Digital Gateway

Social Media in Libraries: Google+ | Facebook-

At this point, cultural institutions are aware of the power of social media.  Whether it is the Library of Congress's embrace of Flickr, academic libraries use of Twitter, or museums sharing across platforms, social media is a free, easy way to share information with users and colleagues.

Google+ makes sharing even easier for libraries and museums, because it does not have the 140 character restriction of Twitter, nor the semantic baggage of Facebook.  By using circles, it's easy to create groups of users and share information in a more targeted manner.  Facebook does not allow lists to be created for pages.  That means everything a library or museum communicates is shouted with a megaphone to everyone who has "liked" the page.

With Google+, an academic library can create various circles depending on user's interests.  Is there a group of faculty interested in new acquisitions for Biology?  Create a specific circle and reduce the noise of the feed.  Some ways institutions have been working around this problem is to create multiple Twitter accounts or Facebook pages, as well as a plethora of blogs.  It can be cumbersome and limited.

One problem with Google+ is that in order to deliver specific information to users, they need to be using Google+.  Right now, it's still in the early stages; however, as users flock to the service won't they be pleasantly surprised to find your institution already has a presence?

If you're interested in connecting with the Digital Gateway, look for us on Google+.  If you're not ready to make the jump, you can still find us on Facebook and Twitter.

Another reason the iPad may be transformative

On the day of the iPad launch, but prior to the exact hour announcing the name and specs officially, I wrote a little about why I thought the iPad would become a significant presence at colleges and universities.  While we have yet to set the conditions for winning or losing, I have an unofficial bet with my boss that in 5 years, the iPad will be all over campuses.  Let's just say for the record, 15% of student-owned computers on campus will be iPads (or maybe at that point, at least iPad-inspired tablets).  Part of my thinking on that can be seen in this story: "99 Year Old Lady Buys Her First Computer, An iPad."  The story clearly shows that the iPad represents a major advance in ease-of-use, at least equal to the creation of the graphical user interface, and the mouse as an input device.  As others have noted already, it's a device that adapts to the user, not vice-versa.  While I don't see the downside my colleague here does (in his last post on the iPad) I think there's no doubt that, whether Apple continues to own the category or not, or the accompanying publishing models for some traditional content providers are changed for better or worse, the form is one that will be here to stay.

The iPad Cometh

But before we go, I want to say something, and I want to say it in all sincerity: I want an iTablet. Give it to me.

Steven Colbert, The Colbert Report,
January 26, 2010

Apple's iTablet (or probably called, it seems to me, iPad) is expected to be announced later today. So this is my last opportunity to write something about it without knowing what it is, exactly. But the truth is, we won't know what it is for a while, as was the case with the original announcement with the iPod. I recall being underwhelmed with the unveiling of the iPod. Maybe because bringing music with me wasn't going to change my life. But I wasn't the only one who damned it with faint praise. No one could see at the time that that it was going to take off as a product, and re-define the MP3 player market, in part by creating the iTunes (now the world's largest music retailer) culture to support it.

This time around, we know not just to look at the gadget itself, but the role it will play in a networked media environment. And there has been much speculation about the tablet's capabilities, but especially the media libraries that will be available to it, including video and formerly traditional print vehicles like Time magazine. In addition to the speculation, there has been one outright confirmation, from Terry McGraw of McGraw-Hill Publishers on CNBC:

“Yeah, Very exciting. Yes, they’ll make their announcement tomorrow on this one. We have worked with Apple for quite a while. And the Tablet is going to be based on the iPhone operating system and so it will be transferable. So what you are going to be able to do now is we have a consortium of e-books. And we have 95% of all our materials that are in e-book format on that one. So now with the tablet you’re going to open up the higher education market, the professional market. The tablet is going to be just really terrific.”
(quote courtesy of crunchgear)

E-books have never not been horrible. They're difficult to read on the screen, and until recently they were mostly only as portable as a laptop (not very) and unless ebooks or etexts leverage some other computer-powered capability like search across libraries, they have seemed fairly pointless (at least to me). I will always remember David Seaman describing the experience of reading etexts on the Windows handheld as "surprisingly non-horrible." That was as good as it got. In any case, the rise of the e-book was threatening to erradicate the phrase "pleasure reading" from modern parlance.

E-book readers have improved over the years. The Kindle certainly gave page-like lighting, and came with a iTunes-like library for easy acquisition of content. But the cost of the Kindle still seems too high for a dedicated device; and unlike music in an iPod (for most people, what they want to do with music is play it) text almost requires interaction. You want to do things with it. The first thing you want to be able to do is pick it up to read it. So far so good with the Kindle. And I believe you can also annotate. But another fundamental difference with the iPod is to music as the Kindle is to books analogy is that the iPod didn't force you to listen to your music only on that device. Apple in fact made it easy to use that same music in, for instance, creating a multimedia slideshow of photographs in other applications. And the "more" you really want to do with text is not just to write in the margins, but copy and share (at least fair-use size snippets!) to use in some other format.

No college student will make the Kindle part of a student workflow (if such a thing exists) if they can't use it directly in connection with their work, and if Kindle content can't interact with other media. All the other things this tablet will be able to do in terms of multimedia and access to content libraries will certainly help expand its market and appeal. It matters less whether you'll be able to write an actual term paper on this device (though likely you will; I'd think physical keyboards will be able to connect to it) than that you'll be able to send the notes you create from the content you read and hear to a place where you can; and that alone will make this device (and those that copy it) a commonplace first for college and later for secondary education as well. But we'll see after today.

As for the Kindle? See "Nomad, Roxio" and "ROKR, Motorola."

Guardian Now Searches Goverment Data on Global Scale

Over the years governments have opened the doors on data, and have been moving it online.  This means that users (scholars, enterprise, local governments, non-profits) can re-use the data in new and telling ways.  World Government Data Search, recently launched by the Guardian, draws on public data from four different countries.  Currently, users can search data from the UK, USA, Australia and New Zealand.

Faux on the Go!

Faux Friendship
"We live at a time when friendship has become both all and nothing at all. Already the characteristically modern relationship, it has in recent decades become the universal one: the form of connection in terms of which all others are understood, against which they are all measured, into which they have all dissolved."

Advisor: Deleting emails could make you happier
from Boing Boing by Lisa Katayama

"If people were just more aggressive about deleting irrelevant things and relevant things aren't that important, they would probably be happier. Because I'm happier. So there must be something to it.
 Emails only take up virtual space, not literal square footage, so it's easy to let them pile up. But have you ever scrolled through your inbox and realized what a monstrous mess of random messages you've accumulated? It can be pretty overwhelming. I, for one, have been terrible about keeping things in order, even with dozens of folders and subfolders in my Apple mail"

Why is the FDA holding up delivery of an Apple computer?
"The Food and Drug Administration is holding up the delivery of MG Siegler's iMac because they apparently think it is an apple, not an Apple."

How Google Will Infiltrate the Real-World: Mobile Coupons, Barcodes, and Visual Search
from ReadWriteWeb by Sarah Perez

"The rapid growth of the mobile web is a force that could be disruptive to Google, a company who built their search engine for a desktop-based world. On the handheld, all bets are off. Anyone with an innovative concept for improving mobile search could gain ground, possibly even overtaking Google as the top search provider for mobile devices. But don't worry - Google hasn't been ignoring this trend. The company has been busy prepping various initiatives designed to get people googling from their mobile phones. From scannable barcodes to an innovative visual search app that lets you perform searches by taking photos, Google is slowly revealing how they plan dominate search in the real world too."


Applying Quantitative Analysis to Classic Lit
from Wired Top Stories by Douglas McGray
"Stanford English professor Franco Moretti, famous in bookish circles for graphing, mapping and charting novels by hand, is going digital. He hopes to soon be flying through the creative output of entire eras, ultimately changing the way we look at literary history."

Robotic digitization

George Washington University (not to be confused with our own Washington University) has purchased an automated digitization system to investigate whether automated methods are more cost effective for digitization projects. Kirtas Technologies makes the machine, which uses a plastic arm to turn pages and uses cameras to photograph the pages. A vacuum of circulating air also helps turn pages. It will be interesting to see the outcome of this experiment. If nothing else, it's a pretty cool machine and can photograph up to 3000 pages per hour. Read more here.

Sony and Amazon fight to the death over e-books

Or in slightly less dramatic terms, Sony is releasing new Reader hardware that will surely challenge the Amazon Kindle. The Reader allows users to download content from just about anywhere. Users can borrow e-books from their local library and download them to their Reader for 21 days. The New York Public Library has already signed on to offer this service. Sony also plans to have the Reader on display at many retail locations so people can try them out. Read the full article here.

Secret's out, Google!

NPR's as a matter of fact posted these drawings of Google's book scanner. They developed a system of using two infrared cameras that detect the shape of the page, which allows the OCR software to adjust to better read the text. This is pretty cool. Personally I'd settle for a Bookeye scanner, but this works too.

Semantic Web Tool - THESEUS

News release on project to further develop the semantic web and create a more robust Internet.

Searching the Deep Web

Article from the NY Times discussing the issues of searching the deep web.