On this episode of Spark: Library Hacking, Niche Publications, and Enlisting Online Influencers. Click below to listen to the whole show, or download the MP3 (runs 54:00).
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 54:25 — 49.9MB)
You can also listen to individual stories below.
Book Release as Political Campaign
Baratunde Thurston is a comedian and author, as well as the web and politics editor for The Onion. His first book How to be Black will come out at the end of January, and he has an interesting approach to marketing it. He has amassed an advance street team of volunteers – volunteers he vetted for their social media influence, and has now sent forth to campaign for him and his book. (Runs 14:08)
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Living With Transmedia
These days, it’s not enough to simply watch a TV show. You’re asked to follow the show on Facebook and Twitter, download the companion app for your smartphone, and buy tickets to the touring stage show when it visits your town. These techniques are sometimes called “transmedia” and Steve Rubel, the executive vice president of Global Strategy and Insights for the PR company Edelman, talks about how to manage time and attention in a transmedia world. (Runs 7:08)
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Hacking the Library
Jon Kalish brings us the latest DIY trend: hackerspaces popping up at public libraries across North America. He’ll tell us why the re-purposing of public libraries is revolutionizing the way we think about libraries, turning them into places where we can make things. (Runs 8:13)
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Library Innovation
According to David Weinberger, libraries have access to huge amounts of information that they’re simply not making use of. David is the co-director of the Harvard Library Innovation Lab, and two projects he’s working on, ShelfLife and LibraryCloud, are designed to change the way we find and access library information. (Runs 8:46)
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Niche Subscriptions
Cathi Bond is here to talk about the trend of niche publications – having a subscription that’s not to a magazine, but to actual physical objects that come in the mail. It’s a different, analog approach to customization. Hyper-curated almost. And Cathi and Nora wonder if it’s an example of a post-digital fetishization of artifacts. (Runs 7:08)
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As I was listening to Spark today, I was working with an antique sock knitting machine. I have books to help me, very much a niche market,and self published by the authors, and the internet has myriad videos to help me thru many of the problems working with my cranky, but loveable machine.
Wow, I didn't know there was any such thing as an antique sock knitting machine. Is there a community of practitioners that's built up around it, in addition to the authors?
I think Steve Rubel missed the point when you asked him about how TransMedia strategies will affect literature. His comments about reinterpretation are true, but I felt you were asking about 'pre-interpretation' if I may coin a word. How will playing to TransMedia audiences affect the the way books get written and what they are written about? Don't get me wrong. Great literature will undoubtedly find a voice in new media. But I hope those quiet, reflective souls, who help us look deeply into things by standing very still, do not get lost in the binary blur.
During the show on Vermont Public Radio, 12.17.11 Nora went into a LA juice bar. There she used an app to pay using her smart phone. I cannot fine this app. Can you help? Dr. P
Hi Philip, Hmm, that would have been during this show, but we didn't air a segment like that. I wonder if it's possible that you heard a different show that airs before or after us?
Sorry I am confused. Now that you mention it wasn't your show it was on Marketplace Money with Tess V. Thanks for the reply and Happy Holiday. Dr. P
While Library Cloud seems to take advantage of new opportunities to fuse information from a variety of sources, it's an oversimplification to suggest that libraries have not been using their system logs as sources of management information. The capability of ranking books by usage frequency, for example, has been around since the early 1980s. The Markham-based Geac system, for instance, provided a report-writing language called GLUG, which allowed libraries to extract a variety of management information from their circulation, acquisitions, and cataloguing systems.
Interestingly, the "look left – look right" function, which simulates browsing a shelf, was introduced in the 1980s by an Edmonton based library automation vendor, in a product called Molli, back in the 1980s. Of course, that system just allowed people to look at descriptions of books or movies etc., but by the 1990s, integrated library systems allowed people to display photos of the covers, etc. as well as links to the contents when available.
Libraries have actually been pushing the envelope for decades. Quietly perhaps. When computing was mostly about numbers, libraries were thinking about texts and a/v content, and lobbying computer companies to provide the required functionality.
Thanks for this episode, I really enjoyed it, especially the last story about physical things and how you should appreciate them. In today's world it is so easy to make things digital, but to go out of ones way to make something physical…just because, is nice.
This episode did inspire me to make a blog post as well…The physical that I appreciate in my life, is my bicycle. Thanks for the post, here's mine: http://kellyhays.ca/blog/enjoy-physical-your-life
Another great episode, thanks Nora+team
@hayskelly hoorah for bikes!