Daily Thoughts 01/15/2015

Daily Thoughts 01/15/2015

I checked the library Twitter and Facebook this morning.

January 15, 2015 Metro Conference

I attended the 2015 Metro New York Library Council Conference on January 15, 2015.  It was at Baruch College.  I am a member of My Metro.  It has proved to be a very useful membership.  I renewed my membership today.  The first speaker was Siva Vaidhyathan who talked about the role of libraries in the future information economy focusing on Google and other large players.  He mentioned a new book coming out called Bibliotech Why Libraries Matter Even More in the Age of Google by John Paltry.  He also talked about how the big companies want to be our personal operating system with driverless cars, reminders on our cell phones, and embedded computer chips in our appliances.

It was mostly new faces at the conference.  I went to  was Brooklyn Book Match taking Readers Advisory Online http://www.bklynlibrary.org/bookmatch They talked about creating custom booklists based on patron requests.  This is also being done in Denver Public Library and  Seattle Public Library.  I found the idea quite interesting.  There were numerous lists in the catalogs of these libraries by topic.

I went to the second half of Towards a National Digital Network An Update from DPLA (Digital  Public Library of America) and ESDN (Empire State Digital Network).  The main focus was on metadata and describing digital content.  There was an acknowledgment that these networks were seeking public domain digital information.  

I took a short break.  The lunch was excellent and the coffee was good.  I only saw a few people that I recognized from the New York Librarians Meetup. The next session I went to was the NewYork Digital Humanities Group.  This focused on digital projects connected to the humanities. http://nycdh.org/  

The last program which I went to was called Member Driven Community Focused An Update on Metro’s Services.  They seem to be very focused on digitization.

I had a drink of cider after the conference where there was a short after party at the Churchill Tavern.  I got to talk to a few people from the conference.  It was pleasant.  

On the way home, I finished reading Tesla,  A Portrait with Masks. I read a little bit about how Tesla was involved with the Electrical Experimenter a magazine supported by Hugo Gernsback who was famous for publishing the first science fiction magazine.

Web Bits

The Dictionary in the Digital Age
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2015/01/merriam_webster_dictionary_what_should_an_online_dictionary_look_like.html