Roy has a list of library buzzwords that have outlived their usefulness. My question is, why focus on a bunch of golden oldies when there's such a wealth of current -- I'm almost tempted to say, 'next-gen' -- buzzwords to choose from.
A partial list would include:
The Pew Research Center reports on the 'app gap':
"...[W]hile almost half of adults get local news on mobile devices, just 1 in 10 use apps to do so. Call it the 'app gap'."
Please just put me in cold storage for the next 5 years. I don't know how otherwise I'm going to endure the incessant call to build to particular brands (iPhone! iPhone! iPhone!) rather than to the platform in general. Hopefully by the time I'm revived, they'll have come up with a credible standard. I mean, that's how it usually works.
Dries Buytaert speaking on the exhibit floor at DrupalCon Chicago. Topic: "The Drupal Revolution - Buckle up, we're just getting started!"
We were able to squeeze in more than 50 librarians into the Library BoF. Topics of discussion included migrating to Drupal from other systems, integration with ILSs, creation of research guides, etc.
I put together a complete write-up for Library Hi Tech who'll be publishing it at some point.
That takes care of time.
On the way home, I made a last sweep through our local Borders. I went through the bookshelves and magazine racks and wondered what exactly will be the extent of our access to print media when none of this is around any more. Is the publishing industry (no matter how vibrant or moribund) about to run out of outlets?
The Illinois Library Association has just sent out an 'Action Alert' with the title, "Contact your representative to oppose filtering legislation".
Although I agree with all the 'talking points' it suggests, this one really strikes a nerve:
You'd think these people had better things to spend their money on:
Facebook and Google size up takeover of Twitter: report(Reuters) - Google Inc and Facebook Inc, plus others, have held low level takeover talks with Twitter that give the Internet sensation a value as high as $10 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Sites like Twitter come in and out of fashion all the time. $10 billion bucks? Can you say, 'MySpace'?
So let's say the iPad Fairy™ comes down and gives everyone at your school a free iPad. Miracle, right?
Well, apparently not at Stanford's School of Medicine. As an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education explains:
But when Stanford's School of Medicine lent iPads to all new students last August, a curious thing happened: Many didn't like using them in class.... In most classes, half the students had stopped using their iPads only a few weeks into the term.
How's this possible? Didn't they hear their own Assoc. Dean Charles Prober describe them as "extremely tech-savvy" in a press release from the School earlier in the year:
Because the population of new students is extremely tech-savvy, it makes sense to teach them through the use of the electronic devices they're familiar with, Prober said, adding, "We can either say, 'That's silly. They have to learn the old-fashioned way.' Or we embrace where they are."
Yup, 'embrace where they are'! That's the spirit!
Only they didn't. And you're entitled to ask where exactly 'they' -- in this case the extremely tech-savvy incoming class -- where exactly 'they' are.
Well, wouldn't you know, Stanford provides us with an answer! Every year the University conducts a survey of incoming students as to their computer use and in 2009, for example, they found that "90% have a Windows or Mac laptop".
So basically an overwhelming majority of students already have a computing device. It's called a laptop.
Of course the notion that a laptop might be more useful to students than an iPad, even in this day and age, never seems to dawn on the administrators. Instead they seem to be afflicted with a serious case of 'techno-infatuation disorder' or 'TID' for short. This is where the desire to be seen buying the latest tech gizmo overrides any consideration of whether the intended audience might actually want to use it.
Now if the administrators at Stanford's Medical School truly believed their students were 'extremely tech savvy', they might have left the decision of what to bring into the classroom up to the students themselves. But again, we're talking techno-infatuation disorder here and considerations such as what our users might actually want fade in comparison to what we might want for them.
Some shots on the way to work today.
Wonderful! Look what Amazon is recommending to me. Not only do they think I'm a vegan but an overweight vegan at that. I'm devastated.
Boy this is a classic: I email one of the IT people at MPOW asking how I can get access to the directory '/usr/local/' on one of the local servers here and he replies:
"You likely need to use: 'sudo -s' to access a root user shell first."
No, really? I'm thinking of returning the compliment and replying to him in Hoch Deutsch.
From Magill's Medical Guide:
"Meanwhile, Spanish physician Michael Servetus published a treatise in 1553 describing how circulation of blood to the lungs and back (often called the lesser circulation) might occur. Unfortunately, because he also included religious views, all copies of his writings that could be found were destroyed, and he was burned at the stake. Eventually, in 1694, a copy of his book was found; his circulation theory matched later findings." [6th ed., v. 1, p.369]
So Apple thinks it's okay to download and install commercial links to itself -- not just anywhere but on the taskbar no less, all under the guise of 'Software Updates'. If MS had done this back in the day, the Justice Department would've already been after their sorry a*ses by now.
As if I didn't have enough to do over the holidays (see below), I redesigned the website template for UIC's Office of Admissions & Records.
Basically what I did was to bring the thing into compliance with the University's new top-level website which they changed at the beginning of the school year.
The holidays are always a great time to do something like this (since basically no one's looking) so you can believe I worked my butt off to get this done on time.
