Here’s the summary from a new Pew Internet & American Life survey of 6,224 Americans 16 years and older: Some 90% of Americans ages 16 and older said that the closing of their local public library would have an impact on their community, with 63% saying it would have a “major” impact. I find it encouraging that while only 54% of Americans have used a public library in the past 12 months, 95% think libraries play an important social role. MORE
and Social Computing Guidelines and why you would still need them ) I guess it’s now a good time to talk further along about the next pillar in the framework: Building a Solid Library of Use Cases. . MORE
So Benjamin Franklin was convening a Book Discussion Café (well not really but it's a nice fantasy) back in 1727 that morphed into the Library Company of Philadelphia - the first public library in the US in 1731. By David Gurteen. MORE
stevenberlinjohnson.com « The New Office | Main | » Uploading My Library In setting up my new study , I did something with my books Ive never done before in the twenty-odd years that Ive been building this library: I alphabetized them. MORE
Adaptive Path has a lending library for its employees and interns to use. The San Francisco Library has been around for about four years and we have 488 books in the collection, plus periodicals. I am the Librarian for the San Francisco Library; our other studios are working on creating libraries of their own. The library is run as a small, special library, much like the scientific library at the Rowland Institute at Harvard , where I used to work. MORE
Library Journal just posted my article “ Library as Platform.” It argues that there are reasons why libraries ought to think of themselves not as portals but as open platforms that give access to all the information and metadata they can, through human readable and computer readable forms ” It’s likely to show up in their print version in October. MORE
I’m at the DPLA Plenary meeting, heading toward the first public presentation — a status report — on the prototype DPLA platform we’ve been building at Berkman and the Library Innovation Lab. But I’ve been thinking for the past few weeks about ways in which libraries can (and perhaps should) view themselves as platforms in a broader sense. Libraries are attached to communities, whether local towns, universities, or other institutions. MORE
According to a post by the Harvard Library , LibraryCloud is now officially a part of the Library toolset. Internal to Harvard Library, it’s a metadata hub that lets lots of different data inputs be normalized, enriched, and distributed. To the Harvard community and beyond, LibraryCloud provides open APIs to access tons of metadata gathered by Harvard Library. This also would not have happened without Harvard Library’s enlightened Open Metadata policy MORE
FOR SALE: Professional Library of Jay Cross. Acquire an instant library! Classic marketing and sales library. Buy them all. I will throw in an afternoon on my back deck in Berkeley going over what I thought were the major messages of as many volumes as you wish. MORE
I’m at a Hubweek event called “Libraries: The Next Generation.” ” It’s a panel hosted by the Berkman Center with Dan Cohen , the executive director of the DPLA ; Andromeda Yelton , a developer who has done work with libraries; and Jeffrey Schnapp of metaLab. Sue Kriegsman of the Center introduces the session by explaining Berkman’s interest in libraries. “We have libraries lurking in every corner…which is fabulous.” MORE
Just for fun, over the weekend I wrote a way of visual browsing the almost 13M items in the Harvard Library collection. It returns 5-10 of the first results of a search on the Library’s catalog, and lays them out in a line of squares. MORE
We’ve just posted the latest Library Innovation Lab podcast , this one with Karen Coyle who is a leading expert in Linked Open Data. And, if you care about libraries and are in the Cambridge (MA) area on Oct. link] at Sanders Theater at Harvard for a year of conversations about the future of libraries. Will we have perpetual but interoperable disagreements about how to classify and categorize works and decide what is the “same” work? MORE
I’m here to keynote an OCLC EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) conference about libraries. After three major revisions, I believe that on Tuesday I’m going to propose thinking about libraries as community centers. The idea arose in a conversation with Robert Fleming, executive director of the Emerson College library. It used to be that once a user checked a book out of the library, the library was out of the loop. Your local library MORE
I was unable to go to our local Aaron Swartz Hackathon , one of twenty around the world, because I’d committed (very happily) to give the after dinner talk at the University of Rhode Island Graduate Library and Information Studies 50th anniversary gala last night. These are heroes of libraries. (My And the reason for that is because in my heart I don’t think librarians are going to invent the future of libraries. MORE
I went to see my friend Jeff Goldenson — we worked together at the Harvard Library Innovation Lab — at Olin College , where he’s director of the library. Jeff’s taken a library that was an under-utilized resource and, with full Administrative backing, turned it into a playground and a lab …by learning some lessons from community theater. The library’s got two floors, neither of them particularly large, and 15,000 volumes. MORE
The 400-year-old Biblioteca lays claim to being the world’s oldest public library. Then you are taken into the Pope Pius VII’s library, a well-lit room with 15th century music books on display. I’m in Cesena, Italy for the first holding of the Web Economic Forum. MORE
Sitterwerk Art Library in St. All the items have RFID tags in them, and the shelves are automatically scanned so that the library can always tell users where items are located. At the Harvard Library Innovation Lab , we wanted to do something that touches on some elements of this. MORE
This video will remind you, if you happen to have forgotten, what libraries mean to much of the world: Internet, mesh, people eager to learn, the same people eager to share. A future for libraries. MORE
I’m a little proud of this, although it’s a total hack job, and not in the good sense.Take it as a library mashup. Harvard Library has 13M items in its collection. LibraryCloud provides an API to Harvard’s open library metadata and more. (We’re MORE
I’m at an early Sunday morning (7:45am) session on re-imagining libraries with John Palfrey of the DPLA , Brian Bannon (Commissioner of the Chicago Public Library), and Tessie Guillermo ( Zero Divide ). My seat-mate tells me that many of the people here are from the local library and its board.The audience is overwhelmingly female. SM: Libraries are being more used even though people can download books. Turning into community centers is risky for libraries. MORE
Library Journal has posted an op-ed of mine that begins: The future of libraries won’t be created by libraries. Still, that doesn’t mean that libraries can wait passively for this new future. Rather, we must create the conditions by which libraries will be pulled out of themselves and into everything else That’s a good thing. That future is too big and too integral to the infrastructure of knowledge for any one group to invent it. MORE
I’m just out of the first meeting of the three universities participating in a Mellon grant — Cornell, Harvard, and Stanford, with Cornell as the grant instigator and leader — to build, demonstrate, and model using library resources expressed as Linked Data as a tool for researchers, student, teachers, and librarians. We are particularly focused on showing the value of the high-quality resources that libraries provide. MORE
I put this video together as the opener of the first in a series of public conversations Harvard is holding about the future of libraries and of the Harvard Library system MORE
Thanks to Google Books and the Library of the University of Michigan , we have an account of the Elizabeth Rose’s launch, in March 1917, in Volume 35 of The Rudder , edited by Thomas Fleming Day (in a day when using full names was still as current as sails on ships). MORE
On Friday I had the pleasure and honor of attending a symposium about libraries as part of the inaugural festivities welcoming Temple University’s new president, Neil Theobald. Library, featured an amazing set of library folks. Here are the links, in chronological order (which of course is the reverse of blogological order): James Neal : 26 truths about libraries. Siobhan Reardon : Renewing Philadelphia’s public libraries. MORE
If you ask people to describe a library, you get different answers. Their first library job: designing the new library in Alexandria, Egypt. “Libraries don’t stop at the door.” Libraries have always been about these interactions. MORE
I’ve posted the next in my series of library podcasts at the Library Innovation Lab blog. This one is with Peter Suber , the hub of the Open Access movement MORE
I finally got to see the Chattanooga Library. In fact, you can see the future of libraries emerging there. That’s not to say that you can simply list what it’s doing and do the same things and declare yourself the Library of the Future. Rather, Chattanooga Library has turned itself into a platform. It had been the Library’s attic, but now has been turned into an open space lab that works in both software and hardware. MORE
Did I ever mention the really useful site Matt Phillips and Jeff Goldenson at the Library Innovation Lab put up a couple of weeks ago? If you are interested in libraries and tech, Library News is a community-supported news site where you’ll find a steady stream of interesting articles. Or, put differently, it’s the Hacker News code redirected at library tech articles. Go library hacker nuts MORE
A new report on Ithaka S+R ‘s annual survey of libraries suggests that library directors are committed to libraries being the starting place for their users’ research, but that the users are not in agreement. This then calls into question the expenditures libraries make to achieve that goal. My own opinion is that libraries should let Google do what it’s good at, while they focus on what they’re good at. Library platform s can help. MORE
I had lunch recently with Paul Signorelli , who’s active in helping libraries with digital literacy, and during the conversation he talked about his vision of the future of the library. What I heard was a vision of libraries moving beyond content to be about learning, and this had several facets I found thought-provoking. Now, as context, I’ve always been a fan of libraries and library science (and librarians). MORE
Also, LibraryBox : an instant wifi distribution point run on a battery for distribution of library content. It was a great way to engage people in conversation about libraries. Because he could reach beyond the library space, and because it spoke to open access to info, it succeeded. MORE
The Bogota National Library has been bringing in speakers this year to talk about the future of libraries, the relation of digital and cultural worlds, and library innovation, partially sponsored by the U.S. The Luis Ángel Arango Library, and the church up the street. MORE
Libraries are arguing over how the federal government funds WiFi in public libraries. Space versus People Maybe the most interesting issue is whether WiFi funding should be allocated by the square footage of libraries, OR by how many users each library serves. MORE
Will making libraries digital cost us to lose our future? . News reports a library will test going totally digital. The bottom row of books in my home library are encyclopedias from 100 years ago Some librarians are concerned. So am I. MORE
I like libraries. The time at the public library in my community was perhaps the most important part of my youth. But I would have access to one in the community library. In addition, many libraries today include music, movies, video games, and other digital resources. This report supports the value of public libraries as places of equity of access: 32% of the US population uses libraries for computer/internet access I like the feel, the smell. MORE
With increasing prices for serials, libraries have less money for books. In 1986, academic libraries spent 46% of budgets on books. And the effect on book publishers is even worse: when they can’t sell books to libraries, they shut down publishing in entire disciplinary fields. Libraries have to boycott offenders. What is the mission of the academic libraries? U of Mich put its press under the library. MORE
So, why not lend it to your local library? As the owner, you can reclaim it at any time, although maybe your library would prefer you lend it for a known term so that they can count on reducing the number of copies of a bestseller they have to buy. MORE
Wayne Wiegand is giving the lunchtime talk at the Library History Seminar XIII at Simmons College. He’s talking about his new book Part of Our Lives: A People’s History of the American Public Library. He exercises his curiosity in the field of library history. [ People love libraries, he says, citing the Pew Internet 2013 survey that showed that almost all institutions except libraries and first responders have fallen in public esteem. MORE
The upcoming HyperPublic conference has posted a provocation I wrote a while ago but didn’t get around to posting, on rebooting library privacy now that we’re in the age of social networks. (Ok, Here’s the opening couple of subsections: Why library privacy matters. Without library privacy, individuals might not engage in free and open inquiry for fear that their interactions with the library will be used against them. MORE
Sarah Bartlett of OCLC interviewed me at some length about the future of libraries. At some point I will write up the topic of my talk at the OCLC’s EMEA Regional Council Meeting in Florence: libraries as community centers…of meaning You can read it here. MORE
Library Related Topics David Weinberger
MARCH 8, 2016
Sitterwerk Art Library in St. All the items have RFID tags in them, and the shelves are automatically scanned so that the library can always tell users where items are located. At the Harvard Library Innovation Lab , we wanted to do something that touches on some elements of this.
George Siemens
APRIL 1, 2010
I like libraries. The time at the public library in my community was perhaps the most important part of my youth. But I would have access to one in the community library. In addition, many libraries today include music, movies, video games, and other digital resources. This report supports the value of public libraries as places of equity of access: 32% of the US population uses libraries for computer/internet access I like the feel, the smell.
David Weinberger
JANUARY 12, 2017
I went to see my friend Jeff Goldenson — we worked together at the Harvard Library Innovation Lab — at Olin College , where he’s director of the library. Jeff’s taken a library that was an under-utilized resource and, with full Administrative backing, turned it into a playground and a lab …by learning some lessons from community theater. The library’s got two floors, neither of them particularly large, and 15,000 volumes.
David Weinberger
OCTOBER 13, 2014
A new report on Ithaka S+R ‘s annual survey of libraries suggests that library directors are committed to libraries being the starting place for their users’ research, but that the users are not in agreement. This then calls into question the expenditures libraries make to achieve that goal. My own opinion is that libraries should let Google do what it’s good at, while they focus on what they’re good at. Library platform s can help.
David Weinberger
JANUARY 7, 2015
According to a post by the Harvard Library , LibraryCloud is now officially a part of the Library toolset. Internal to Harvard Library, it’s a metadata hub that lets lots of different data inputs be normalized, enriched, and distributed. To the Harvard community and beyond, LibraryCloud provides open APIs to access tons of metadata gathered by Harvard Library. This also would not have happened without Harvard Library’s enlightened Open Metadata policy
David Weinberger
OCTOBER 7, 2014
I finally got to see the Chattanooga Library. In fact, you can see the future of libraries emerging there. That’s not to say that you can simply list what it’s doing and do the same things and declare yourself the Library of the Future. Rather, Chattanooga Library has turned itself into a platform. It had been the Library’s attic, but now has been turned into an open space lab that works in both software and hardware.
David Weinberger
SEPTEMBER 25, 2014
Just for fun, over the weekend I wrote a way of visual browsing the almost 13M items in the Harvard Library collection. It returns 5-10 of the first results of a search on the Library’s catalog, and lays them out in a line of squares.
David Weinberger
JANUARY 6, 2012
Did I ever mention the really useful site Matt Phillips and Jeff Goldenson at the Library Innovation Lab put up a couple of weeks ago? If you are interested in libraries and tech, Library News is a community-supported news site where you’ll find a steady stream of interesting articles. Or, put differently, it’s the Hacker News code redirected at library tech articles. Go library hacker nuts
David Weinberger
JUNE 29, 2014
I’m at an early Sunday morning (7:45am) session on re-imagining libraries with John Palfrey of the DPLA , Brian Bannon (Commissioner of the Chicago Public Library), and Tessie Guillermo ( Zero Divide ). My seat-mate tells me that many of the people here are from the local library and its board.The audience is overwhelmingly female. SM: Libraries are being more used even though people can download books. Turning into community centers is risky for libraries.
David Weinberger
DECEMBER 11, 2013
Here’s the summary from a new Pew Internet & American Life survey of 6,224 Americans 16 years and older: Some 90% of Americans ages 16 and older said that the closing of their local public library would have an impact on their community, with 63% saying it would have a “major” impact. I find it encouraging that while only 54% of Americans have used a public library in the past 12 months, 95% think libraries play an important social role.
David Weinberger
OCTOBER 7, 2015
I’m at a Hubweek event called “Libraries: The Next Generation.” ” It’s a panel hosted by the Berkman Center with Dan Cohen , the executive director of the DPLA ; Andromeda Yelton , a developer who has done work with libraries; and Jeffrey Schnapp of metaLab. Sue Kriegsman of the Center introduces the session by explaining Berkman’s interest in libraries. “We have libraries lurking in every corner…which is fabulous.”
David Weinberger
OCTOBER 20, 2013
If you ask people to describe a library, you get different answers. Their first library job: designing the new library in Alexandria, Egypt. “Libraries don’t stop at the door.” Libraries have always been about these interactions.
David Weinberger
MAY 13, 2014
I’m a little proud of this, although it’s a total hack job, and not in the good sense.Take it as a library mashup. Harvard Library has 13M items in its collection. LibraryCloud provides an API to Harvard’s open library metadata and more. (We’re
Clark Quinn
JULY 29, 2015
I had lunch recently with Paul Signorelli , who’s active in helping libraries with digital literacy, and during the conversation he talked about his vision of the future of the library. What I heard was a vision of libraries moving beyond content to be about learning, and this had several facets I found thought-provoking. Now, as context, I’ve always been a fan of libraries and library science (and librarians).
David Weinberger
AUGUST 27, 2015
So, why not lend it to your local library? As the owner, you can reclaim it at any time, although maybe your library would prefer you lend it for a known term so that they can count on reducing the number of copies of a bestseller they have to buy.
David Weinberger
SEPTEMBER 22, 2014
Library Journal has posted an op-ed of mine that begins: The future of libraries won’t be created by libraries. Still, that doesn’t mean that libraries can wait passively for this new future. Rather, we must create the conditions by which libraries will be pulled out of themselves and into everything else That’s a good thing. That future is too big and too integral to the infrastructure of knowledge for any one group to invent it.
Adaptive Path
DECEMBER 6, 2010
Adaptive Path has a lending library for its employees and interns to use. The San Francisco Library has been around for about four years and we have 488 books in the collection, plus periodicals. I am the Librarian for the San Francisco Library; our other studios are working on creating libraries of their own. The library is run as a small, special library, much like the scientific library at the Rowland Institute at Harvard , where I used to work.
Nine Shift
JULY 4, 2014
Libraries are arguing over how the federal government funds WiFi in public libraries. Space versus People Maybe the most interesting issue is whether WiFi funding should be allocated by the square footage of libraries, OR by how many users each library serves.
David Weinberger
AUGUST 2, 2015
Wayne Wiegand is giving the lunchtime talk at the Library History Seminar XIII at Simmons College. He’s talking about his new book Part of Our Lives: A People’s History of the American Public Library. He exercises his curiosity in the field of library history. [ People love libraries, he says, citing the Pew Internet 2013 survey that showed that almost all institutions except libraries and first responders have fallen in public esteem.
David Weinberger
SEPTEMBER 5, 2012
Library Journal just posted my article “ Library as Platform.” It argues that there are reasons why libraries ought to think of themselves not as portals but as open platforms that give access to all the information and metadata they can, through human readable and computer readable forms ” It’s likely to show up in their print version in October.
David Weinberger
NOVEMBER 9, 2013
I was unable to go to our local Aaron Swartz Hackathon , one of twenty around the world, because I’d committed (very happily) to give the after dinner talk at the University of Rhode Island Graduate Library and Information Studies 50th anniversary gala last night. These are heroes of libraries. (My And the reason for that is because in my heart I don’t think librarians are going to invent the future of libraries.
David Weinberger
SEPTEMBER 27, 2011
We’ve just posted the latest Library Innovation Lab podcast , this one with Karen Coyle who is a leading expert in Linked Open Data. And, if you care about libraries and are in the Cambridge (MA) area on Oct. link] at Sanders Theater at Harvard for a year of conversations about the future of libraries. Will we have perpetual but interoperable disagreements about how to classify and categorize works and decide what is the “same” work?
David Weinberger
MARCH 22, 2014
The 400-year-old Biblioteca lays claim to being the world’s oldest public library. Then you are taken into the Pope Pius VII’s library, a well-lit room with 15th century music books on display. I’m in Cesena, Italy for the first holding of the Web Economic Forum.
David Gurteen
JULY 27, 2017
So Benjamin Franklin was convening a Book Discussion Café (well not really but it's a nice fantasy) back in 1727 that morphed into the Library Company of Philadelphia - the first public library in the US in 1731. By David Gurteen.
David Weinberger
FEBRUARY 23, 2015
Sarah Bartlett of OCLC interviewed me at some length about the future of libraries. At some point I will write up the topic of my talk at the OCLC’s EMEA Regional Council Meeting in Florence: libraries as community centers…of meaning You can read it here.
Doc Searls
NOVEMBER 13, 2010
Thanks to Google Books and the Library of the University of Michigan , we have an account of the Elizabeth Rose’s launch, in March 1917, in Volume 35 of The Rudder , edited by Thomas Fleming Day (in a day when using full names was still as current as sails on ships).
David Weinberger
OCTOBER 20, 2013
On Friday I had the pleasure and honor of attending a symposium about libraries as part of the inaugural festivities welcoming Temple University’s new president, Neil Theobald. Library, featured an amazing set of library folks. Here are the links, in chronological order (which of course is the reverse of blogological order): James Neal : 26 truths about libraries. Siobhan Reardon : Renewing Philadelphia’s public libraries.
David Weinberger
DECEMBER 9, 2013
The Bogota National Library has been bringing in speakers this year to talk about the future of libraries, the relation of digital and cultural worlds, and library innovation, partially sponsored by the U.S. The Luis Ángel Arango Library, and the church up the street.
David Weinberger
JUNE 3, 2011
I’ve posted the next in my series of library podcasts at the Library Innovation Lab blog. This one is with Peter Suber , the hub of the Open Access movement
David Weinberger
FEBRUARY 8, 2015
I’m here to keynote an OCLC EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) conference about libraries. After three major revisions, I believe that on Tuesday I’m going to propose thinking about libraries as community centers. The idea arose in a conversation with Robert Fleming, executive director of the Emerson College library. It used to be that once a user checked a book out of the library, the library was out of the loop. Your local library
David Weinberger
APRIL 27, 2012
I’m at the DPLA Plenary meeting, heading toward the first public presentation — a status report — on the prototype DPLA platform we’ve been building at Berkman and the Library Innovation Lab. But I’ve been thinking for the past few weeks about ways in which libraries can (and perhaps should) view themselves as platforms in a broader sense. Libraries are attached to communities, whether local towns, universities, or other institutions.
David Weinberger
MAY 19, 2011
The upcoming HyperPublic conference has posted a provocation I wrote a while ago but didn’t get around to posting, on rebooting library privacy now that we’re in the age of social networks. (Ok, Here’s the opening couple of subsections: Why library privacy matters. Without library privacy, individuals might not engage in free and open inquiry for fear that their interactions with the library will be used against them.
David Weinberger
OCTOBER 20, 2013
With increasing prices for serials, libraries have less money for books. In 1986, academic libraries spent 46% of budgets on books. And the effect on book publishers is even worse: when they can’t sell books to libraries, they shut down publishing in entire disciplinary fields. Libraries have to boycott offenders. What is the mission of the academic libraries? U of Mich put its press under the library.
David Weinberger
MARCH 18, 2012
Libraries are a statement of a community’s commitment to the 99 Yeah yeah, not everyone uses them. But they could.
Steven Berlin Johnson
MARCH 12, 2006
stevenberlinjohnson.com « The New Office | Main | » Uploading My Library In setting up my new study , I did something with my books Ive never done before in the twenty-odd years that Ive been building this library: I alphabetized them.
Jay Cross
JULY 7, 2010
FOR SALE: Professional Library of Jay Cross. Acquire an instant library! Classic marketing and sales library. Buy them all. I will throw in an afternoon on my back deck in Berkeley going over what I thought were the major messages of as many volumes as you wish.
Nine Shift
MARCH 18, 2013
Will making libraries digital cost us to lose our future? . News reports a library will test going totally digital. The bottom row of books in my home library are encyclopedias from 100 years ago Some librarians are concerned. So am I.
David Weinberger
DECEMBER 31, 2010
May 2011 be the best year for libraries in a couple of millennia! So much is going on that it could be, you know. And how often do you get to say that?)
David Weinberger
OCTOBER 20, 2013
Also, LibraryBox : an instant wifi distribution point run on a battery for distribution of library content. It was a great way to engage people in conversation about libraries. Because he could reach beyond the library space, and because it spoke to open access to info, it succeeded.
David Weinberger
FEBRUARY 1, 2014
I’m just out of the first meeting of the three universities participating in a Mellon grant — Cornell, Harvard, and Stanford, with Cornell as the grant instigator and leader — to build, demonstrate, and model using library resources expressed as Linked Data as a tool for researchers, student, teachers, and librarians. We are particularly focused on showing the value of the high-quality resources that libraries provide.
INDUSTRY INSIGHTS YOUR PEERS ARE READING
148 
Let's personalize your content