Jas. H. Hyde (Library of Congress) Bain News Service, publisher. No known date.

“Toward a Worldwide Digital Library” by Edward A. Fox and Gary Marchionini was a flat out disaster of an article. The authors easily used the term ‘worldwide’ yet throughout the article I saw no mention of:

• Any South American nation
• Any Central American nation
• Any African nation

I’m amazed that they mentioned Korea (as Japan is often the only Asian nation mentioned) and amazed that out of the BRIC nations only Brazil was mentioned.  I don’t know through what lens I should be viewing a 12-year-old article on anything digital unless I was doing research into how well an author did at forecasting the future of digitization.

I had a much different experience with “FRBR and the History of Cataloging” by William Denton. Though still largely European centric, Denton painted a colorful history of cataloging including important people, trends and challenges.

What I found most compelling about this article was the study of the ebb and flow of interest and effort in trying to achieve a functional, user-centric system for organizing printed materials.  From a mess, to a system, to many systems, to a 54-nation effort, the importance of cataloging increased significantly over time.

Sir Anthony Panizzi, despite external challenges, forged ahead in development of his “Ninety-One Cataloguing Rules” (1841) which laid the groundwork for Charles Cutter’s development of the Cutter Expansive Classification system (1876) and his Rules for a Dictionary Catalog (1890). Then, in the early 20^th century seemingly everyone got into the game of classification – Dewey, American Library Association, Library of Congress, and Seymour Lubetzky.

Now we have the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (1996 ). Does this mark the final say for cataloging? We’ll have to wait and see.

So before this falls into the ‘I should have written that’ category, I wanted to get some pen on the iSchool introductory class -IST601 – Information and Information Environments.

In short – awesome. Really awesome.

The content delivered and the delivery methods were as world class as I expected but the energy. WOW. Totally infectious and not just from one or two lecturers, but each and every one of them and ALL of the staff there to support them and us (SU’s incoming iSchool Master’s students).  Total faculty and staff that presented over the weekend numbered, by my count, 15, but there could have been more. A high level of passion exuded from each and every one of them and it left an amazing mark. They’ve set the bar very high in terms of our academic, creative and innovative pursuits, but also in service and ethics.

That really stuck. Time and again we were reminded to bring anything – questions, concerns, problems, etc.  It’s a level of service and support that I don’t think I’ve ever seen before in an  organization. The iSchool at SU is really committed to turning out radical, game-changing information professionals and they’ll do whatever they can to foster the creativity and innovation required to bring about real change.

Not that I needed it, but the class confirmed that I’m doing the right thing and am in the right (best!) place.

I’m pretty late to the game on this but I’ve had a lot of fun reading up on Hadoop and Cloudera. As I understand it, Apache Hadoop is a freeware/open-source software package that allows a lot of data-intensive computing systems to play nicely together and analyze large amounts of data. This is a top-level project from Apache who as you probably know supports a ton of software and web-related projects. Cloudera are the commercial Hadoop experts.

What strikes me as most interesting here is that the Hadoop system can bring together so many disparate functions – even during a system failure. Yes, it is self-healing. Interesting. It even does this working side-by-side of existing/legacy systems. Seems very pertinent to the ever growing mountains of data generated daily.

Here’s my (rough) idea – mix the concept of popup shops (a venue that is temporary and allows a company to create a unique environment that engages their customers, as well as generates a feeling of relevance and interactivity) with the semi-permanance of LA Foodtrucks, but instead of selling anything, make it a roving library. I imagine this would be a pretty good way to engage underrepresented groups and quickly find out what works/doesn’t and what communities need. More to come on this later. If anyone has any ideas, feel free to comment. I’d love to get this off the ground before someone else does!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/books/review/Kennedy-t.html

Transliteracy is the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks. Wikipedia

Venezuela's four-legged mobile libraries

A university in Venezuela is using a novel method to take books into remote communities and encourage people to read. As James Ingham reports, the scheme is proving a great success.

Read the rest here.