Thank you, Andy, for saying something that not many others are brave enough to voice:
As of this moment, I have yet to see Amazon or Google (or any other company for that matter) as being the reason cited that any library has been cut or closed. It’s always been a matter of political will, whether it is local, state, or national. The threat is not from these companies or ones like them; it is from our own communities. In fact, our communities are a bigger actual threat than the imagined threats from these outside entities. Our communities are the investors, the stakeholders, and the immediate purse string holders. It doesn’t get any more “power over life” than that.
We at WAL wholeheartedly agree that assigning blame to superpowers like Amazon and Google accomplishes nothing. The answer is political involvement and a reassessment of library models. The only real “library killer” is misplaced energy into a fight not worth having.
Source: Why Are Librarians Picking So Many Fights? | Agnostic, Maybe
Sherry Turkle’s recent TED talk, “Connected, yet alone” reaffirms many ongoing discussions and questions on how technology is helping and hurting modern relationships.
(via TED)
The American Library Association’s Washington Office has asked members (and any librarians not yet members) to reach out to their U.S. Representatives to oppose the latest cybersecurity bill.
We did a great job knocking down SOPA & PIPA, and now it’s time to speak out against CISPA before it goes for a vote in the House of Representatives. From District Dispatch:
ALA is concerned that essentially all private electronic communications could be obtained by the government and used for many purposes – and not just for cybersecurity activities. H.R. 3523 would permit, even require ISPs and other entities to monitor all electronic communications and share personal information with the government without effective oversight just by claiming the sharing is for “cybersecurity purposes.”
For more information including links to find your Representative’s phone number and Twitter handle, plus talking points, check out ALA’s piece written yesterday.
Check out data artist Jer Thorp’s TED talk Make Data More Human.
(via TED)
Last week, Archivist Round Table hosted a great event, which focused on FIT and NYPL’s partnership to digitize and provide access to the André Studios archive of fashion sketches.
Tech meets textiles with the recent completion of the digital archive project presented in collaboration between the two institutions. They used Blacklight for the faceted search with Ruby on Rails and Solr indexing. Jpeg 2000 allows for unbelievable quality high res images with exceptional zoom capabilities.
NPR recently published a visualization of weekly drought statistics (via FlowingData) since mid-2010 through 2011, studying the terrible–and lingering–conditions in Texas. To the untrained eye, the animated map looks like a product of some large enterprise reporting software package.
Nope! It’s all available for free from Google. This is not news for some of you, but Google Spreadsheets offers a series of gadgets in addition to the standard HQ charts & graphs. Such options were typically available either through products like Tableau and Crystal Reports, as well as to designers and developers via JavaScript and Illustrator. Now with a little time and experimentation, infoviz novices can catch up and appear just as sophisticated as those with larger budgets & expertise.
Rick Falkvinge of the Swedish Pirate Party gave a TED talk recently and covered issues like censorship, copyright, and privacy on the Internet.
(via TED)
What: Free Lecture, Indisciplined Curation
When: Tuesday, April 17, 2012, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm
Where: Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Auditorium, 66 Fifth Avenue, NYC
