Follow-up

The "Spotify for eBooks" Has Arrived - Nuvem de Livros « The Digital ReaderThe Digital Reader

This little gem came across my radar today. It always seems that as soon as I would blog about a topic something related would appear in my subscription feeds- funny how that works.

I would love a closer look at this subscription plan for books! I wonder how it's working for the people.

Is the message clear? Sending a message in the Digital World

In a time when we are so reliant on digital data for information, it's important to know what information there is to be found.

If you Google yourself, what comes up? Does it paint an accurate depiction of who you are and what the world-at-large should know about you? Have you even left a real footprint?

Blog or not to Blog...

These are questions of importance not only to individuals, but also to organizations- including libraries.

In searching Wikipedia for some key topics of interest to the library and information field, I was overwhelmingly pleased to find relevant, seemingly accurate information, presented with recent updates and a number of valuable links and resources expressing from which locations the information came. Also, thankfully, there were not many Wikipedia notes at the tops of the pages indicating that the articles needed more work, appeared to be biased, or may not reflect a "worldwide view". [Segue: I am continually impressed by the information that can be found using Wikipedia. In the past five weeks, I have truly been converted to a believer in that community.] Overall, the image of information science appears to be well reflected in the accessible information found online.

It is our responsibility to represent our profession, our organizations, and ourselves as clearly and accurately as possible in this digital age of technology and information. If there is no information to be found, or if all of the information is negative, it does not bode well for anyone on our branch of the professional tree.

So you Google yourself. What comes up? Is it what you'd expect (or hope) to see?  If a potential employer were seeing my name on Google, a cluster of appropriate keywords or tags might include something like this:

(Note: this is NOT my name/ word cloud)

Were I to tag myself I would include: Kent State University, MLIS, Library, Information Science, Ohio, Librarian, Art, Artist, Print-making, The Arts, Scholar, Research, Student, Academic Libraries, Professional, Organized. As I become more experienced or more knowledgeable  I would add more and more keywords to my tag-cloud to reflect my professional identity and interests in this field. As of now, I'm not sure exactly which direction my studies will take me, so, as expected my tag-cloud is still a work in progress. Thankfully, proper utilization of social websites like LinkedIn and Blogger can help you cultivate an online presence. My plan is to continue this blog and allow it to lead off my future in information science and provide a space for me to explore the relevant topics in this field. More topics, more information, and more tags can all add richness and contextual information to my web presence.

Just like Shedroff's Model of Understanding, I will recognize and utilize my role as a producer and consumer of data and allow my worldview and contextual experience to add to the larger pool of data found on the web. I will add my voice to the many already speaking and exploring these developing topics and emerging directions for information access. I will continue developing my own base of knowledge, wisdom, and understanding of this profession and contribute it to metaknowledge. As Weinberger noted, "... now more than ever, knowledge's value will come from the understanding it enables" (p 215). The more we all contribute to our social understanding (metaknowledge) the more knowledge we can inspire over time- the innovation in the intersections (Weinberger).

Put that away!!!

In my life, and the lives of many twenty-somethings, there are a lot of little messes that fill my daily life that I try (mostly in vain) to keep ORGANIZED.

Areas of disorganization that plague me most often are: laundry, groceries, dishes, toiletries, pet food, video game equipment, digital photos, digital music, books (paper, not digital), and SCHOOL WORK- notes, textbooks, and papers. I imagine that my approach to  the majority of my little messes is much like the process of any other person who does laundry, organizes grocery shopping, loads and unloads a  dishwasher, and attends school- everything has a place  in these areas (and for the most part approaches to organizing these areas are ubiquitous). 

My approaches to my other little messes may be more or less common, but my organizational system for digital pictures is something new and possibly less common. The Picasa program is something that my fiance and I are adopting so  that we can tag our photos and hopefully make them  more accessible than the  endless folders of garbage that we have accumulated up to this point. My fiance has TagsAlbums on his iPhone and he is starting to "tag on the fly" when he takes pictures so that when he eventually syncs them to Picasa on the computer at home- they will all still be accessible to him. The ability to add these tags provides a layer of context that keeps the photos accessible- giving my fiance and I the opportunity to draw relationship lines between the content of the photos-the faces of those pictured-the dates-the times-the locations- all relevant and useful data that will allow us to relocate these images in the future. 

Valdis Kreb's (developer of InFlow software) approach to drawing relationship lines between relevant data was a particularly interesting subject in chapter nine of Weinberger's book. Kreb's approach, particularly in the example of an office setting, illustrated the importance of his work beautifully. In an office setting, with a particular food chain organizational design, charting the actual lines of communication and noting the individuals of particular importance reveals much more about how the company can get effective work done than the black and white organizational design. Kreb's design reveals the truth of information flow and innovation- "innovation happens at the intersections" of conversational lines (p 181).

Kreb's Organizational Interrelationships

As an information scientist, this design is particularly fascinating to me because of all the information it reveals. The added layers of contexts, social relationships, and communication, speak volumes about human nature and the interaction of ideas. A simple organizational chart describes nothing more to the viewer than what the order "should be," even though we all know that it never is that organized. Humans are simply too complex and all work involves intersections of communication. It's clear that displaying linked data will always more accurately reflect the physical world, and I would love to see the ways in which this could be applied to digital media and technology. (Again, reminding me of the Facebook friend mapping and other tools I have previously discussed.) This approach is far from McCallum's system of organization. 

McCallum's Organized Railroad Map

The idea of linked data and the importance of relationships between information directly links to the concept of the prototype- the indisputable examples of things we can't quite define. There are many nouns in this world, and we like to organize them... however, our work is impossible to organize with McCallum's organizational prowess and we are more likely than not to wind up organizing these nouns in a Kreb's-like fashion- according to relationships and associations when direct links cannot be identified. Overall, I liken this knowledge based on prototypes to Dervin's Sense Making Methodology- a model based on filling in uncertainty with new fluid knowledge. When we take in new information from our environment we add it to our mental stock by identifying ans associating how this new information relates to the information we already have- we compare the information and either associate it with a prototype or create a new one. All of our prototypes are dependent on our individual contexts and they are all impacted by social interactions- they are ever-evolving. There is no perfect definition. There is no perfect organization.

My personal prototype for the library involves: 1) "The Library"- an official building (with signage), usually built with bricks, located near the center of a town, 2) "Information"- Rows upon rows of books, magazines, and computers, 3) "Help"- employees who help you allocate resources. For the most part, my personal library prototype seems like it could translate to other cultures. A library is always a place that houses information and is run by employees. The contents of the global libraries will probably always vary based on the accessibility of technology, but they will always be centers of knowledge.

National Symbol for "Library"

International Library Access

In all the recent conversations regarding technology, the direction of our libraries, and information access for the future, it is extremely easy for us to overlook the fact that our advances and expectations surpass the available services for many international locations.

Global Internet Access Graph

Growing up in the United States it is easy to take advantage of the local public library system, and I have never known a region without at least one local area library. These conveniences, even some of our worst ones, can surpass the provisions in some of the "Third World" regions of the world. While not every area is given the same extravagances we have in the United States, it is not to say that those areas of the world do not have the creative minds and capacities to develop meaningful technology and benefit from better access to information.

The TEDTalk with Anil Gupta perfectly captured the spirit of ingenuity and adaptation in order to better advance society. Gupta said, "minds in the margin are not marginal minds," and it would be beneficial for us to take note of that fact and recognize the value of that truth. Every individual every where has the capacity to develop creative solutions to their technological deficiencies. Just as "life will find a way," people too will problem solve and develop alternative methods. We are ALWAYS striving to be more efficient, more effective, and better served by the tools we use.

I had never considered Maslow's hierarchy of needs from the viewpoint Gupta captures in his lecture, but I am inclined to agree with him. I studied psychology for many years and we were always taught Maslow's hierarchy and told that no human could hope to achieve self-actualization or seek to meet higher level needs without meeting their basic needs first. Clearly, as Gupta points out, this idea is flawed. There are impoverished peoples living throughout the world and managing to live day by day barely meeting any of the "basic needs" and certainly not living as a majority of American citizens are living, but they struggle, strive, and survive by the sweat of their brows and the creativity of their minds. They make it work. They adapt and they problem solve in ways that many of us in "First World" countries would not be able to simply because our life situations challenge us differently.

This  same  point regarding the life styles and making ends meet also applies to individuals with differing abilities. Individuals with hearing, vision, mental or other impairments, have a host of other challenges that are not faced by many of those who develop new technologies and are responsible for providing open access to the public in libraries. Those with different abilities have many creative and adaptions to daily living and there are many more that could still be developed and need to be developed in order to provide open access to our modern technologies and services. With the fast-pace of society and our desires for ever more intuitive and flexible technologies, we need to be vigilant regarding our adaptions and adaptations for those with different abilities.

I greatly enjoyed learning about initiatives like Room to Read- providing libraries and new schools in areas like Nepal, but I must admit that I have questions and reservations about such initiatives. I always wonder how the individuals creating these programs go  about interacting with the students and their families. How do these programs actually change the lifestyles of these young girls? Does education offer them the chance to "go further"-- the way we would view it in the United States. Watching the videos of the Room to Read program I recalled the documentary film "Born into Brothels" and the challenges that those individual young people faced. I specifically recall the mother of one of the young girls in "Born into Brothels" being unsupported of her daughter's involvement in the program because she needed her daughter to be working and making money  for the family.

I have to wonder if the families of the girls in the Room to Read program are supportive of the girls' involvement or if they would prefer to have the girls helping in the home with their mothers and their siblings? I have to wonder how far some of those girls have to walk to reach their schools? I would like to see where some of those girls are in five or ten years from the time they begin the program. Do educated girls feel disconnected from their families- do they "abandon" their families? Even more importantly, how do the girls use their education? Is an educated woman of a certain poverty level less appealing to a potential spouse? If the culture is so regimented and hierarchically structured, I could imagine an educated wife being dismissed for a less educated wife who would be more obedient and better "prepared" to be a house wife. It's possible that none of these questions are problematic in reality, but there are many facets of living, culture, and lifestyle that are impacted by access to information and education. While "we" value education and equal opportunities for men and women, those values cannot be superimposed on other cultures.

Do you *read* me?

Context is everything. 

When it comes to sharing a message, gleaning something from the environment, or just generally maneuvering your way through modern society we have a number of implicit messages to guide you along your way. Depending on our context, signs and symbols can vary in their meaning- arrows, red lights, green lights, flashing lights, and combinations of all of these things and many more all have very specific meanings for us depending on where we are and what we're doing. Then we also have the explicit content practically shouting at us, "I can't make this any clearer to you!" Sometimes we mess up though- sometimes subtlety is lost or information is misinterpreted.

In the library setting, the context and associations we have with libraries suggest to us that we should probably speak with an "inside voice." Rarely is there ever a clear sign posted for patrons...

Except for in some very specific locations I can think of in academic libraries...

It's just common sense in a lot of ways. If we see several people working quietly and intently with materials we get the hint. We interpret the context and know to keep it down- and if not, we all know what this means:

(be quiet)

Although, outside of the context of the library... it could mean something a little different...

(it's a secret, don't tell)

Other implicit messages we get from the library context relate to the way we should interact with the space- alone or with groups or people:

A technology center designed for group work around a computer

A space for independent work

A larger view of an academic library with tables for group work, individual seats, and study carrels

And then there are times when (for the sake of usability and clear communication) we are more explicit:

In the age of digital technology, there have to be better ways for us to direct our patrons- to provide them a map of sorts- to the materials and information they seek. I can remember struggling when I was younger to find materials on a given topic- like astronomy- and exhausting the resources in the youth area and seeking out the "adult" materials before long. Then also, there are broad subjects- contributions of Italian culture- that patrons may be interested in researching. Sure, you can search the catalog to locate items, but what if we were to create a technological resource map that could be accessed by patrons and guide them to the materials in a variety of library areas (cooking, travel, history, literature, music- all of which were relevant to the example topic). At times, what we need most is a personalized road map to lead us where we want to go. I would love to develop something like this- an app for phones or tablets, that could access the database of library materials and highlight areas for resources. My particular niche would be in improving accessibility and intuitive browsing/searching. All of this, of course, would rely on the book information and keywords containing information pertinent to the goals of our patrons- something achievable by social tagging. 

In Weinberger's chapter "What Nothing Says," the subject of tags comes up again in reference to gleaning the kinds of implicit and explicit meaning I was referring to above. The suggestion is that tags can only provide us meaningful implicit knowledge when the users generating them have a transparency in their information sharing. While transparency itself is a very hot topic for debate, I must admit that in the past several weeks the more I have learned about open access, social sharing, and the efficacy of "folksonomy," I am much more interested in seeing a greater amount of transparency in this digital world. - Although, there are some areas in which transparency should NOT be expected or encouraged by any means for the sake of safety and privacy. Data collection is good, but not always data sharing. Privacy cannot be ignored.- 

With greater transparency we are better able to provide the implicit information needed in order to identify more relationships between data. The more we connect the data and uncover the implicit information the more we are able to mirror the physical world in the digital world and increase our ease of use, create a space for intuitive searching, and effective browsing. When everything is truly miscellaneous, systems of classification will be able to give way to every individual user and their ability to create their own meaningful structures. The consumers will become the producers, and in social sharing and open access we will all be able to maneuver effectively... some day.

But, I want it NOW...

I think that one of the most interesting things about library 2.0 (or our more modern library systems) is just how much more integrated they are into the community. Like most people, I grew up in a time and place where the library was a stand alone building that I only visited when I needed something and never really thought about as a place to go and "hang out" because we would inevitably be shushed or asked to leave and socialize elsewhere. These days, that is far from the norm! Libraries are places of activity, of exchange of information, and and community centers in many ways. I think that libraries are finally becoming what they were always meant to be.

I love the idea of a "library that lets," a library that allows and is more interested in providing information, space, and opportunity for the people it serves than being museum-like, dusty, and vacant. Libraries and librarians are adapting to the constant changes in societies and really rolling with the punches- granted they have to if they want to keep their doors open- but it's also a great accomplishment for a field that was so traditionally structured and organized. It seems that despite the difficulties in keeping up with new technology and new ways to access information, that librarians are willing to do whatever they can in order to provide the nest service and best access to information that they can for their patrons.

One of the ways that I have seen advances of technology encouraging the evolution of the library has been in the ways that we are visualizing information. I remember working at the circulation desk for my undergraduate library and one of the librarians showing me the AquaBrowser (example below) tool being used by another library.

At the time, we were all fascinated by this method of browsing and very impressed with the technology that made it possible. Fortunately or unfortunately (I'm not sure which) I have not seen that technology appearing on more library websites. It's unclear to me whether it just never "caught on" with the public, or if it was simply too complex, too problematic, or too expensive to put in place. I think that unless it was a technology that could "learn" from the users it could be more frustrating than helpful in the long run.

Being an individual with a background in art, I am a very visual person and I found myself quite drawn to the design and spread of the AquaBrowser. MindMap is a tool that I have used myself when trying to visualize ideas or plans of my own that were non-linear and it was very similar in its core structure to the AquaBrowser. If there was a way for libraries to bring this mapping technology into the library system I would most definitely explore it. Being able to bridge connections between things often allows for an unexpected and valuable layer of knowledge. I, for instance, would have never really known which of my FaceBook friends knew each other if I had not played with the friend-wheel app. You might think, "well, they're your friends how did you not know they knew each other!?!," but it's not as if we regularly question whom our friends are acquainted with- at least I don't. I do wonder how the software color codes the friends though- based on networks perhaps(?).

The added bonus is that it's just PRETTY to look at!

The most impressive references in this discussion of open access and access to information were the two TEDTalk videos with Lawrence Lessig (one at that link, the other here). Larry made so many fascinating points regarding the modern applications of creativity and several fantastic arguments for less stringent policies and laws surrounding copyrights. Larry's point that artist choice is the key to open availability is one-hundred percent right. We have to rely on the creators of the original content we reference in new creative works to be open and supportive of the creative endeavors of their fans and the public and I think we are getting much closer to realizing that dream.

In recent years, many (not all), recording artists have welcomed and accepted services like Spotify. Artists are coming to realize that their profits will no longer be tied to the sale of physical albums- everything is digital. When a new album is released we want instant access to it. We want to have those copies on our computers and on our phones so that we can take it with us on anywhere- at home, in the car, in between classes, on our breaks. Music is a huge part of our culture and historically has always had a place at the heart of not only our solitary activities but of our social endeavors. With Spotify- every time a track is played by a user, the artist is making a profit (a very small one- but it accumulates I'm sure). Consumers don't have to buy full albums, and they don't have to listen to any album in its entirety. We build playlists- mixes, and we share them with our friends- we subscribe to one another and we share all of the music. It's truly brilliant, and it's free for PC- a small monthly subscription for the flexibility of mobile use.

My own Spotify account as I listen to Lindsey Stirling (she actually came to fame ON YouTube)

The best thing about services like Spotify is that independent artists- singer/songwriters and some of the artists on the periphery of the pop culture spectrum are also made available (talk about opening the long-tail!) I personally have not bought a CD or digital album in well over a year. I don't need to anymore- and I LOVE IT. I actually don't even pay the monthly subscription, but I imagine it won't be much longer before I do. Spotify has completely changed my music listening habits. I have playlists of "New to Me" artists that I have either stumbled upon by the related artists information or from family and friends who have suggested them. I follow my friends playlist "cheer up... if you want to" and hear an assortment of music I know and don't know. The trick is- only artists can opt to make their music available on this service. The service provides a VAST amount of digital music and the collection is growing all the time, but it will take participation in order to allow it to become kind of the Wikipedia of digital music. Recently there was a user-related campaign that led up to releasing the Pink Floyd collection. It seems as though there is a lot of pressure on artists to adopt this approach to making their music widely available and still retaining a profit. It's great for the users, and it seems to be working for the artists (otherwise it would have flopped a long time ago.)

We can all only hope that YouTube will eventually release its firm grasp of copyright laws and once again allow the users the space to create the content that they want to create. Larry Lessig made a great point when he discussed the fact that mash-ups, remixes, pastiches, and parodies are individual and unique creative endeavors. Even though users reference more official media or resources- as always the greatest form of flattery is IMITATION. In order to reach new levels of innovation we have to build upon what we already know and that is what a vast number of YouTubers are set out to do. Lessig really drove this argument home for me when he stated (I paraphrase) Our lives are built on sharing activities- socializing- and we need spaces of "fair use" in order to relate to the world in the most natural way.

We can all hope that the future of our digital media progresses closer and closer to Lessig's vision of an ecology of commitment to the values: freedom, community, limited regulation, and respect for the creator.

The Objective of Neutrality

In Weinberger's chapter "Social Knowing," the discussion of Wikipedia and its practices regarding neutrality and anonymous authoring becomes a topic of relevance for not only research and information access, but also of best practices in all social sectors.

The working definition of neutrality in the Wikipedia community, for posting content, relies on the belief that neutrality is achieved when people stop changing the content (Weinberger, 2007). For Wikipedia, this is what works. The authorship and the content of the site is entirely open to the public and as such every individual feeding information into the articles has their own information, their own perspective, and their own language to describe the person, places, and events contained within the articles. It takes everyone's participation in authoring these articles to achieve the most neutral voice on the subject as possible. -- I really appreciated Weinberger's contrast of this process to that of newspapers and media outlets where only one voice or one message is really heard. Everyone likes to believe that the news they hear/read contains "the facts," but the truth of the matter is that it is not in most cases the whole truth.--

An example of how social interaction can reduce bias

At Wikipedia, the approach to article writing is entirely collaborative and prevents any one voice from necessarily being the dominant one. At Wikipedia, they realize the importance of representing facts in a neutral playing field for the sake of the readers right to decide what they think about the topic. They encourage well rounded information to bring the greatest degree of knowledge on the subjects to their users. In the case of Wikipedia, it is not just the few, powerful, educated, and influential figures of the world who are writing our history and sharing the information we "need to know," it is the people from many spheres of the world who are documenting the information and relying on one another to build a complete picture of events.

When it comes to "deciding what to believe," it is the expectation of the Wikipedia community that the readers will challenge the facts/data and explore the truths themselves before adding this knowledge into their worldview. This process directly relates to Shedroff's Model of Understanding :

It would behoove the public to value the kind of information  and methods of collaborative communication demonstrated by Wikipedia- neutral, unbiased, and interactive information presented in compromise- rather than allowing themselves to learn from one source or one authority. Shedroff's model addresses particularly how we on an individual basis take in data and integrate information into our knowledge and sense of personal wisdom. What may not be clearly understood from this model alone is that the data, provided by the "producers" is already imbued with context when it gets to us. Producers are consumers and consumers producers. We are living in a time when we collectively teach and learn in our social interactions everyday. Such is the wonder of our digital age- where rarely should anyone be expected to be an expert on anything. We all dabble, we all explore, and we all have a relevant context for information. We do not live in the a world of Orwell's imagination. We live in a time where we are more powerful in our collective search for knowledge than the few who would choose to censor it.

1984 - George Orwell

I have personally pushed myself to explore more topics that have been the subject of public outcry in the past two years. I have struggled with communicating differing opinions and values in social media on more than a few occasions (and have all but given up on trying). But, I have found that it is because my voice is the one saying, "Where did you get that information? Did you actually read the official document yourself? Are you aware that the resource you're sharing here is completely biased and provides a very harsh criticism from a very narrow view point on this subject?" I am finding that it does become more and more difficult to reign in conversations and allow clear communication to occur- especially when it is something which people are particularly impassioned by.

The simple fact is that once people hear something, they tend not to look any further in to it- or they only listen to the voices saying all the same things and it spirals into a world of anger and argument because, "THESE are the FACTS! I don't care that you found someone else saying something different- THIS is the TRUTH because THIS is what I READ." The topics become impossible to discuss in most places because people are very passionate about their beliefs and in most cases are unwilling to hear opposing beliefs. In the places where people have an opportunity to "discuss" topics, they end up arguing instead and working themselves into a fury- name-calling others, cursing at them, judging the morals, intelligence, and sense of decency in the people who offer different beliefs or perspectives. There tends to be a great deal of capitalization and exclamation points.

Most people, it seems, are unwilling to discuss the difficult topics because it is very personal- their ideas become a part of their identity, their sense of self- and to have a disagreement on something is to face a personal attack (even when the subject itself has nothing to do with them personally). The context rather than the data ends up translating the information. The individuals in disagreement most often are fighting not about the facts, but about how they have individually interpreted them. The interpretations form the "brands" and the "labels" that individuals cling to and identify with instead of discussing the raw data and coming to a neutral understanding. The individuals hoist their banners and create divisions between themselves and "others" and turn what should be an open forum of information sharing into a battlefield to fight for the title of "truth" and authority over the "others".

To a large extent, I think that better educating everyone to be more wise in their information gathering in this digital world cannot be emphasized enough. While many voices together may hope to weave a neutral and accurate tapestry of information (like in Wikipedia), most people are not gathering their information from those forums and are instead turning to the individual voices who seem to shout the loudest- or use the right "brand". Seeing the success of Wikipedia- and knowing that from time to time articles need to be locked when tempers flair- does give me hope for the future and the information sharing between people. But, until people once again become more skeptical of the information they find online and re-learn to question bias and access information from many diverse voices, I fear it will take a long time before the majority of the voices stop shouting and start listening.

As Weinberger put it:
"For 2,500 years, we've been told that knowing is our species' destiny and its calling. Now we can see for ourselves that knowledge isn't in our heads: It is between us. It emerges from public and social thought and it stays there, because social knowing, like the global conversations that give rise to it, is never finished" (2007, p.147).

We are all allowed our opinions, but we have to begin to acknowledge that opinions are not facts- they are interpretations. All interpretations are valid because they are unique to the individual context. We cannot force our opinions upon each other. We cannot turn opinions into laws by which everyone must abide. We cannot keep cultivating arbitrary figures of authority based on what is "right," because there are no absolutes. We have to create a spirit of open access to information and allow one another the opportunity to "know" whatever it is we may know and believe [without judgement] whatever we choose to believe. But, then again, that's just my opinion.

Technology in Transition

Sometimes I have a sense of nostalgia for the simplicity of the world I grew up in: a world of tangible "stuff." In other ways, I cannot imagine life without the technology we use every day. Living has become a very different experience in the time from 1993 to 2013. Probably the only thing I really miss is feeling a responsibility to protect and maintain my tangible possessions because they were limited, rare, and precious to me-- these days everything seems to be quick, easy, and cheap and as a result easily replaced.

Today we're talking about the tech of yester-year- all of the gadgets and tools we had to navigate us in the land of web 1.0 and part of 2.0. You know what I mean- the floppie disks, VCR's, Blockbuster, and blowing on your NES cartridges so your game would stop messing up. Thanks to continual innovation we have come to live with far better technologies, but there was a time when we absolutely relied on those simple technologies and considered them luxuries! It makes me wonder if movie nights have lost their splendor for kids of today? Do they get the same thrill and excitement scrolling through Netflix or Amazon Instant Video that I once got walking in to the local movie rental place- Questor Movies To Go? When choices were limited, they were more intentional somehow more special. Movie nights were a treat! Nowadays, it's as easy to do as turn on your television. At what point does our ease of access make us take for granted all that we have? It does seem like our "more, more, more" culture has taken off with the dawning of the digital age and with all the consumption of goods ometimes I have to wonder if we're better off for it?

Then, I see the devices our engineers and computer geeks are uniting to create and I see the possibilities that they open up for society. I have to acknowledge that the benefits of our future technology are worth every device and every development along the way. From the now obsolete technologies of the distant past we have come into a world of technological invention that seems straight out of a science fiction novel.

Computer Science... bringing us the reality of theatrical imagination.

In Pattie Maes's presentation on TEDTalk from 2009 a world of integrated technology becomes realized. Adopting the concept of a sixth sense, MIT student, Pranav Mistry worked to develop a prototype of a device (incidentally) called the SixthSense. The device was created by integrating a web camera, battery powered projection device, mirror, and Pranav's own cell phone which would enable him (or the user) to interact using digital technology with the physical environment.

Granted, many of the device uses described in detail were social or personal in nature (taking photos, checking the time, checking plane schedules), but there are also further applications for working with paper and productivity tools at the end of this TEDTalk presentation by Pranav himself. Devices like this one- if the physical logistics of it can ever be figured out to make them more manageable to wear and interact with- could absolutely change the way that we interact with our entire physical environment. The possibilities are limitless as long as individuals with imagination continue to develop the technology. I hope that we will hear more about this technology as there hasn't been much said since 09/10.

The SixthSense from the website

SixthSense is likened to the interface seen in Minority Report

The technology from SixthSense also got me to thinking about a more current and ever-evolving technological reality that we are facing: Google Glass. Seen below, "Glass," as it is known, is a very real technology that will become a part of our future is under heavy scrutiny at the moment by a range of people from authorities in the national and local government down to the individual users of the device. The device is already banned in several areas and the poor developers haven't even set a release date for the device yet! Glass is a technology that I am personally very excited about because it removes a level of complication from the SixthSense design (in my opinion) by putting the projection on the glass you are looking through. In this way, Glass seems a little more private than SixthSense (which was outwardly projected the images) and it also involves a less cumbersome device.

Glass is likened to Iron Man's Jarvis interface

Glass is really catching a lot of flack from the public, and in our age of "If you have an opinion, share it!" blogs- like the one providing the above picture, create open forums for its many criticisms. There are also (thankfully) individuals out there willing to sing the praises of this new leap into intuitive technology and beg the public to think about the future and the positive outcomes. What seems to be overlooked in the opinions of those attacking the device is the fact that with or without Glass, your privacy is still an issue, cinema piracy will still happen, and people are still going to have auto accidents related to distracting devices. It's just going to happen. Glass isn't so far removed from mobile phones and I personally believe it would be safer [It doesn't impede you vision, it's hands free, it's voice controlled].

 It seems that every time there is some tech advance, all the doomsday prophecies come creeping out of the cracks and the hoards of skeptics grab their pitchforks and curse the demon technology, but come on guys, really-- consider the positive possibilities (there are so many!). These technologies are just the next logical step in our quest for connecting all the data of the world around us- as Tim Berners, inventor of the world wide web, would have us do. These technologies bridge the gap between the digital data and the physical world in way that has never before been achieved. It quite literally brings the data and information necessary to enhance your personal knowledge directly to you- right before your very eyes.

Our time of knowledge at your fingertips is beginning to give way to the new possibilities for metadata access and it is exciting! It's not as if Glass users are never going to take them off. There is always a time and a place for its uses, like any technology. There are endless applications for these devices and no level of skepticism or fashion-policing is going to impede the progress of our technology. Once the naysayers really interact with the device, I can't imagine they will think it's junk- it's just an adjustment like any other. It wasn't so long ago that the concept of the internet was a "vague, but exciting," and it's time we open up to the new possibilities available to us.

We are living in an Intertwingled world...

While Madonna may have been on to something in her assertion that, "We are living in a material world," the time of the material world has come and gone. While we produce more and more in this physical, tangible reality, the best way for us to compile, document, and learn from our new discoveries and evolving technologies is to turn the material world into an intangible, digital one. 

Marine Biology Labs creations, uBio is one complex example in a string of projects to translate everything we see and know about our tangible, physical world into a compendium of human knowledge that is somewhat cataloged, but not entirely definite in its parameters. The system itself is attempting to embed all of the common data for each and every taxonomic classification that exists in the plant and animal world. This daunting task could never have even been envisioned before the advent of the computer, and even now scientists and biologists continue to struggle to name and define these species because in creating any one definition they are inherently excluding other creatures from being included in the category. 

Scientists are being labelled "accidentalists" rather than "essentialist" because of their disregard for lumping large categories of classifications. Instead, the trend is to now accept even minute differences as evidence of evolution and new species development. Every little accident in the evolution of a species is now considered a further reason to recognize the individuality of the species and classify it as such. 
 
Yet, while they struggle with classifications they are also including all of the known names for each plant/animal whether it is recognized as an official title or not. This compilation of human knowledge forms such a tangled web of information that it will continue to become a useful source of reference. But, because nothing is ever truly definable, the system will never truly be complete. All we can do is add to the collective knowledge and postpone the inevitable task of setting parameters and delineating boundaries between data. 

(Aside) It's actually fascinating to me that in order to cope with the unimaginable amounts of data that we are managing in the world, that we are clinging to systems of barcodes, ISBNs, and other systems in order to manage the identification of every piece of imaginable data. We have no alternatives to identifying these "things" except by assigning arbitrary identifiers to them. In a world where all we want to do is move away from labeling things and preventing the relationships between data from being known- we absolutely must use these arbitrary means in order to keep the data miscellaneous and accessible. (I wonder what Mortimer Adler would think of that!)

In many ways, this system is much like the approach taken in the development of Wikipedia. Users are continually giving input for an endless number of pages, however, to some degree it seems that Wikipedia may have more of an official role because they make conscious decisions to include, exclude, or edit data that is added to the site. It seems that uBio is entirely open to including any and all information that it can find without judgement or restraint- truly, a Third Order approach to organization.

The all inclusive approach in many ways also reminds me of Google searches- although, Google too is filtered and impacted by businesses wishing for better search results. Overall, besides similar systems in development (and forever in development) there is really nothing else that compares to uBio and its brethren sites. These compendiums of human knowledge are truly what we have always envisioned the internet to be. Quite literally, everything there is to know at the click of a mouse or the tap of a screen. 

As librarians, we are beginning to face the challenges presented in these other areas of knowledge compiling. Much as the biologists are facing ever more tiny differences and delineations in their classifications, we too are faced with the challenges of naming, defining, and classifying ever more information- be it books, ebooks, digital music, CDs, DVDs, Blu Ray, the list goes on and on. Within each item goes down and down further specifications for identification and classifying the individual materials. We now also face the difficulties of recognizing the information generated on the internet. 

How long will it be now before blogs of authors become referenced materials, or before news and media digital files become stored and archived for access through libraries or other sources. As we move forward into the world of third order classification, where will the line be drawn between what is and isn't necessary to add to the compendium of knowledge? Should we be filing away information about each individual person living on the planet? Will there one day be a current file of information pertaining specifically to me? 

Essentially, anything that can be documented can technically be contributing to the increased knowledge of society, of psychology, anything really. Because we are a part of this world, we impact it, it impacts us, and it is all intertwingled together. Where does it end? Does it ever? Should it? I can hardly begin to fathom the questions- to understand the implications of such data, but it is something that is on the horizon for this digital world.

Revolution, Evolution, and Our Future

One of the most interesting conundrums of the technological age is how much we rely on our technology in order to get by in society considering the relative cost and availability of such objects.

Computers with internet access are expected in every household, as are televisions, DVD/ Blu Ray players, digital cameras, cell phones, and cars. Many in our current society take for granted the value of these objects in their daily lives. This is perhaps why it is so easy for the value of the public library to become overlooked. For the most part individuals falling in the middle class to upper class of society do not absolutely rely on the services and access to information provided by their local libraries. Literacy programming, community initiatives, and yearly budgets are of little interest to most in this group- although the open access to library run activities and programs is often utilized.

It is far too easy to forget that there are individuals who struggle to attain access to the "standard" technology of this digital age, and for those who struggle to get it, the fast-paced society is hard to keep up with. I imagine that none of us- accustomed to the convenience of modern technologies- would be content to go without their internet, television, or cell service for even a week. In a day and age where most of us access the news and up-to-date current affairs online with the click of a button, how many of us still subscribe to the local newspaper?

 In a time when we educate our children, entertain them, and interact with them through education videos, cartoons, and video games, what would our children do if the television were simply gone?

Given the ease of combining internet, cable, and cell phone services into tidy packages, how many of us still have home phones?

In one week, how much would you "miss" because your life is dependent on your technology? I know I would have no idea what was going on with friends, family, the community, the nation, or the rest of the world- unless I found a way to access the technology in places where public service is provided.

As Clay Shirky describes in his TEDTalk presentation, our landscape for media and communication has changed drastically- revolutionarily- in the years since the advent of the internet. As he notes, the internet itself is not the reason for the changes in our living, but rather the ways we have changed and evolved the uses of the internet.

The internet is the centralized point for all of our other forms of media. Through the internet we can not only access information, but also connect to one another globally. The digital world we live in is too big for any one entity to control entirely- and that is because of the ways in which we have adapted social communications such as Twitter and blogging platforms like this one. As discussed in previous posts- we are both the producers and consumers of the digital media world. We have come to both expect and rely on its presence in our daily lives in order to stay connected to the larger global community.

As Ben Par writes, the technological future will be a world of intuitive user interfaces relying on gestures, touch screens, and voice commands, and above all else, social media will be the largest component. There is no expectation that at any point society will move backwards in technological advances, we will always move forward in to ever more evolved and intuitive means of accessing information and communicating with one another. The future of the internet is a global one- based on widespread use, and access for all. Access, one day available to all, may not be of an equal level of efficiency or style, but as time has shown us, where there is a demand for a product, the market will provide it. Then, as I have seen before, libraries and other public access vendors will do their part to keep up to date with the technological devices used by patrons and also continue to provide educational programs to ease patrons into becoming successful users of this ever-evolving world.

Tag! You're it!

Weinberger's statement that "order often hides more than it reveals", is one that is all too true and all too challenging for the world of libraries. Organization by limited terms makes discovering relationships between objects or people impossible to fully grasp. 

[In my own experience right now- organizing wedding invitations- we could organize the ways in which we stuff the invitations based on family/ friends, towns, wedding party/ guests, those invited to the ceremony and reception/ those invited to the reception, and further to those invited to the rehearsal- there are individual invitations that at any point could be in 5 of the eight categories and when it comes to stuffing the envelopes with the appropriate pieces of information it is not yet entirely clear to me what the most efficient order of operations may be.]

All too often we take for granted the accepted systems of organization and rely on them to inform us of relationships between things. But, there is a great deal to be gained from allowing individual organization methods to influence our online library databases. Just this past week, for another LIS course, I had to investigate and evaluate the relative efficiency and user-friendliness of two similar websites. I chose two familiar libraries. In my exploration of the sites I was very frustrated by my inherent desire to browse and how nearly impossible it was to do in the online catalog systems. I would seek to find suspenseful, dystopian fiction, and come up with nothing simply because the words I choose to use to describe the types of books I enjoy were not the words that were used when adding the books to the catalog system. 

In desperation to try learn what search terms might yield the results I was hoping for, I searched for a related title (The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins)and examined its particular subject keywords: Survival, television programs, interpersonal relations, and contests. Four keywords- and words which I would not have thought of using. Under local subjects: books made in to movies, Buckeye Children's Book Award, suggested books for teens, and Teen's Top Ten 2009. Again, four keywords- one's I would never use to describe materials I was interested in finding.

Then, I saw below: "Community Tags," and found a couple of useful tags which might in fact lead me down the right path: "apocalypse" and "books you might stay up all night to finish". While not entirely useful for my intended search, seeing the incorporation of patron suggested tags did bring me some level of hope for the future of this particular library's catalog searching.

The process of allowing the creation of community suggested tags for the books in the catalog system, while it may seem catastrophically disorganized and "miscellaneous," would in the end benefit the patrons the most. Allowing the public to sort and organize their books can broaden the field for those who wish to browse for books in a digital format. The use of these community tags puts the power into the hands of the readers to say what the books are about- not a lone cataloger, not the author, and not the publisher. Allowing this kind of flexibility gives readers the opportunity to relate their experiences with the materials to the larger community of readers and expand the meaning of the materials. As we all know, when any two people read a book, what they take away from it will not be the same. Allowing readers to reflect back on the books and expand the search terms might allow other readers the opportunity to discover books they may not otherwise find.

Adopting more and more user tags, can only help the library system by increasing meaningful searches by library patrons. Like Flickr, the more tags applied to the individual items in the catalog search, the more reliable and useful the search results will become. If 25 people had read The Hunger Games and described it as "dystopian" perhaps search results for dystopian fiction would have been able to yield more overall results for me in my individual pursuits. Increasing the number of tags allows libraries to expand the language used by readers in order to bridge the gap between the librarian's personal context, the reader's personal context, and the context in which the book's information exists.

Projects like: the  PennTags project, are able to demonstrate the usefulness of group sharing and tagging. The relative usefulness of searching by tags is unlimited, I can only hope that the user interface for such systems might become less overwhelming over time. Visiting the PennTags site and taking in the information is daunting right now, but organizing the site into something more visually pleasing could be yet one more step to organizing and creating barriers to the data that we are working so hard to move away from.

For now, I believe I will have to stick to the WorldCat website where they are incorporating the use of tags on a larger scale than my local library. Using WorldCat I found the search term I was looking for, refined the search further and have saved some of my results to look for in my local library when I get the chance.

Happy hunting!

ASK and you shall receive... The communication of Queries

One of the largest topics of consideration for anyone studying the topic of Access to Information must revolve around the communication or acquisition of new knowledge.

As future librarians, and always as patrons, there is at some point in the quest for new knowledge a query. Whether we do our research independently from our home computers or in person at the local library, there is a point at which the jumbled mess of information and confusion in our own minds must be organized into a single, clear question. Unfortunately for most of us, the formulation of "the question," and getting the information you we are hoping to get does not usually happen on the first attempt. According to Belkin, this can be explained by the Anomalous State of Knowledge. We have all experienced this at some point and time. We get curious, (we're human, it's in our nature) but, the acquisition of knowledge must always be a journey. As such, it may take us a while to figure out what exactly it is we want to know.

Whether we ask another individual our thoughtfully formed question, or we ask a computer, our own contextual framework for the "topic" or the "issue" will inherently impact the way the question is asked... and unfortunately, we do not always fully understand the context for the questions we ask- making the answers ever more illusive.

For example, offhandedly one evening I wondered what the odd little "tables" inside of pizza delivery boxes were for? My experience with this odd object were limited to either throwing them away or using them as furniture for my dolls as a child. I had no idea how to find the answer to my question- I had no context for the piece except that it came in a pizza box and was plastic. Luckily for me, a lack of contextual fluency in the area of pizza packaging seemed to be a common problem and my particular question also a common one. By simply searching, "what are the little tables in the pizza box for?" I was able in a simple Google search to learn that these were "pizza savers" and that there was a convenient Wikipedia page describing their function. Thankfully, my question has been asked before and was easily searchable online. However, there are many other questions to ask that we (or our patrons) may not have enough context to investigate independently.


Once we pass the point of asking our questions in such a way that the answers we seek can be found, we enter a whole new world of discovery and exploration.

On one occasion a few months ago, I became curious of the topic of prayer, what religions adopted it, and in particular whether it was a part of Eastern traditions or not. On this particular occasion, I visited the library (anticipating that I would be interested enough in what I found to read some materials on the topic.) That day, I helped myself to the religion section of my local library and went on a "berry-picking" adventure.

I am well known for my escapades in area searching- finding a broad topic of interest (i.e. eastern religions and philosophies) and simply scanning titles on the shelf until I find myself with 15 books by various authors with varying levels of relevance to my initial inquiry. When I started with my question, I did not have enough context to ask more about the topic- I didn't know too much about important authors or terminologies for the things I wanted to know, but once I started scanning the shelves it was easy to see recurring patterns and identify materials which would be informative on the broader topic and also address my narrow question. This is the kind of self-education that I personally love. My mental schema works very much like the berry-picking model. I begin in one place and jump from broad topics to narrow, from well known authors to the obscure, and where my journey ends usually has little to do with where it began (but it's always successful because regardless of where I am in the end, my journey brought me knowledge I did not have before.)


Knowing how my own independent searches for knowledge typically unfold, I can only imagine how difficult I would be as a patron in a library (if I didn't just go browse independently.) I think I would change my question 5 times before the librarian could even help me find the sections I would need to be looking in. What I really like about Dervin's Sense Making Methodology (below) is that it really captures the spirit of information access that I personally appreciate- the action of discovery and personal growth through finding knowledge.

All searching for knowledge fills the "gaps" we have. We as information professionals have the privilege and the responsibility to help our patrons fill these gaps in their knowledge and assist them in carrying forward their own experience of living and learning- helping them to broaden and deepen their own personal context of living and interacting with the larger world. But, in order to help our patrons we have to continue to be aware of the process and evolution that is a part of accessing new information. Asking questions and actively searching with our patrons is a responsibility we have to take on in order to be truly successful at what we do.

Learning, like living, is best accomplished by continuous forward motion. As we live and learn, there is ever more living and learning to experience. To help someone else make that journey is to practice patience, openness, and communication from one personal context to another. While others may never perfect that art, we as library professional must strive to do so in order to best serve our patrons.

Information Literacy: why we do what we do

In my last post I used the term computer literacy to describe the relative efficacy for digital natives and older generations to access information using modern technologies. Computer literacy is just one component of the incredibly important area of information literacy. In this day and age, with the torrential onslaught of information, it is ever more important for individuals to know how to access information and determine whether or not it's the information they need/want to access.

My history with information access began with card catalogs and ink date stamps. Even though I have always loved books, I distinctly remember having a hard time finding books within the card catalog system.  Instead of allocating my materials, or asking the scary librarian to help me, I became a wanderer- walking through the rows of books and trying titles that stood out to me from all over the different sections of the library. Before I left grade school, after they transitioned to the bar-code scanning system I pilfered the check-out card for my favorite poetry book with my own name among those of patrons from many years before my generation.

front and back of a check-out card from a poetry book in my grade school

In middle school, I worked in the library and really got to know the Dewey classification system and we only had 4 computers in the library itself (the rest were in the computer lab down the hall). By the time I got to high school, computers had become the primary means by which I searched for materials (even the materials I checked out from the library). Sadly, with the push to computer technology really kicking up, I only found myself in the library when we had classes scheduled in there and lessons with the library on search terms and research strategies. I actually found myself at the public library more often than the high school library because the resources in the school itself were too limited for my inquiries.

It really wasn't until college that I truly fell in love with the library system and learned the value of information access. In college I had practically unlimited access to resources through OhioLink and immediate access to both the campus library and local library. I learned the Library of Congress classification system (see "The Shelving Song" in the previous post) and I got to work in a real academic library with a group of amazing and enthusiastic library professionals. Simply working in the library and working with patrons made information literacy second nature to me and opened up a wider world of academia for me personally.

I wish that information literacy had been more of a focus in my education prior to college, but my experience did give me the opportunity to see the world of library 1.0 cross over into library 2.0 and that is something that more recent generations will never know. Card catalogs were a part of my library experience and I think they give me an even greater appreciation for how far we have come in the past 15 years technologically. I was given the opportunity to value the use of books in research where younger generations have to be reminded of using book references. I learned how to create outlines and reference notes for research papers using books, articles, and web resources. I learned how to help others successfully access the information and I can only hope that librarians can be encouraged to teach these skills in younger children.

Information literacy has been a meaningful part of my life for longer than I have ever realized before, and it is shocking how long it took for me to embrace my interest in this area. I love learning- seeking knowledge, and I can think of no better way to spend my career than in helping to bring that love and those skills to others.

Original Classifications: Organization: Developers: Linnaeus (and) Ranganathan

When it comes to the classification system developed by Carolus Linnaeus, there are positive attributes but also several prominent challenges for the modern world- not the least of which being the disuse of the Latin language.

Linnaeus did at the very least bring us kingdoms of classifications which were based more on observable traits than on an arbitrary ranking system (Dewey).  However, the system itself was still based on the observations of a single man with a specific vision of the world around him. The use of the binomial system did get him a little farther than Dewey's system, but some of the second word qualifiers would be difficult to conjure up without simply having memorized the entire system (because when I think of orangutans my first thought is not, "Ah, the feral man of the woods!" of course, now it might be because that is pretty funny.)

If we lived in a remote and finite world with limited data, Linnaeus's system could carry us far. However, given the diversity of not only living animals, rocks, and minerals, but of objects and things in this world, there is simply no way that a binomial classification could ever be enough for us. Eventually we would run out of qualifiers- kingdoms would not encompass enough, arguments would erupt about which pigeon-hole some newly discovered "thing" should fall into, and we would wind up with yet another useless, rigid system of arbitrary classification that relies on one limited perspective to conceptualize the entire (unfathomable) universe.

Ranganthan's classification was really fascinating for me because of what it allows us to do with classification in the present. I have recently made use of a system built on these very principles while looking for a new car. Searching through dealerships I am presented with searching tools like this:

(image from ferrischevy.com)

This tool, like many others built on a dynamic multifaceted classification system, narrows my search by each specific parameter that I tell the computer I want- or in some cases the search can maintain the broad range of parameters for specific isolates (make/model in my example). This technology is fantastic for someone like me who has very specific criteria to search for in some ways (mileage, year, mpg, and price range), but enough flexibility to want to browse options I may not know anything about (make, model, trim, or history).

The versatility of this system lends itself to continuous growth over time and also to a user-friendly experience. The adoption of systems like this one is highly logical and useful for conceivably any level of computer literacy- and this is highly valuable during a time when we have digital natives and older generations attempting to use the same devices.

This system, in my opinion, surpasses even the ever-evolving lists that Amazon generates for customers- specifically because the customer is again put in charge of the list development and given the opportunity to browse in a more intentional way. We as users do not have to search a specific title or author and can instead opt for more broad categories which can present us with ever more refined options until we find ourselves in new territory- exposed to books which meet our interests that we may not have otherwise discovered. The system is wonderful for this kind of browsing- as long as the materials are provided enough tags to allow them the flexibility of appearing in as many relevant categories as possible. This type of searching should be relatively limitless for digital books because computers can easily scan the materials for "keywords" that match the search criteria.

In many ways, libraries have already adopted this technology for their website-based search engines- specifically, the databases of academic articles are champions of this browse and grab approach. These multifaceted systems have no way of translating to the organization of physical books, but they do provide us with ever-more useful ways to use our technology in order to provide the best possible access to information for our patrons. If we ever find ourselves in a world of entirely digital books, the barriers of physical classification will become a thing of the past, but until then our libraries will have to continue to adopt these searching technologies and maintain the classical classification systems. Even sticking to that formula isn't all bad- sometimes when I search for an item and find it in the library, the current organizational system still allows me the opportunity to browse other books in the same physical category. So, we take the good with the bad and carry on with Dewey and our Library of Congress System hoping for a new step in the path of organization for libraries.

I leave you now with a flash back to the ways in which my peers learned the organization of our physical library in college... (Yes, these were my classmates and co-workers, and yes, I wish I had helped with this). Enjoy!

Dewey or Don't We?

After working as an undergraduate in a college library for four years, I never could understand why when our whole library was organized by Library of Congress Classification, that our children's department was still organized using the Dewey Decimal Classification. The entire section was constantly a mess and student workers struggled with both remembering how they were suppose to shelve this select group of books and identifying them for routing when they were returned by patrons. I spent two solid weeks of one summer inventory reorganizing the entire section just to get everything placed in the correct order. I hated Dewey that summer. I hated him a lot.

After learning a little bit more about Dewey and the development of the system, I have to admit that the tension between us has eased, although I still dislike the system overall. From reading Weinberger's chapter "The Geography of Knowledge," I have learned that Dewey was a considerably eccentric man with a vision that for library organization that sincerely changed the way library systems were run before the turn of the 20th century. That being said, it is time that we move on from Dewey's system and move toward one that is more relevant and versatile for our Digital Age and exponentially growing wealth of information.

In the year 2010, over 300,000 books were published in the United States alone, just as eReaders were really coming into the public market with Barnes & Noble and Borders. Considering the growth of digitization technology and successful adoption of eReader technology and self-publishing software that number has had no alternative than to keep rising. In Dewey's day, so much of what we know about the world now was simply unimaginable and as such impossible to make space for in such a finite system. While Dewey loved his decimals, there is no way for the system to keep up with the rapid changes in all spheres of our fast-paced, technological society. For instance, in the fall of 2010, when I briefly worked for Barnes & Noble, entire sections of the carefully planned store system were entirely overhauled to make space for the new budding genre of teen book, "Paranormal Romance," a section of the store which took up nearly 1/3 of the entire "Teen" section (and is now the third genre listing of the teen favorites). There is simply no way to plan for the changes in popular culture using second order organization.

I'm not really sure what the future will hold for the organization of physical books. Stores and libraries utilize different systems, and it seems that the struggle to maintain organized stock is losing the battle against the desire to browse in book stores. I just remember everything shifting constantly between new displays, new end-caps, new tables, new promotions, new books... it was all constantly in motion. For libraries at least, I feel the influx of new materials is more calculated than on the selling floor, but between weeding out obsolete materials and trying to find places to fit new ones into the system the troubles will eventually have to be faced.

Whatever the next step may be, I do believe that the decision-making process should be conducted by a cross-sectional group representing a diverse group of library professionals. The group needs to attempt to formulate a plan or system that will work within the mindset of third order organization and be relevant for as long as possible. Whatever memory palace develops, I am sure it will be something we have not seen before.

Like European free book exchanges:

Maybe the future of libraries is breaking down the established idea of what a library is...

Maybe with all of the digital media and electronic resources, libraries will sustain as a source of person-person interaction and sharing of information between librarians and the public, more like the human library project...

Or, maybe we will come to rely more heavily on digital resources and adopt the concept of digital kiosks for patrons to utilize.

One thing is certain, we can all start copying off of Amazon's notes.