Take a Hike, Dewey!

Dana Jones brought up an interesting piece of library news tonight on our Hot Topics discussion board - 'Arizona Library Shuns Dewey Decimal System.' Apparently, this public library has decided to shush forever the organization method that 95% of public libraries presently use to catalog and store materials - the Dewey Decimal System.

According to the NPR report today, they will be setting the library up like a Barnes and Noble or Borders - organized by interest like "Gardening" or "Gaming" or "Lame" or things like that. Don't get me wrong, I think libraries need to be aware of what's going on in the corporate world. It just doesn't mean that they need to follow obediently, tail between legs, every trend that hits the market. So while college bound teenagers will be able to easily find information about top schools and how to write decent essays, they won't be ready for the shock that sets in when they set foot into their very own University library - Library of Congress style. I wonder if they'll outlaw letters now that numbers have been deemed too difficult to decipher. We shall see.

Networked Books - Will they make it past Wikipedia?

I recently stumbled upon a new genre of literary creations called Networked Books. Basically, these books cease to act like typical print books in that they're never complete. They're open for continuous revision, addition, and brainstorming by multiple "authors" in a disorienting sense of the word. Wikipedia is a massive example of a networked book. These may link to hundreds of other sites or networked books in a variety of mediums. An intriguing group who call themselves the Institute for the Future of the Book, located in Brooklyn, NY, work heavily on developing social software to allow a wider audience to experiment and create electronic works such as networked books.

Check out my custom Google Search Engine that focuses specifically on Networked Books. If you'd like to collaborate on making it or another customized search better, feel free to comment.

Do we want books or not?

Should libraries be required to preserve every single book that enters its collection? Should they work to keep as many as possible on the shelves? Should they weed incessantly to make room for new material? Should they buy microfilm rather than keep runs of journals and newspapers on the shelves? Nicholson Baker's book Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper has provoked many of these kinds of questions as I cobble together my stance on how libraries should act in these situations. Mass digitization projects, like Project Gutenberg and ibiblio, attempt to copy existing works for the generations to come. Baker rants about people like Michael Lesk, who apparently want to throw away mind-numbing amounts of perfectly good material in favor of digitizing it (and throwing the originals to greedy private sellers). I fall somewhere in the middle, but hesitate to spend my life savings on a warehouse full of original newspaper runs.

EndNoteWeb - Yea or Nay?

So I've been bombarded by EndNoteWeb this week, both from work and school. My first encounter was less than ideal, trying to import tags from Connotea into ENW. Apparently, it works just fine with dozens of scholarly databases, but doesn't know how to communicate with tagged websites without authors. Needless to say, ENW may be more convenient in its portability than its predecessor, EndNote 10, but it has a long way to go to win my final vote.

Aghhhhhh!

I am so frustrated right now. It seems like everything I'm trying to do refuses to work, and the assignments just creep out of nowhere. I can't figure out how to post an RSS feed from Bloglines on this stupid thing, I can't get Connotea to export to EndNoteWeb, and I have no idea how I'm going to get all three books read and a 1500 page paper written by next Monday. Too much technology at once. I would have called myself half decent at computers before this week. Now I'll just be glad when June is over.

Marc Smith on social networking

Marc Smith of Microsoft Research implies that the future of social networking is going to be increasingly telling about the way people live their private lives - publicly. "It's a great time to be a sociologist . . . our society is not going to be recognizable in ten or twenty years." He speaks of "myspace as a new kind of body adornment . . . a fundamental shift that hasn't been seen in millennia." Social network profiles will be emitted from our bodies, he claims, in a way that makes information that we choose public in a way never thought possible. It makes sense, as most people love to talk about themselves. Why not have an ongoing conversation with everyone who cares to view it?

A chilling take on Big Brother 2.0...

Fahrenheit 451

So I received an email today with the subject line of "Burned Book..."

Now, I'm not sure what the funny part is - the fact that I work in the library and a phrase like this should strike fear into everyone employed here - or the elipsis at the end. I often wonder why people think that using an elipsis is a good idea. I have no room to talk, I use them fairly often (mainly in email correspondence), but in certain situations they can completely change the tone of what's actually being said. If the line would have read, "Burned Book," fine. There was a burned book. There's nothing I can do about it. It will probably involve a bill and someone trying to get out of the bill. But when you write "Burned Book..." the possibilities suddenly become endless. There is most likely a story behind it that I will hear that involves some kind of drug or alcohol use and the abuse of housesitting privileges. Not that this has ever been told to me. But it's always possible.