blog post: David Lankes

"Kristin Fontichiaro and R. David Lankes join Henry Jenkins as AASL 2012 Fall Forum facilitators"

Virtual Dave…Real Blog
News, thoughts, ideas, and more from R. David Lankes 

April 23, 2012

count: 1 page

This is one of the more compelling reasons I would want to attend AASL, in a perfect world.

* Fontichiaro working to deconstruct transliteracy so it is more comprehensible; attendees will build a definition of transliteracy

 * Lankes will share about the collaborative nature of transliteacy; how to advocate for it; how to highlight relevance of school librarians in this environment. 

 * "His more recent work involves how participatory concepts can reshape libraries and credibility."

A friend of mine serves as library consultant at ESC10 in the Dallas, Texas area, and her site will be one of those offering a satellite site for the program. Registration is still amazingly steep, though.

book: Inside view of Google

In the Plex: How Google thinks, works, and shapes our lives

Steven Levy

2011, Simon & Schuster

count: 69 pages (as of May 2: finished Part 1, 69 out of 432)

I've heard a steady stream of rumor and conjecture during the last decade about Sergey Brin and Larry Page and how they came to start Google.

And the day Google announced Google Drive, I happened to be in my public library and ran across this book.

It may be every doc student's dream to ditch the academics and go make a billion. And apparently, they helped a good number of other doc students do just that, by coming to work for Google.

This is an interesting read (and listen) because Levy was actually allowed access to many of the behind-the-scenes stories and events for this notoriously secretive corporation. 

As I'm reading through it, I keep coming across some nugget that I think I have to post on this blog.  But now I'm seeing just too many such gems to actually be able to share all.  Google truly does "shape our lives," and Levy makes his point that Brin and Page have indeed "changed the world."

So I'll keep reading -- sharing as relevant, and being amazed at this historically unique and prodigious event known as Google.  Wow.

online news article: New York and School Librarians

"NY Board of Regents Supports School Librarians in All Elementary Schools"

By Rocco Staino

School Library Journal online
April 30, 2012

count: 2 pages

A welcome move that makes New York look very wise and ahead of the game: the Board of Regents has backed the plan to have a certified librarian in every elementary, as it has already done at the middle and high school levels (though not enforced, the article shares).

Maribel Castro from Lubbock shared with the TLC listserv, ""I want our community to know that change can happen!"

We need such voices of encouragement right now, in Texas fer shure.

web news: Collaboration across library types

"It Takes Two: SLJ’s first public library spending survey uncovers an opportunity for tighter collaboration between school and public librarians"

By Rebecca T. Miller and Laura Girmscheid
May 1, 2012

count: 2 pages

 School Library Journal has published its first survey of public library spending habits for children’s and young adult services. The headline nugget from the report is that public and school libraries aren't collaborating to make purchasing more efficient and complementary.

The idea of working with a public library to coordinate book purchasing had never occurred to me. I obviously needed to be educated on this, particularly when the article explains the way such collaboration can support the curriculum and make students stronger. 

I can see why it would make great sense to give the Lackland Air Force Base Library a call every now and then, just to let them know what we have, what students are requesting, and to find out what they have and what they might want to buy. 

Unfortunately their purchasing is not done locally; it's done federally. But there are two local public branches that I could contact and try the same approach with. 

I also found it interesting that the SLJ report "Libraries that expect a drop in their kids’ and YA book circulation explain that it’s likely due to transient populations, as well as shrinking budgets and a market flooded with electronic devices." And they're not just speaking of Kindles or Nooks: they're also talking about gaming devices, TV, and mobile apps.

Recently I've been on the prowl for statistics on -books, and the article mentioned this topic as well:

Naturally, interest in ebooks is growing, but efforts are hampered by the limited offerings of big publishers. The main digital book suppliers are OverDrive and TumbleBooks. Two-thirds of libraries that don’t carry ebooks say they plan to do so or will consider doing so in the next year.

 In my earlier report for the course position paper, I did not even consider TumbleBooks. I'll need to check why: either we don't subscribe to downloadable books from TB, or else the report is speaking only of interactive rather than downloadable books.

If someone doesn't have time to read the entire news article, the infographic alone is worth the time to examine.

online Storage: Google Drive

This post points to a concrete example of Chris Anderson's thoughts in his second book, Free: The future of a radical price in which he discussed the inexorable tendency of prices for digital, electronic items (or bytes) to decrease to the point of "free." In this case, storage, lots of it, is now free.

"Introducing Google Drive... yes, really"

Official Gmail Blog, April 24, 2012

count: 2 pages

It hasn't been that long since Steve Jobs was one of the few individuals who could afford this much storage.With last week's Google announcment of Google Drive, its free online storage for all sorts of digital files, the world saw the first real competitor to DropBox. 

Similar to DropBox, Google provides 5 GB (gigabytes) of storage for free, and even more, this storage is posited in the online collaborative world of Google Docs, so as the Google blog post says, 

Store everything safely and access it anywhere (especially while on the go). All your stuff is just... there. You can access your stuff from anywhere—on the web, in your home, at the office, while running errands and from all of your devices.

This freemium service will be a real money-maker for Google, who is good at that sort of thing. Currently DropBox offers 2GB free, and then offers upgrades beginning at $9.99 monthly (this rate for up to 32GB if you refer lots of friends). 

With Google Drive, each customer begins with 5GB, with the least-expensive upgrade priced at $2.49 per month, for 25GB. I'm expecting some immediate changes in the DropBox business model if they are to remain viable.

Is it just me? Or are we indeed seeing amazing changes, innovations, trends, and shifts throughout the digital world, in an amazingly small period of time? It's enough to make one dizzy.

Oh, post-data: The interactive banner logo on the Google Blog linked above is a lot of fun to play with.

book: The Atlas of New Librarianship

The Atlas of New Librarianship
R. David Lankes

2011, The MIT Press

count: TBD  finished 23 pages

(408 pages, but I won't get them all thoroughly read)

An essential guide to a librarianship based not on books and artifacts but on knowledge and learning. Post to follow -- I'll work on this until our semester and reporting period end.

Update 5/2/2012

My reading in this text is the single regret for my supplemental reading this semester. I really wanted to get into this complex and amazingly rich resource, and I can only say that I honestly consumed only 23 pages. I spent lots of time examining and unraveling the infographics.

I would like to request a full course, doctoral level, on this text alone. It would take a full semester, and all the discussion and collaboration seen in a course to absorb all this.

book: "Being Indispensable"

Being Indispensable: A school librarian's guide to becoming an invaluable leader 

Ruth Toor and Hilda K. Weisburg

published 2011 by Amer Library Assn Editions

count: 184 pages when completed (I'll confirm completion with full post)  as of May 2, only 88 pages completed)

I'm still in the process of reading this book, but the purpose of the work: "to raise awareness that twenty-first-century learning requires school librarians to be leaders." (Introduction, p. ix) So far this is a powerful read.

news article: Dying Technologies

"15 Current Technologies My Newborn Son Won’t Use"

Avram Piltch

April 9, 2012    Gizmodo 

count: 1 page

Some of these technologies are obviously dying (land-line phones, fax machines) while others make sense, once I read about them (wired home Internet, dedicated cameras and camcorders, slow-booting computers). 

A few surprised me:

• hard-drives
• movie theatres
• 3-D glasses
• the mouse
• remote controls
• desktop computers
• optical disks

And a few shocked me:

• windowed operating systems
• phone numbers
• prime time television

An intriguing read!

web editorial: "Friction" and eBooks

“Friction” and Progress: ALA Pushes the Big Six Ebook Holdouts

By Francine Fialkoff
March 6, 2012
Library Journal news online

count: 1 page

This is a somewhat retro perspective after my prior post today. But I cite this article because it explains the term friction in reference to eBooks, and it also posits that use in an historical context. Good reading.

Friction refers to libraries lending eBooks with patrons having "no trips to pick up or return books." Macmillan’s Alison Lazarus put it this way: “We want to insure that customers who have typically been book buyers do not migrate their purchasing into borrowing.”

Heavens. Just how did Andrew Carnegie get past this obvious elephant in the room?

web news article: judicial ruling on ebook prices

"Huge Win for Citizens of Kindle Nation, and Amazon:  U.S. Justice Department Sues Apple and Five Big Publishers Over eBook Price Fixing; Three of Five Rush to Settle; Millions to be Paid Out to Customers "

by Steve Windwalker

Kindle Nation, April 11, 2012

count:2 pages (tangential research to discover the identities of the Big 6)

The US Justice Department has stepped into the eBook pricing world with both feet -- and appears to have dramatically impacted the pricing we should see on Kindle books (and thus, other eBooks) in the future.

With evidence of Jobs and Apple working with publishers to "create a real mainstream e-books market at $12.99 and $14.99," as opposed to the $9.99 average, the government will "vigorously pursue the suit against Apple and the two publishers that did not settle."

Of the Big 6 publishers (see list below), 5 were being sued, 3 settled, and 2 are holding out, along with Apple.

I've wondered for a long time why this obvious  monopoly was being allowed. I just needed to wait a bit longer for the slow wheels of justice. Let's just hope they are also inexorable.

Big 6 Publishers?
From what I can determine, these are

• Hachette (settled)
• HarperCollins (settled)
• Macmillan  (to fight the suit)
• Penguin Group (to fight the suit)
• Simon & Schuster (settled)
• Random House (not included in the JD suit)

5/2/2012
Post data: I learned through my e-books study that Random House is the only publisher cooperating with vendors to offer e-books for a lending model.