15 May
6:35 PM
11 notes
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My colleague Jaron turned me on to Columbia’s idea crowdsourcing tool: What to Fix (WTF) Columbia. Name jokes aside, It’s a novel implementation of a product offered by a company called IdeaScale. (People in the tech world will immediately recognize it as similar to feature request software like Dropbox’s Votebox.) Basically, the Columbia community can vote ideas generated by their members up or down, like Reddit. Some participants just raise issues, others offer solutions. Columbia doesn’t appear to have a “campaign” (tag) for libraries, but a quick search shows that this hasn’t stopped patrons from submitting library-centric suggestions under other tags. I don’t think it would make much sense for a library-only implementation, but as a total quality management-esque push across a university I think library participation is great! Why do I think this is so brilliant? It’s public. It encourages consensus based on merit. It holds us accountable to our user communities. It’s the suggestion box for the 21st century. It would be fascinating to know if this particular effort will be a success.

My colleague Jaron turned me on to Columbia’s idea crowdsourcing tool: What to Fix (WTF) Columbia. Name jokes aside, It’s a novel implementation of a product offered by a company called IdeaScale. (People in the tech world will immediately recognize it as similar to feature request software like Dropbox’s Votebox.) Basically, the Columbia community can vote ideas generated by their members up or down, like Reddit. Some participants just raise issues, others offer solutions.

Columbia doesn’t appear to have a “campaign” (tag) for libraries, but a quick search shows that this hasn’t stopped patrons from submitting library-centric suggestions under other tags. I don’t think it would make much sense for a library-only implementation, but as a total quality management-esque push across a university I think library participation is great!

Why do I think this is so brilliant?

  • It’s public.
  • It encourages consensus based on merit.
  • It holds us accountable to our user communities.
  • It’s the suggestion box for the 21st century.

It would be fascinating to know if this particular effort will be a success.

11 May
8:57 AM
0 notes
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“Privacy Breach on Bloomberg’s Data Terminals”

“A shudder went through Wall Street on Friday after the revelation that Bloomberg News reporters had extracted subscribers’ private information through the company’s ubiquitous data terminals to break news. […]

Bloomberg said the functions that allowed journalists to monitor subscribers were a mistake and were promptly disabled after Goldman Sachs complained that a Bloomberg reporter had, while inquiring about a partner’s employment status, pointed out that the partner had not logged onto his Bloomberg terminal lately.”

Scandal!

Read the rest at New York Times.

7 May
4:11 PM
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Cornell’s Department of Psychology has a collection of human brains and the name, quite simply, slays me: The Wilder Brain Collection. Not only is it wild, but it brings to mind Young Frankenstein’s Gene Wilder and the brain hijinks in that film. The brains above are on display in Uris Hall, on the second floor.

Whose brains are in the collection? Well…

The brain collection houses the brain of John Rulloff, a notorious murderer born in 1819 and the namesake of Rulloff’s bar and grill in Collegetown, as well as the brain of Burt Wilder, the originator of the collection.

The collection also serves as a repository for the remains of the famous Cornell pumpkin, although it’s no longer alongside Rulloff’s brain in the second floor display.

Photo 1: Wilder Brain Collection display in Uris Hall. Photo 2: Rulloff’s brain.

Quote via Cornell Facts entry about Uris Hall.

5 May
10:31 AM
5 notes
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Are you Cascading Into Librarianship?

The most recent episode of the Freakonomics podcast (“It’s Crowded at the Top”) discusses how unemployment has forced highly educated individuals who can’t find jobs in their field into professions that don’t require as much education or expertise. They begin with the example of the college grad who ends up as a barista, but then explode the cliché by discussing how this can have beneficial side effects. For example, many highly educated people are being rerouted into teaching. Teach for America has had a record number of applicants.

I think we already know, anecdotally, that information professions are popular with people who are transitioning to a career that better matches their disposition. However, we should also think of this as an opportunity to engage individuals with skills or expertise that could fill critical gaps in our teams, but who, in a different economic environment, would otherwise be difficult to hire or retain.

For example, many job listings require an ALA-accredited MLIS or its equivalent in theory or practice. I think we need to push that boundary, and identify related skill sets that can then be augmented by library coaching/continuing education.

So for your next library position, do you need a librarian, or do you need a project manager who can work in a library environment? Do you need a metadata librarian, or a computer scientist/programmer who can apply those skills to our records/systems? Do you need an instruction librarian, or do you need an instructional designer who can teach while also transforming your unit’s approach to teaching? Do we need a scholarly communications librarian, or someone who’s worked in publishing and can get Open Journal Software up, running, and sustainable?

It’s time to explode the MLIS echo chamber we’ve created and infuse our libraries with varied skill sets. Doing so doesn’t mean that traditional library roles aren’t important or valued, it means that we need a diversity of skill and disciplinary expertise to best serve our user populations and support top-level library goals.

9:56 AM
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A video for One: Number 31, 1950, part of the Jackson Pollock conservation project at MoMA. A very compelling example: previous restoration (overpainting) covers cracking, a photo from 1962 confirms the change, the chemistry that differentiates the original and added paints, and finally the process of the conservators removing the heavy-handed restoration work. Fascinating!