Interesting 4-part workflow describing a high-quality technique for copying audio from TechKing.

Networked Learning and Sympathetic Spaces in Libraries

Business Insider has an interesting argument indicating that Craiglist is being slowly, but surely, disrupted.

Generally speaking, Craigslist has been “good enough” to not be disrupted head-on. Nevertheless, the world moves on, and the gaps in their product (due to a stubborn obstinate refusal to invest in technology) grow wider and wider. As tablets, smartphones, etc disrupt, and craigslist doesn’t invest in those platforms, the feature gap grows wider.

The disruption that has happened has occurred on a category-by-category bases, as this graphic by Andrew Parker (http://thegongshow.tumblr.com/po…) shows:

That graphical analysis of sources for disruption is really interesting. What would the same type of analysis look like for academic libraries? Here’s a lightning quick example using the library I work at as an guinea pig. This image is not meant to be comprehensive, just a proof of concept. This doesn’t prove that libraries are imminently doomed to be disrupted, only that many services external to the academy would like a slice of the action. Let me know in the comments what I’m missing.

Active Sources of Library Disruption:

Over the next year I’m creating a plan for investigating and implementing digital curation micro-services in some form. A first step in this project is a learning environment on the topic.

http://www.netvibes.com/stevemtzn#curation_micro-services_news

Gartner has an interesting analysis of current technologies plotted against the Hype Cycle.

Gartner 2010 Hype Cycle Analysis

The Hype Cycle is a model for interpreting technology adoption. According to the model:

• Technology Trigger: A potential technology breakthrough kicks things off. Early proof-of-concept stories and media interest trigger significant publicity. Often no usable products exist and commercial viability is unproven.
• Peak of Inflated Expectations: Early publicity produces a number of success stories—often accompanied by scores of failures. Some companies take action; many do not.
• Trough of Disillusionment: Interest wanes as experiments and implementations fail to deliver. Producers of the technology shake out or fail. Investments continue only if the surviving providers improve their products to the satisfaction of early adopters.
• Slope of Enlightenment: More instances of how the technology can benefit the enterprise start to crystallize and become more widely understood. Second- and third-generation products appear from technology providers. More enterprises fund pilots; conservative companies remain cautious.
• Plateau of Productivity: Mainstream adoption starts to take off. Criteria for assessing provider viability are more clearly defined. The technology’s broad market applicability and relevance are clearly paying off.

It would be an interesting project to do this type of analysis with library technology. It is conceivable to first identify where a particular technology lives along the curve and then map out the different library institutions and where they tend to live in that life cycle.

An example would be the success of Wolf Walk at NCSU. I would say the project is an example of a technology trigger. For smaller institutions (i.e. those without technology R&D resources), we’ll need to wait for that technology to reach (at least) the Slope of Enlightenment before it will be feasible as a low impact, high return project. It’s possible we’ll need to wait for the Plateau of Productivity. The real value to what Gartner is doing is the timeline analysis involved in that wait.

Interesting DIY project using simple, consumer-grade cameras and an ingenious box frame to hold them. The project website is at  www.bookliberator.com. According to their blog, they will be using two pieces of free software: scantailor for post-processing and djvubind for OCR, metadata and conversion to the djvu format.

BookLiberator

An example of a final page image:

Poster of Metadata Standards (PDF)

Fascinating video describing how the NY Times graphics department works.

Extremely rewarding slide presentation by a Google UX researcher.

Main takeaways for me:

• “Make no mistake about this. Everyone in this room will need to learn how to design social features on websites. Whether you like it or not.” (biggest surprise from our recent usability study is the repeated call for “personalization” of our services)
• Social networks are not only about “friends”
• Strong ties = typically 4 people you care about the most (range: 2-6)
• Weak ties = 150 people max.
• Temporary ties = librarians, instructors, etc. (a connection which is highly influenced by trust)
• People generally have 4-6 groups of less than 10 people based upon various life stages (college, a particular class, family, a community) which probably don’t overlap much, if at all.
• People make decisions based on their interactions with the above groupings. In other words: networked critical thinking

Decapod is an interesting project with partners from Germany, Canada, and Anarbor, MI and funded through The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

From the site:

The solution will address these problem areas:

1. Allow the camera based capture of bound material by using computer vision techniques to produce flat, clean page images equivalent to those produced from a flat bed scanner.
2. Remove the need for extensive operator intervention in the capture process by detecting scan problems and allowing the operator to rectify the scan immediately.
3. Reduce user intervention in the conversion process by using advanced document understanding techniques to remove almost all intervention, and by reducing the remainder to very simple “1-click” operations.
4. PDF/A outputs will be visually faithful to the original, searchable, and widely usable.
5. Allow the output to be viewable on mobile devices that support PDF reflow.
6. Remove the need for deep software, hardware or digitization skills by integrating all software components into a turnkey end-to-end solution.
7. Remove capital cost barriers by using consumer grade cameras.