was wrong to assume that the Information Revolution would be an instrument of personal liberation and an explosion of creativity, raising the quality of public debate, encouraging evidence-based decision-making, enhancing rationality, and weakening fundamentalism and fanaticism. Instead, it has entrenched tribalism, dogmatism and retreat into the realm of the personal. The Information Age has increased the power of information providers, has been characterised by domination of public policy by managerialism, replacement of ‘the public good’ by ‘private benefit’, the relentless ‘dumbing down’ of mass media, linked with the cult of celebrity, and substance abuse.

Crikey.com
18 April 2008

Television: “ tremendous advances during the first part of this century…”

I love reading about tremendous advances.

“The story of television, though equally as interesting, is not nearly as well known as that of wireless, possibly because in this age of scientific achievement people are inclined to take every new wonder as a matter of course.”

“Television, as a form of public entertainment, is yet many years away, not just “around the corner” as the popular press has been saying for some time.”

“Many great strides have been made in the last five or six decades but the obstacles to be overcome are still many and formidable, and until at least some of these difficulties are conquered television will remain in the hands of the research engineers.”

“The early demonstrations were followed by a transmission from London to New York, and from London to the liner Berengaria (http://www.bairdtelevision.com/ ) in mid ocean, on which occasion the wireless operator had the distinction of being the first man to see his fiancée by wireless.”

************

I wonder how many would see these sentences and think they could be from an article in the Swinburne College magazine – “Open Door”, November 1935?



The writer, Alec H Clyne, in his article entitled “Television: its development and present state” proposes that he will “deal with the more outstanding developments in television made up to the present time, and to outline some of the systems now in the hands of the research engineers, with their attendant difficulties”. He concludes with “…”I have endeavoured to deal with the optical side of television, chiefly for the non technical reader.”

___________________________________________________

Now for the present:


Future CD's to be a digital Aladdin's cave
Story by David Adams
Imagine being able to put your entire DVD collection on a single disc. And not just your collection, but also that of your family, friends and neighbours … the contents, in fact, of as many as 200,000 DVDs.

It sounds a stretch of imagination, but this is the aim of Professor Min Gu and his team at Swinburne University of Technology’s Centre for Micro-Photonics.

They are three years into a fiveyear project that is looking at how nanotechnology – particularly the use of nanoscopic particles – can be used to exponentially increase the amount of information contained on a single disc.

Their ultimate aim is to be able to include as much as a petabyte (PB) – 1015 or one quadrillion bytes – of data on a single disc, an amount 20,000 times greater than the amount of data currently able to be stored on a Blu-ray Disc, which is a high-density optical disc format. “The idea is to incorporate nanostructured material and to increase the data capacity without necessarily increasing the size of the CD or DVD disc,” says Professor Gu, who is director of the Centre for Micro-Photonics and leading the $1 million project.

From “Swinburne Magazine” March 2008

****************************************************


Here are two perfect illustrations of the ever present theme at Swinburne – technology, research and explanation

-73 years apart?

So You Want to Be a Blogging Star?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/20/technology/personaltech/20basics.html?em&ex=1206676800&en=9d3733b8625e0d92&ei=5087%0A

Here is something of a primer for the bloggers among us.

Some of the paragraph headings:

Don’t expect to get rich.

Write about what you want to write about, in your own voice.

Fit blogging into the holes in your schedule.

Just post it already!

Keep a regular rhythm.

Join the community, such as it is.
******************************************

There are some good links to famous and successful (?) bloggers: http://www.blogmaverick.com/http://www.blogmaverick.com/

Why Old Technologies Are Still Kicking

Why Old Technologies Are Still Kicking: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/23/technology/23digi.html?ex=1221883200&en=6282d3c9731ebd9c&ei=5087&WT.mc_id=TE-D-I-NYT-MOD-MOD-M038-OP-0308-L1&WT.mc_ev=click&mkt=TE-D-I-NYT-MOD-MOD-M038-OP-0308-L1



I came across this item in the New York Times. The fact that it speaks of the premise that I espouse incessantly, of course made it alluring for me. I itch to pass it on to all those out there who are doomsayers or want to reinvent (and you spend), reinvent (you spend) like a snake oil merchant.

Here are snippets:

"The weight of legacy is underestimated, according to John Staudenmaier, editor of the journal Technology and Culture, because innovation is so often portrayed as a bold break with the past. A few stories of technological achievement fit that mold, like the Manhattan Project, but they are rare indeed."


"…But the old technology or business often finds a sustainable, profitable life. Television, for example, was supposed to kill radio, and movies, for that matter. Cars, trucks and planes spelled the death of railways. A current death-knell forecast is that the Web will kill print media."

***********************************

I think the points made are worth bearing in mind as we consider our strategies for our library future. It is the business of conducting our library operations that is paramount, not the latest technology and who is using or not using what.

Youth have too much time on their hands and too much money

“…there is one fault in the present system of bringing up [children] ..is the fact that there is too much ease, pleasure and sport and youth has too much money…and too many opportunities to gratify their desire for pleasure….they would be more skilled …and succeed in business, if life was not so easy for them and they did not have so many opportunities for wasting time in material pleasures.
To those who want to get on in life and want to be successful, concentrate your ambitions and ability on the better things in life, which are infinitely more important than the frivolous things that appeal so readily to youth in this country.”*





* Sydney Myer
Governing Director of the Myer Emporium

Extract from an address to Swinburne students in the 1931 June edition of Open Door, the College Magazine

Who would have thought to call the anthropologist in to find out what students in libraries (really) want?

I came across this survey through a Google alert. I glanced at it to see if my colleagues who are deeply into this kind of information may be interested.

After a quick look, even I was interested in some of the points made about students, especially about those millennial ones, who are supposed to be a cohort, as opposed to being individuals.

The premise of the (yet another) survey of library users is that an anthropologist was called in to undertake some of the research. The chapter headings include: “Library design and ethnography”, “Then and now: how today’s students differ”, “The Mommy model of service”.

A particularly interesting chapter focuses on “student-centred “ – Google lists 13,000 results for Student- Centred- Universities. "…consequently to be truly student-centred, we must be cognizant of the high-level student trends, BUT truly fluent in the local campus situation." ( P83)

Here is a link to the survey document: http://www.alastore.ala.org/SiteSolution.taf?_sn=catalog2&_pn=product_detail&_op=2434


I have an electronic copy of the paper on file.

Unfaithful - not loyal - shifting

I really, really want to denote progressive thinking, as in, continuing to progress with Web 2.0. But I cannot stop returning to “plus ca change…”. Web 2.0 has taught me new tricks and methodologies with the internet and now I am the guru in my life outside Swinburne with nearly everyone in my ken, even my two sisters who are both IT experts. One was in computers in 1965 when they were the size of a large room.
I am a genius almost, or at least really clever, because I am au fait with the “communication-with-the-world and outer space aspect of the web – blogs, flickr, you tube and you name it. To them I have defied their view of me as a sound interpreter of most things modern as new/repackaged versions of the old ways – but with bells on. However, I am becoming a bit of a pariah among my family and friends in dealing with blogs and facebook (the latter I just did the 23 things exercise as I had to).

Where is my well- and often- espoused scepticism?

As Kath would say …I have 3 things to say, or she says something like that:

1 I have forgotten or am now ignoring a lot of what I learnt about the 23 things I had no interest in – google docs, Facebook, LibraryThing, RSS feeds. I admire my colleagues’ testing of the tools we have learnt about - Library 2.0, or why I’m not running off to join the cult just yet; Wikis: Not all that wiki

2 I am feeling like I am about to jilt 23 things. Like many quick relationships, I got a tremendous, and I repeat, tremendous boost out of my new-found knowledge through 23 t and I loved participating with my colleagues in the first flushes of action. I also loved the aura I had, around my family, etc. when I dropped words like blog (for heavens sake) and flickr. Admittedly I sounded like a bit of a spruiker, just as friends and family hyperbolize like sales people/ keep pestering me to get Foxtel to open up a whole new world. I say I do not want or need Foxtel's World Movies or Ovation and to watch more Television. They say I would love it. They seem to ignore that I can watch TV on our old 25 year old model (2nd TV for a program not liked by one of us) and can watch old movies late at night or on the DVD player if desired and I like going to the cinema to watch new movies. We have never recorded TV programs, because we did not bother to find out how, but mainly because we would not find time to watch the recorded TV program which was considered a bit like yesterday's newspaper. While Foxtel is not new, I feel the same lack of interest in new phenomena such as 20/20 cricket or new AFL teams in Western Sydney, coffee chains or popular romantic movies – The Enchanted.
I did love Once and I am so proud to see the song from that movie won the Academy award. I felt like a winner with the actual winners.

3 I see that there are millions, if not billions of people who do not need Web 2.0 and millions of these come to Libraries and get what they want, as librarians have been assisting people do this forever, pre and post Web 2.0.

Kluster: People who do online networking get it.

http://kluster.com/


Can Swinburne streak ahead with a similar forum and radicalise the "suggestion box"?

We know that rewards concentrate the minds of our students and staff. Kaufman's program of rewards is based on using a tokens-voting system to determine the best idea worth "prototyping".
There is a plethora of items on the internet about Kluster. We would be wise to keep a very close watching brief on Kluster and Kaufman.

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Some excerpts from the launch of Kluster:

"We are going to allow all the people out there that have new ideas, or thoughts on how to improve something, or expertise on developing concepts to finally realize their potential."

"Every new idea will meet its skeptics. Radical concepts, however, often take a greater amount of time to justify and coax critics onto its side - and Kluster was no exception….. A normal response is, “But, that’s not how this kind of thing is usually done.” Of course this isn’t how it’s usually done! That’s why it’s effective, exciting, and worth while. If this were normal, we wouldn’t be here."

"Ultimately, Kluster is about connecting people and busting open the vacuum so often used in the idea development and evolution process. "We are going to allow all the people out there that have new ideas, or thoughts on how to improve something, or expertise on developing concepts to finally realize their potential. We are breaking down the usual barriers to consumer influence and entrepreneurship"

Ben Kaufman at the launch of Kluster.

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From the "Without Thought" website: http://withoutthought.wordpress.com/

"Watt next?

2008 looks set to be the year of the ‘WE’. Today, Tech Crunch announced the launch of a new online product called Kluster. Kluster is designed to help companies take advantage of a sea of on-line talent and may have a solution to one of the chief concerns bugging democratization; ‘What’s in it for me?’. Kluster appears to have an answer to that quandary with a currency system referred to as ‘Watts’. Tech Crunch quotes CEO Ben Kaufman

“Our Watt system is like a currency. You get a certain amount of Watts. As you do more things you get more Watts. Instead of voting on ideas, you invest your Watts in concepts you like.”

"You have the better brand, the brand built by the people," Kaufman said. "The power of community is the best protection of an idea."