Miscellaneous Connections

the digital and institutional environments

Mal BoothUTS Library, October 2009

Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922 text)Contains Hazel Bell’s Wheatley Medal winning index.

http://www.telawrence.info/telawrenceinfo/books/works.shtml#sp22

Seven Pillars of WisdomThe ParallelText (1997)

Collection of the Australian War Memorial, presented by the publishers, Jeremy Wilson & Nicole Helari

A messy but connected collection of miscellaneous ideas, thoughts, images and links to places on the web and about some

institutions

Collaborators: @CathStyles @paulhagon @MissSophieMac

@mhuston @lizholcombe all in Google Documents

+ Robyn Van Dyk & Alex Byrne by email

If this doesn't work: blame them!

It just doesn't make sense to chunk it up and put an arbitrary structure around stuff like this, so I won’t.

Maybe that is why things like DAMS, ECM, WCM and EDRMS are so hard to do and so painful as experiences?

I think we are trying to apply too many techniques and methods from the physical world in the digital world.

Trying to put a physical taxonomic protocol on digital material either doesn't work at all or at best, not

very well.

It is too cumbersome, too slow, too costly, too restricted.

There is no "right" way to do it because we cannot agree on the

categories & because of the size of the problem and the time it takes to do things the old way (in unhelpful systems, adding formal metadata).

http://www.researchchannel.org/prog/displayevent.aspx?fID=569&rID=16134  

The web is too fluid, too dynamic. It is never finished; a work in progress

We are no longer limited by volume, storage, film, distance, membership, pages, chapters,

paragraphs, the concept of the physical object, place, time or even ownership

And yes, we're struggling with that last one too - Copyright wasn't designed for a web platformhttp://frommelbin.blogspot.com/2009/10/cory-doctorow-on-copyright-open-access.html

So what helps now?In addition to given subject headings, Dewey, &

other taxonomies

Tagging, playlists, hyperlinks, shared platforms & data, applications, mashups, ‘digital altruism’

Is it really digital convergence or is it convergence of the best of the physical and

digital worlds?

http://www.librarything.com/home/malboo http://www.last.fm/home http://delicious.com/malbooth 

. . . by letting users tag URLs and then aggregating those tags, we're going to be able to build alternate organizational systems, systems that, like the Web itself, do a better job of letting individuals create value for one another, often without realizing it.http://www.shirky.com/writings/ontology_overrated.html

We're sharing knowledge & collaborating to do it (think Wikipedia)

We're staying connected: social networks and the mobile web, micro-blogging

We're helping & engaging with each other

Examples from the film:http://www.couchsurfing.org/ http://www.mumsnet.com/  http://theps.net/

http://watch.usnowfilm.com/

Have you seen this?

http://www.personalizemedia.com/garys-social-media-count/ 

We're creating and sharing film, images, games, data and text more freely than ever

http://www.flickr.com/photos/malbooth/sets/72157607919370856/

We're sharing software and free applications to help all of the above, e.g. Echofon and Tweetdeck for iPhones

http://www.linux.org.au/  

We're having our say and we're reading what others have to say, not just traditional media & publishing

http://www.frommelbin.blogspot.com/

http://www.google.com.au/reader/view/?hl=en&tab=wy#overview-page

We're figuring out new ways to trust each other and to judge authenticity

http://www.ebay.com.au/ http://sydney.craigslist.com.au/

InstitutionsIt is no longer adequate to wait for people to come to us: physically or via our homepages.

Our content MUST be findable open and then we must get out to where the people are!

Content is king, but clever access to content is God, no amount of content is good, if you can't

access it.@paulhagon (NLA)

We're freeing up our data (slowly) and allowing others to do clever things with it

http://data.australia.gov.au/ http://about.nsw.gov.au/

Other stuff I like

http://pandora.nla.gov.au/

http://www.pictureaustralia.org/

http://www.digitalnz.org/

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/community/

http://www.awm.gov.au/collection/war_diaries/cew_bean/

http://www.flickr.com/commons

http://mappingouranzacs.naa.gov.au/

http://utsescholarship.lib.uts.edu.au/

New UTS Library services: data curation, e-publishing, i-repositories (for research), & facilitating better

rights management

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sydney-Australia/UTS-Library/93282252430http://twitter.com/utslibraryhttp://www.youtube.com/user/UTSLibraryhttp://www.lib.uts.edu.au/news/*/*/*/feedhttp://www.lib.uts.edu.au/students/need-help 

Librarians must continue to be proactive in their attempts to reach students and other researchers where they begin their search.  http://www.dlib.org/dlib/may07/lally/05lally.html

07/04/2023

LIBRARY OF THE FUTUREHOW WE WILL GET THERE

Vodafone Electronics

Tutor, Lisbon

AUTOMATED STORAGE & RETRIEVAL SYSTEM

Specification development (now)

Relegation policies & algorithms (soon)

ASRS tender(s) from early 2010

Excavation & build from 2011

Plan decant & ingest from mid-2012

Procure ASRS – late 2012

Collection decant & tote load from Aug

2013

Operational use of ASRS from Aug 2013?

EXEMPLARS

1. Service delivery

• “Barefoot” librarians

• 24/7 service

• “Triage” or tiered levels

of service

• Client & staff circulation

and interaction

• Use of furniture or space

design that helps or

facilitates improved

service

• Way finding & signage

Qantas Sydney First lounge

Faculty hub concept, US

EXEMPLARS2. Personalised or customised services

• Spaces designed specifically to meet target groups or individuals

• Personalised services

• Consultation services

Codrington Library, All Souls, Oxford

EXEMPLARS3. New physical and virtual spaces & integration of those

• Security initiatives and access regulation

• Evidence of the physical and digital spaces working together

• New teaching & learning spaces, group study spaces, training facilities

• Staff office spaces or other concepts

• Showcasing eScholarship

Top: “reactable”, tangible multi-touch interface.

Bottom: AMP office refurbishment, Sydney

And while all of these sustainable operational initiatives are important and commendable, they are really just the tip of the iceberg. What is really important is the impact

companies have on the world in terms of the actual work they do.

The actions we inspire, enable and facilitate are by far the biggest part of our ecological footprint, that’s the

chunk of the iceberg under the waterline . . .Dave Gravina, Digital Eskimo

EXEMPLARS4. Sustainability

• Green initiatives

• Affect on the environment

• How is staff participation encouraged?

• Creating a fun environment to work in

Surry Hills Library &

Community Centre.

Green City Council building, Melbourne

SYNTHe roof garden,

Los Angeles

EXEMPLARS5. Social interaction, collaboration and networking (“community”)

• Space & furniture design

• Lighting

• Inclusion of other facilities (eg. cafes)

• Evidence of a community being encouraged

Left: Listening Lounge in atrium Murray State U.

Right: Forest Science Centre, UBC.

UQ Engineering learning commons.

EXEMPLARS6. Flexibility & other innovation/experimentation

• Easily reconfigurable or repurposed spaces

• Multi-purpose spaces

• Spaces that differ between night & day

• Behaviour stimulation?

• Creative spatial experiments!

New Macquarie Bank HQ.

Bike parking

& repairs @ Digital

Eskimo

“Box” innovation lab @ the London

School of Economics.

Image credits:http://www-lib.icu.ac.jp/ASRS/index-e.htmhttp://www.archdaily.com/14063/qantas-sydney-first-lounge/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/building_ub/3038276269/ http://fistswithyourtoes.blogs.com/fistswithyourtoes/2007/05/index.html http://www.cox.com.au/projects.aspx?projectId=3944&disciplineId=1208 http://www.siteisight.com/green_project.html http://constructionblog.org/tag/green-building http://www.arnewde.com/architecture-design/architecture-building-of-surry-hills-library-and-community-centre-by-fjmt-architect/ http://cedirsd.uow.edu.au/ils/globe.aspx?type=2http://www.sydneyarchitecture.com/NEW/NEW22.htm http://www.educause.edu/learningspacesch23 http://digitaleskimo.net/blog/2009/09/02/bicycle-parking-and-repair-station-opens

My profile can be found here:

http://www.google.com/profiles/mal.booth