It has been far too long since I posted a Friday five, here is a mix of things that I have come across lately that interest me.
1. Standing on guard for Canada’s records (Globe & Mail Interview, June 16, 2009)

This article discusses the career and views of Ian Wilson, who served as the first executive to lead Library and Archives of Canada (formed in 2004 after the National Library of Canada and National Archives were merged into a combined institution) and has also served as national archivist of Canada and other positions. I found the comments on digitizing LAC’s collection to be quite interesting. Wilson argues that even if the institution digitizes millions of images per year, this will scratch the surface at best: “Do it for 10 years and it’ll still be about 1 per cent unless we find some way to do a one-time mass-digitization program,” Wilson said). The only way to get everything done is likely to find private support. Seeking private money or other forms of support may be it.

Other interesting items from the interview include the fact that the LAC website records about 1.2 million hits a month on its website (approximately 40,000 per day). LAC has also acquired the reputation of responding very quickly to Access to Information requests which strikes me as great: showing leadership on access by doing it well. The one disappointment (or perhaps it would be better to put it as “incomplete goal”) Wilson refers to is his effort to start a national portrait gallery. After visiting Washington DC and London, the lack of such an institution in Canada is unfortunate.

2. Wiki Patterns (learned about this at a SLA Toronto “Best of the Web” event this week; thanks to Daniel Lee)

I have been looking for something like Wiki Patterns for quite some time; this resource explains which social patterns can contribute (or undermine) the successful use of a wiki. One successful strategy to encourage wiki use is “Barn Raising” where everybody focuses on a single project. In contrast, there are anti-patterns such as Gate which slows down contributions by having too many processes. As somebody that uses wikis regularly, this looks helpful.

3. Value Based Management (learned about this at a SLA Toronto “Best of the Web” event this week; thanks to Daniel Lee)

This resource is dictionary to management concepts and buzz words. If somebody mentions something you’ve never heard of in a meeting or document, then you can get a basic definition here. I looked up something I had heard about recently – Six Sigma – and learned that this technique is ultimately concerned with the identification of defects in processes and eliminating these as much as possible. New terms in business books and writing occur so often that it can be difficult to keep up.

4.Facebook and academic performance: reconciling a media sensation with data by Josh Pasek, eian more and Eszter Hargittai (First Monday, May 2009)

This article looks a study that made the rounds earlier this year arguing about the supposedly negative effects of Facebook use on students. My post about Facebook and grades (and workplace productivity) has been among the most popular I’ve written here. Here is part of the abstract of the article: “In none of the samples do we find a robust negative relationship between Facebook use and grades. Indeed, if anything, Facebook use is more common among individuals with higher grades. We also examined how changes in academic performance in the nationally representative sample related to Facebook use and found that Facebook users were no different from non–users.” This happens to support my general view – Facebook is not uniquely good or bad, it is just another form of social media that people use.

The author’s articles put this analysis (that linked FB use to poor grades) in part of a decades old academic tradition that focuses on the negative effects of media on young people. Back in the 1930s, some argued that movies were ruining children. It seems this idea comes up every few years whenever something new type of leisure is created, especially if that type is popular among young people. If it isn’t TV, it is comics or the Internet or video games. Old ideas like this die hard. I would hope greater awareness of this history should increase our collective skepticism.

5. Global Entertainment and Media Outlook: 2009-2013 (PricewaterhouseCoopers)

While the full text of this report is not available for free, there are some interesting items available. There is a video that provides an overview of the sector that I found interesting. “The pace of digital migration is increasing significant as a result about the recession.” I’m still waiting to see this impact book publishers and newspapers (most of the newspapers I read have no active plans to drop their print editions). There is also an observation that old concepts like “prime time” are gone in an era when users drive demand. As the video puts it, “monetizing [digital] demand is a struggle.” I still haven’t seen much in the way of robust new business models that sustain digital media that could support the staff of a major magazine or publisher.

After visiting the US National Archives in Washington D.C. last week, I found myself inspired. It is the only archive I have ever been anywhere in the world that had a line of people outside waiting to get in. Almost all of these people were interested in seeing a select few extremely well guarded documents; the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution and some other related materials. Though I didn’t get a chance to go inside, I also noted that the Archives had a shop with plenty of books on American history and reproductions of documents. The good news just keeps coming though. A few days ago, the US Archives started a YouTube channel (here is the Archives press release about it).  There are 21 videos there now, mostly focused on US Presidents (hmm, maybe Library and Archives Canada could do something like this for all Canadian Prime Ministers?). The channel looks well designed and I hope it expands.

I also learned this week, via Stephen Abram, that the United States Army is now allowing its soldiers to access social media websites like flickr, Twitter and Facebook. You can read about it on this WIRED article. This new openness does not apply to American bases oversees. The powers that be are viewing social media as a tool. The order authorizing this change states, “IOT support the intent of senior Army leaders to leverage social media as a medium to allow soldiers to “tell the Army story” and to facilitate the dissemination of strategic, unclassified information.” While promising, this statement partly misses the point. Social media is a two way road and trying to use it like broadcast media will not be all that successful. Still, it is early days and maybe they will come around. I wonder if this originated as an order from the Commander-in-Chief who is well known for his embrace of social media tools. After all, the new White House website is a fine piece of work. I wonder what their usage statistics are like?

I am home from the SLA conference in Washington D.C. and getting other projects ready. This week, I will be presenting at the SHARP conference. My presentation is based on my major research project from my Master of Arts degree: “The Manchester Public Library: A Pivotal Moment in British Print Culture.” It will be good to revisit the topic and present on it again. Besides that, I have the Net Neutrality Thesis to revise and some other writing projects to work on.

Through Twitter, I was notified about two blog posts that offer some notes on Colin Powell’s SLA speech. Here is a post that provides a brief series of notes while this post offers a more detailed reflection.

This evening, I attended the SLA Salutes! reception at the Library of Congress which was a delight. In addition to seeing a Gutenberg Bible printed on vellum, there were several exhibits of note. The display on Thomas Jefferson’s Library was well presented and informative. I knew that Jefferson had given his books to the Library after the “Congressional Library” was destroyed by in the Library of Congress. It actually turns out that he sold it for about $24,000 (which is something like $300,000 in modern terms). The staff at the Library also opened up the main Reading Room and let us browse around. It was an inspiring place to be in.

Crossposted to the SLA Blog.

When I left the opening session of the SLA conference yesterday, I left inspired. The event opened with a series of awards that recognize professionals in various fields for the numerous contributions. Prefacing each award, there was a “trailer” where interviews and other information on each award winner was displayed on the ball room’s large monitors. As a new member to SLA, I found this especially useful as it introduced me to many new people. Not only that, these video presentations benefited from some high quality production work. The award presentations exceeded my expectations and energized me about the profession.

The opening keynote address by Colin Powell, former U.S. Secretary of State, struck a counterpoint to the awards. While Powell did not speak about librarians directly, I still found the speech quite interesting. He covered everything from his many pursuits, his views on leadership and his efforts to modernize the U.S. State Department. His speech also showed that it is althogether possible to deliver a very good speech without PowerPoint or any other visual aids.

Reposted from the SLA Blog:

As a first time attendee to the SLA conference, I must say that I am much impressed. The conference is very well organized, there is free wireless (well done to the organizers!), and a conference canvas bag made from partly recycled materials. I have also enjoyed reading through the latest issue of Information Outlook which came in the conference bag. It was also fun to see flags of all the countries where SLA members hail from. Though the conference proper does not start until tomorrow, I decided to get started early by taking two courses.

Both courses I took today were interesting and left me full of ideas. One of these courses included a CD full of PDFs on knowledge management – which has been a great resource. It has also been really interesting to see the range of organizations where information professionals work. Today alone, I met librarians that work in pharmaceutical companies, government libraries, and statistical companies.

In addition to this blog, Twitter is full of activity as people write about the conference. If you’re curious to know more about me, please have a look at my blog.

This weekend and for much of next week, I will be guest blogging at the SLA Blog as the association’s annual conference takes place in Washington D.C. I will also be re-posting those posts here as well. I have most of my schedule prepared, but I am still working on some parts of it.

I’ve been learning Open Journal Systems (OJS) this week at the Digital Humanities Summer Institute. OJS is really best thought of as a customized content management system (CMS) for academic journals. Even though there are quite a few steps in setting it up, I can see the pay off it provides in better organizing workflow, version control of documents and communications. I’m taking plenty of notes and I can feel my confidence with the system increasing. From my perspective, there’s an opportunity for librarians to contribute here – libraries and librarians can serve as publishers, technical support, advisors and more. In addition to the tangible benefits, I am especially happy to see the rise of open access content that is encouraged by OJS.

Tomorrow, we are going to go over installation in greater detail, some PHP (which I am learning more about on my own, along with brushing up on my MySQL skills) and more administration. Already, I am wondering about how OJS (and other similar practices) may change the practice of publishing, tenure requirements and more.

While some may be unfamiliar with it, OJS is a major force in scholarly communication. According to the Public Knowledge Project (which produces and gives away OJS for free as an open source application), at least 2000 journals use it in fields such as law, banking, political science, applied mathematics and much more. Developed in North America, OJS is used around the world (+900 journals use it in South America and +300 in Africa). I’m curious to know what readers, editors and authors think of it and how it might compare against other methods (digital and otherwise) of managing journals.

In today’s Globe & Mail, there was an article about a conference being held at the University of Waterloo called Canada 3.0. Before I quote the Globe article, I have a brief word on Canada 3.0 – it is a major event that has drawn in cabinet ministers and a video of the keynote address is online. There is also an interesting reference to the somewhat mysterious “Canada Project” (an effort to make a great volume of Canadian content from archives and other places available online). There is a great opportunity here for information professionals to contribute in design, organizing systems, helping people find what they need and more.

‘Digital nation’ key to economic recovery, academics say (Globe and Mail, June 8, 2009)

At a time when governments are spending billions on ailing industries, roads and bridges, a group led by the University of Waterloo has grabbed the attention of politicians and corporate leaders with a pitch to make digital media a key part of the country’s economic-recovery plans. Organizers of a two-day conference that starts Monday in Stratford, Ont., are hoping to gain momentum for their push to make Canada a leader in the biggest technological revolution since the railway.

“We want to make Canada the first digital nation in the world,” said Ken Coates, dean of arts at the University of Waterloo. Getting there, he said, involves not just supporting high-tech tool makers, but understanding how the rising use of digital media is changing the way we communicate, do business and access news and entertainment.

Greetings from sunny Victoria, British Columbia. I am here to learn and participate in the Digital Humanities Summer Institute hosted at the University of Victoria. I am told that more than 150 people have registered, so it should be a good event. There is a big mix of people present which should lead to some interesting conversations.

Two small notes about Victoria so far. Coming in from the airport, I was greeted by a scene that broadly proclaimed the city as home to “Canada’s Pacific Fleet.” Indeed, several people on my airport shuttle said that they were going to naval base. Contrast that observation with the University of Victoria campus which is oddly well populated with rabbits. I’ve never seen such a thing. I wonder if there is some sort of interesting backstory to this? Perhaps an experiment in ecology?