PassingNotes.com

okay, so i just got back from vancouver where the lovely carla graebner invited me to present a session on competitive intelligence in libraries - it was a blast…and so if you quickly refer to the 2nd edition of the Guide to Standard Male Fantasies, after the one where the hot female doctor asks you to cough again but before the one where the hot female cop tells you there’s a way out of the speeding ticket, there’s this one where the librarian takes off the glasses and lets her hair down and turns into the chick from van halen’s ‘hot for teacher’ - it was like that…

…hmmm, so vancouver, beautiful city, the most diverse group of white and asian people i’ve met in years…a lotta money there, blenz coffee rules, great sushi, nice views…

as for the library industry, because lets think of it like an industry for a moment, it seems that there was this ‘industry in potential decline’ theme glazing the edges of the conference cake…while individual sessions were reasonably granular, there was an overall trend toward (many) looking at how to increase the relevance of libraries to patrons…and while i suppose many of the tactical and strategic ideas make incredible sense, from gaming and use of web 2.0 services in libraries to changing programs and services, i felt like there was something huge being overlooked, perhaps best phrased as a simple question:

“why on earth should my 8th grade son get on his bike and ride to the library for any information if he’s got the interweb at home?”

…now if i look at my son (not right now, he’s still asleep), i see something very different from what i felt some librarians are talking about…when discussion of patrons comes up, it seems that ‘patrons‘ means current adults, not the adults-in-10-or-20-years that i’m thinking about…i tried to convey this idea by talking about the changing role of the information forager…

what do i mean by that? well, if my older son (and younger one) are raised in an educational environment that permits internet citations in papers, condones wikipedia as valid and generally doesn’t mention the library as a resource (or brings it up as an afterthought), then we’re collectively looking at a future in which the information forager has been trained to go online and online only to collect and harvest information…so how might a library fit into that information forager’s cycle? i mean, how might the library literally get in the way?

…that’s a tough question, but i think it’s the only question that matters. adults and peeps with kids will always hit the library for myriad reasons, but what i worry about most is whether samuels’ quote becomes a mantra - “a library is thought in cold storage” - and i’m not pretending to have the answer…

some of what i discussed in my session bears relevance, building ‘library branded’ online resources (e.g. the baker school’s amazing online research resources, free, available to all), using open source tools to build such resources, building identities and relationships in public online networks, offering advisory services and so on and so on…but in the end the same issue remains: in 10 or 20 years, kids (and adults) are going to be so used to online research and online reading that it’s going to take a lot more than one-off novelties like gaming or video centers to lure them in…

…until things change, and i mean really change, i do believe that the only real relationship that i (and most people) have with a local library is going to be an email reminder that my return is late…and the opportunity to engage has gotta be bigger than that, right?.

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…is it a deeper issue - far beyond just spam? is it about miscomprehension of what constitutes spam and what is simply the intellectual dross that surrounds all online dialogue? there’s an interesting discussion going on over at the blog of dries buytaert, most famous for being the big brain behind drupal…

basically, dries has conjured up another clever approach to fighting ‘the shit’ on web sites, including his own drupal…and it’s great - certainly worth a look…but the discussion at his blog feels like a deafening echo chamber…it’s high fives all around, buddy!…but since you know i’m a bit of a shit, i had something entirely different to say (i’m a thinker that way):

“…[from my comment over there, but edited] i’m not so sure that i agree with any of this, though it all sounds wonderful…in the real world, this analog physical thing that we deal with each day, when one opens up a storefront he or she allows for any person to enter - and while we reserve the right to refuse service to anybody, it is often not the ‘terrifying looking’ stranger who causes problems, it’s the seemingly innocuous dude who accosts patrons or does something far worse…

…and so how is the internet any different? sadly, people have come to believe that if they produce a content site (blog, drupal install or other), they reserve the right to implement all sorts of draconian measures to keep out unwanted comments and contributions, rooted in their own baseless assumptions about what ‘probably’ constitutes bad behavior…

but that means different things to different people. if i’m on your site hawking vitamins and mlm schemes, you’ll catch my links and bar entry - just as you would stop me at the door of your store if i were carrying a ballpark vendor’s tray around my neck trying to sell peanuts to your patrons…

…but what if i turn into that other kind of visitor? Read the rest of this entry »

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so this is cool…after i wrote that article about how to record phone calls, the guys over at easyVOIP recorder dropped me a note to thank me for the mention and asked about advertising..

…of course, since you all know i’m a total asshole, i quoted them 10 thousand per month - but they’re just a couple of young dudes who have built a cool product…so we came up with a better idea: no charge for this blog post BUT they’re gonna give away 2 free copies of easyvoip recorder to passingnotes.com readers who comment on this post with the best or most interesting ideas for features or improvements…

rules (simple): check out (windows only) easyvoip recorder, look it over, come up with some cool ideas for features or enhancements etc., then comment here (down below) and be sure to include Read the rest of this entry »

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okay, somebody just sent me an email about this and i had to share it right away - because you can try it for yourself…oh…it’s so exciting, maybe it will work forever (hope hope) - here you go:

go to elGoog’s search page, type in “fucking stupid“ - and what do you see? why, passingnotes.com is result number five! wow! and the article? none other than the rip on mahalo (you know, the asshole engine)

…at any rate, also writing to let you all know that i’ll be slowly cleaning up the tags and attributes throughout the site and if you swing by, you’ll notice already that content is easier to navigate (there are hundreds of my bits on here, it’s getting large)…just need to slowly go back and tag old crap…

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you do know what i’m talking about with ‘preflop’ gold, right? it’s a poker expression - as in, “that ace and jack suited that i was holding looked great until the flop came out.” in the world of internet tools, it’s more like, “that site looked awesome - i registered right away! then i realized that it completely sucks ass” …so yeah, this is some stuff i’ve been screwing around with…some of it is solid, but some of it may feel like preflop gold to you…

Wakerupper! - okay, yeah, i wrote about this before and i’m writing about it again because it is fucking awesome! seriously, no joke, i use this for everything now…get recurring calls to remind me to pick up my younger son (poor kid, he used to stand in the rain for hours) - even set it to interrupt me on dates in case things ain’t going so great (they rarely are, because i’m a bit of an asshole)

your list - email alerts and reminders - if you can’t get into the wakerupper beta, and don’t want to configure google calendar to send you sms alerts for events, then consider just doing it by email like every other tom, dick and shanikwa… Read the rest of this entry »

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