At one point there’s a mention of illegal downloading of movies that briefly hints at the supplementary, bonus material found on DVD. Cerf suggests rather than having the material sit on a DVD to place it on the Web.

The first thought that came to my mind - and nothing original here - was the relationship between archival materials and much of that DVD bonus material, which are essentially documentaries.

Again, it raises the question that I often ponder when it comes to digital libraries: how do our digital collections support the development, the remixing (if you will), into new digital content?

The Adsense video units are very easy to setup:

1. Login to your adsense account
2. From the setup panel of your adsense account, authorize your YouTube account to be accessed by adsense. (You’ll need a YouTube account to place Adsense video units on your site. If you don’t have one, then you can sign up from within adsense).
3. Wait a while for adsense to authorize your account for video units.
4. Then it’s time to create the player. As with normal adsense units you can create several types of channels or, in this case, players.
5. Select the type of video content you want.
6. Then embed the code in your site.

Three sizes of video players are offered: 400 x 415, 500 x 515, 780 x 560

A particular challenge to bloggers and other web sites initially will be on deciding the best placement of the Adsense video player on the Web page. Even the smallest Adsense video unit player takes up a large chunk of real estate.

Bloggers solely interested in monetizing their sites likely will slap the adsense video unit player smack up at the top. But it seems like that approach might almost obliterate all the other content on the page.

For my sites I chose to place the smallest version of the player at the bottom of single post pages. You can see examples at 30 Things to do in Buenos Aires and Bus companies in Argentina.

You should be careful in placing the video player in the right file of your blog’s setup. In WordPress that will depend upon the structure of your theme. I placed my video link in the WordPress file single.php. Be careful that you don’t place the video player in the php file that will cause the player to be displayed below every post on your index page. I don’t think anyone wants to see 5 or so video players embedded in one page!

Another question is whether people even want to see a video player embedded on every page. It may depend upon how well YouTube/Google is able to target the content to your site. I’m going to have another posting on that topic. I will have to say that from my early viewing of the adsense video player that I am not pleased with the video content that is being targeted for my sties. It’s totally irrelevant even though I selected categories and keywords in the adsense player setup that should direct content to my sites’s topics. And there is a lot of content in YouTube on Buenos Aires, Argentina, South America travel, etc. But, I’m going to give it time. It also took the traditional Adsense ad units a while to start displaying relevant contextual ads. So, I assume the same is true with the video.

Update: After more than 24-hours, still no change of video content in the Adsense video unit. Still the same video, totally irrelevant to the category I chose. I’ve removed the Adsense video unit from my Buenos Aires blog. I’m keeping it on the El Sur blog, which has a different traffic pattern, for a few days to see if it changes.

Here’s a topic that came across my mind today: Web-based incomes, global opportunities, & changing educational expectations. Some of you know that I left librarianship to be an expat in Buenos Aires.

What I’m really curious about are teenagers with Web-based incomes and global opportunities. If you’re 17 and making $1k a month from some type of online income (blogging revenue, affiliate marketing, SEO work, etc), then you can afford to move to many parts of the world, particularly Latin America or southeast Asia and live very comfortably. Presumably, you would continue investing your time and energy into more entrepreneurial Web activities in order to diversify your revenue streams. In this scenario, for these kids, what is the role of college?

Sure there’s that wonderful idea of being a learned person (and I fully support that) but, seriously, any of us who have worked in higher education knows sadly that most students are in college to prepare them for the workplace, to earn a living, that’s their motivation.

But if you’re a teenager with already a good income and bright prospect for more, all without that college degree, then what’s your incentive to spend four or more years at a university?

If you’re a parent, what would you say to your teenager who just informed you that he’s skipping college, taking his Web-based income and moving to Buenos Aires or Thailand?

Over a ten year period of managing library technology, I learned some of these the hard way. Some are rudimentary, some are more subtle. I thought that I would share these items (not necessarily listed in any order) for others to take or leave, as they find useful:

1. Hire good people and stay out of their way.
2. Hire for aptitude, the ability to learn new skills and not just based on a person’s current capabilities.
3. Don’t expect every person to work the same way that you work.
4. Don’t make assumptions (remember the first three letters of that word).
5. Encourage systems staff to learn a new skill every 6 months.
6. Ensure that learning time is built into everyone’s work schedule.
7. Have a white board by the department door that staff can use to indicate if they’re out of the office, at a meeting, working on the 2nd floor, or at lunch.
8. Everything a person needs to know about technology can be found through reading a book or on the Internet.
9. No one is born knowing everything about technology.
10. A Unix wizard (or any other kind of techno wizard) is not someone who knows everything there is to know but someone who knows how to find what she needs to know when needed.
11. Make sure there is a backup plan for servers and desktops.
12. Backups of servers should be stored off-site, preferably with a data storage service and not in someone’s bedroom. Test the backups to make sure that files actually can be recovered and loaded onto the system again.
13. Desktop support is a critical function that must receive higher priority than any digital project.
14. Have a multiyear plan for upgrading, replacing computers throughout the library. Not planning this in advance is a huge oversight.
15. Providing the best desktop support will help gain support from others in the library for more exciting digital projects.
16. Occasionally, you may have to remind people that the library is not a hospital; lives will not be lost if a system crashes. But, if the OPAC or Web site goes down, make it a priority over everything else.
17. Follow the lead of the campus IT division.
18. Become friends and supporters of campus IT and not their adversary
19. Let campus IT handle the core functions, such as security and networking.
20. Encourage your staff to meet regularly with their counterparts in campus IT.
21. If campus IT has a standard configuration for desktops, then use it unless the library has extraordinary desktop support staff of its own.
22. But even if you use the campus IT desktop configuration, have your own dedicated desktop support staff who can respond immediately to problems within the library.
23. Use the campus e-mail system rather than an e-mail server managed entirely by the library. (Is any academic library still going it alone with their e-mail?)
24. If the campus has a centralized file storage service, then use it rather than having the library manage its own Windows/Novell file servers.
25. Consolidating certain services with campus IT then allows library systems staff to focus on technologies specific to the library.
26. Work hard to build collaborations with whatever academic technology center exists on campus.
27. Many academic departments will have a negative opinion of campus IT; the library can be a bridge between those two areas, liked and respected by both.
28. Remember that you are not in a competition. You are not competing with other computing groups on campus or with other libraries in the country. You’re just trying to provide the best library services to the faculty and students at your institution.
29. There are always new users.
30. The systems department exists to support the needs of the library, providing a support function to other library departments.
31. Develop a staff training plan for each person.
32. Find projects where staff can incrementally develop their skills.
33. Setup a developmental server, a sandbox.
34. At conferences spend more time in the exhibit hall speaking to vendors and other librarians than sitting in a dark room listening to a presentation that you can download from the Internet.
35. Invest in your own development, including using some of your own funds for travel so that you can attend more events. (Priceline is really useful for hotels).
36. Don’t always stay at the conference hotel; enjoy walking a few blocks from your hotel to the conference hotel so that you have a bit of time to appreciate the town you’re visiting.
37. Learn about project management but don’t obsess over project management tools.
38. Process is important but don’t let a process get in the way.
39. Old but faithful: Treat people the way you want to be treated.
40. Be prepared for your library director to have questions and new ideas whenever she returns from a conference.
41. Don’t ever let anyone tell you there is not money; there is always funding if you know how to ask for it.
42. Learn to say no.
43. The library director doesn’t want to see more than a 1 page report. Learn to summarize, write in bullet points, outlines that can be scanned quickly.
44. Don’t bring problems to the director, bring solutions.
45. Three of the most important people in the library: the director’s secretary, the business officer, and the person who orders equipment, software, supplies.
46. Learn the names of the senior university officials and what they look like.
47. Develop plans for strategic accomplishments, think in terms of 18 - 24 months.
48. Have an excellent understanding of the university’s budget cycle.
49. Know in which month the library director makes her case to the university administration for the following fiscal year’s budget. (Usually in January or February).
50. June and July is too late to be thinking up ideas for new initiatives in the upcoming academic year. (Prepare those proposals before the budget requests are due).
51. But, sometimes new ideas come along: it’s easier to get funding very early in the fiscal year, but don’t wait too long.
52. Around March always be prepared for the availability of end-of-yearing funding for one-time purchases.
53. In the 2nd half of the fiscal year recognize that the budget is tighter, so don’t make many unexpected requests. The administration will like you more for that.
54. Understand the difference between one-time and recurring costs.
55. Understand personnel costs, including the fringe percentage that is added to salary (often between 24% – 30%).
56. Prepare for budget presentations to the library management.
57. Present realistic budget requests but include “throw aways” since administrators always want to cut something from the budget. (Just don’t be extravagant and overload the request with things that are clearly not needed).
58. Be ready to explain the purpose of every item on a budget request.
59. Realize that your budget requests are not the only concerns of the library; you have to share the funding with other library departments.
60. The objectives and goals of the systems department follows those of the library, which follows those of the university.
61. Get a copy of the university’s strategic plan.
62. Try to get involved in the university’s strategic planning process.
63. Become a leader in the library’s planning process.
64. Meet regularly one-on-one (formally or informally) with every department head within the library.
65. Learn to bounce ideas off other department heads and managers before approaching the director (or assistant director).
66. Never make a proposal to the library management group before you already have acquired the support of two other department heads.
67. Old but useful: carefully choose which battles you want to fight.
68. Leadership comes from a person’s quality to inspire and motivate, not from one’s position.
69. Practice “leadership from behind.”
70. Don’t lead by intimidation.
71. Don’t refer to people who work for you as “my staff.” (They have names).
72. Don’t ever refer to yourself as someone’s boss, especially not in front of that person.
73. On the first day of work for a new employee on your staff, take him or her for lunch to a nice place that is off-campus. You pay.
74. On an employee’s first day, give him or her a tour of the library and introduce each person by name.
75. Listening is a very important skill.
76. Ensure that your staff have a good workspace, good chairs, furniture, and that there are always plenty of office supplies.
77. Reference is the most important department within the library; work to keep the head of reference on your side, regardless of your personal opinion of him.
78. No library can do everything. Carefully decide which services and technologies that you want to pursue and make those decisions in collaboration with other stakeholders in the library.
79. It only takes a couple of good people for a library to do remarkable things with technology.
80. Encourage the library to develop professional positions that takes the technologists out of the systems office and into other parts of the library.
81. Your authority has nothing to do with the number of people you supervise.
82. Foster awareness of digital technologies through regular seminars, presentations, or discussions to everyone working in the library.
83. Plan for redundant responsibilities among staff (the “in case someone gets hit by a bus” scenario).
84. Learn to let go, especially if you delegated a task to someone.
85. Not everyone will do a task the way you will have done it, but they will usually do a good job.
86. Some people just need more structured supervision than others and that’s okay.
87. Sometimes, talented employees need more structured supervision on some assignments than others, particularly if the tasks are in an area that is entirely new to the person. (Don’t fault him for that).
88. For some people, working in the library will simply be a job and not a career. Learn to accept that.
89. Help your colleagues understand the possibilities of technologies for developing new library services but also keep their expectations close to what can be accomplished.
90. Look for best practices at other institutions.
91. Work yourself out of a job. You know you’ve been successful when you’re no longer needed.
92. Don’t stress over organizational conflict.
93. Most organizational problems stem from miscommunications.
94. Staff sometimes will need to meet with you in order to vent, express their frustrations with a co-worker. That’s necessary but also encourage the person to think about the work at hand, the objectives and not personality issues.
95. Never make a decision or take an action based on hearsay; second-hand information is the most dangerous element in an organization.
96. We all are always learning how to do our jobs, even library directors and assistant directors. Don’t agonize over every word spoken by a library director. Sometimes, he is just thinking aloud.
97. Likewise, your staff will pay attention to every utterance you make and may at times misconstrue an innocent remark.
98. When socializing with your staff, remember that they never forget that you are their supervisor. So socialize but don’t expect them to be your buddy.
99. Read the Path of Least Resistance. Read it twice.
100. As a librarian you’re making a wonderful contribution to the world, but remember to find time for enjoying your own life.

XAMPP is also available for Linux and versions are in development for Mac OS X and even Solaris. As the documentation strongly states, XAMPP isn’t secure enough for a production environment and is only intended for development purposes. How long does it take to install on Windows? Let’s see…

With the installer version XAMPP is a 33 MB download, so that gives you time to read the documentation. On my connection the download took 3 minutes but there’s really not a lot to read.

The actual install was under 2 minutes. …. since I’m on a Spanish language version of Windows the installed location is C:\Archivos de programa\xampp … I guess that is “c:\Program Files\xampp” for most of you, rigth? I forget.

After installation the XAMPP Control pops up. At this point you need to be sure to have read the part about security. After configuring a couple of passwords you’re then ready to go.

So, just 15 minutes after beginning the download I now have mysql, php, phpmyadmin, apache, and a few other things all working fine on my Windows machine. Simple, I like that.

XAMPP also includes a little batch file that you can use to switch between PHP 5 and PHP 4. You have to stop the apache service first before running the batch file but the XAMPP control panel makes that easy.

Maybe it’s not all that difficult to install all these things individually anymore on Windows. It has been a while since I did that. But with XAMPP I don’t really see why anyone should bother if you just want a development machine. Unless, that is, you’re needing to work with a specific version of MySQL. The version supplied with XAMPP is 5.0.24a.

Of course, I always think that the best development environment is a developmental server that is similar to your production server (same OS, same configuration). But that’s not always a possibility.

I’m very fond of WordPress and my initial thinking was to figure out how to make it work for my needs. I particularly like the way that themes work in WordPress and the ease of designing, customizing the interface will be a factor in implementing all these sites.

And though I do have a dedicated server for all these sites I don’t want to have a hundred instances of WordPress. I would like to have one application installed that can manage sites over multiple domains.

Keeping WordPress in mind I looked at WordPress MU and Lyceum, which are both forks of WordPress designed for multiple users. There are some interesting aspects to those projects that require further examination.

I’ve also collected a number of URLs on this topic, particularly relating to the use of WordPress that I may later add to this post.

For my needs it would be even better to be able to manage these sites all from one admin interface since these will be sites all maintained by one company rather than a lot of different users unaffiliated with each other. So, this makes things a little more complicated.

Also, multilingual capabilities will be nice since some of these sites will be in English and Spanish while some also will be in French.

I started to broaden my search to other content management systems. Drupal immediately came to mind since it’s an impressive project. I thought about Joomla! but it doesn’t seem to support multiple sites from one installation. Seems like Drupal offers a good option for many of the tasks that I need. Will definitely be examining it closer.

But I also decided to think about other CMS options and headed over to the CMS matrix, which lists hundreds of content management systems. I didn’t know that there were so many…not sure why the world needs so many, particularly the ones that costs > $75,000 but, hey, whatever …

A tool that seems very attractive to me is Typo3, particularly for its multi-lingual support and a number of other options. Since I’m less familiar with Typo3 I’m going to be spending some time exploring it. The drawbacks that I gather so far is that it has a high learning curve (no big worry to me) and it is very resource intensive (again, no worry here since I have a dedicated server for this project). Coming next, more info about Typo3….

There are many features to Trac that make it suitable for project management. A wiki is built into Trac but the real star is Trac’s ticket system.

Categories (like bugs, tasks, enhancements) can be assigned to each ticket and each ticketed issue can be associated with a specific component of the software or project. A version and release number also can be tied to each ticket.

There a number of way to view reports for the ticket system, all of which generate a very nice color-coded list of tickets. The roadmap/milestones view is my favorite feature since it allows for an excellent overview of a project’s progress and future plans.

Another default report is the timeline that provides a listing of all activity within the Trac system on a daily basis.

The query tool needs some more work to make it more flexible but Trac is still in the very early stages of development.

For programmers Trac interfaces with Subversion for code management and it’s possible to browse the code of an SVN repository from within Trac. If you want to use Trac just for issue tracking then it’s possible to configure it without the SVN environment.

The documentation on using Trac could be a lot better but that should improve over time. The mailing lists at the Trac site are actually full of a lot of useful information and they’re now available through Google Groups, which mean an RSS feed.

While Trac is still in an early release the system has been under development for some time. However, Trac can be a pain to install. For now I recommend it only for the adventurous but others should keep an eye on it.

Actually, the complexity of the installation varies depending upon the platform. Oddly, I found that installing Trac on a Windows machine to be relatively easy. Installing Trac on my preferred Unix environment was very frustrating since there are a lot of dependencies that also need to be installed (Python, ClearSilver, SQLite, and a number of Python utilities) in addition to Subversion if you want to use that.

Look to see if a package is available for your platform. There’s a good Trac package for RedHat Enterprise Linux 4 that you should definitely use if that’s your system. I skipped this package the first time and tried installing everything individually only to spend a day and half with something that finally didn’t quite work. Then I went and grabbed the package and was up and running in a short time. That was my mistake, sigh.

An increasing number of plugins are being developed for Trac and some are essential, particularly for administration such as WebAdmin. See Trac Hacks for a good source of plugins. Since Trac plugins are Python eggs, those experienced with Python will have an easier time getting things setup. It’s not difficult but for someone new to Python then it’s going to take a little longer.

There are many public trac implementations out there but Trac also can be easily hidden behind http authentication. That’s how I’m using it so I can’t point you to my implementation. However, one of the best uses of Trac is by the developers of WordPress. That’s where I first learned about Trac. Head over to http://trac.wordpress.org/ and have fun browsing around all the development swirling around WordPress. (Once you’re at the site, select the roadmap or view tickets tabs).

Another public Trac that shows how the interface can be slightly customized is by the people behind CakePHP: https://trac.cakephp.org/

Finally, I just decided to check if anyone in libraryland was using Trac and via Google found this excellent use of Trac by the folks at OhioLINK for the Digital Resource Commons project: http://drc-dev.ohiolink.edu/. It looks like they’re using Trac and its wiki engine not only for issue tracking but also to maintain the project’s web site.

I’ve already seen my own productivity improve with the use of Trac. It’s going to be interesting to see how this system develops in the future.

Update: Here’s another public Trac implementation from the good folks at ibiblio.org … trac for Lyceum, a multi-blog derivative of WordPress.

Update: Another nicely done public Trac implementation: Max Media Manager, an open source ad server based on phpAdsNew. This site also uses the wiki within Trac to serve as the web site for the entire project.

In some of my recent consulting work I’ve finally had to come to terms with Plesk, a Web-based tool with the aim of simplifying system administration. For the person not very experienced with unix then Plesk can be an amazing tool. For the experienced unix sys admin then Plesk can be downright annoying.

Plesk is often supplied with dedicated server accounts. I certainly understand why Web hosting provider supply Plesk. It really can do a lot without having to learn a lot of the arcane methods of command-line unix. And Plesk can be removed from a system, if one like. That would be my preference but I’m consulting in a production environment where the tech staff are not well versed in unix. So, Plesk will stay.

In future postings I will try to mention some of the differences that Plesk bring to unix that may be a surprise if you haven’t used a Plesk-managed system before. Many of the most commonly used Web applications are tightly integrated with Plesk and work somewhat differently.

An example:

Try logging into mysql as the ‘root’ user…should be easy…done that a thousand times…but a plesk mysql has no account with the name of ‘root’. The root mysql account is instead called ‘admin’ and it shares the same password as the plesk admin account. So, if you change the Plesk admin account, then that also changes the mysql admin account.

Fortunately (or not), Plesk stores its admin password in a very noticeable place if you have root access — just look at /etc/psa/.psa.shadow and there’s the password in plain text.

Also, Plesk creates a unix account with the name ‘admin’ that also has the same password.

Considering the integration of so many apps with Plesk I’m reluctant to upgrade an application, like even proftpd, for concern that it will break the configuration maintained by Plesk - sigh.

An interesting side note about Plesk from Wikipedia is that while the company selling Plesk is located in Virginia, the technical staff is in Siberia. …that’s okay…can’t say anything about that since I’m down in Argentina myself.

More adventures with Plesk to follow …..

I stumbled across it last week when I was looking for a way to clear the http authentication without having to close and restart my browser. The toolbar has a menu for that, plus dozens of more features.

The toolbar is great for analyzing web pages, particularly if you’re trying to figure out how a particular page is structured. The toolbar makes it easy to see all the relevant information about positioning, images, tables, etc. Definitely a fun tool to add to your firefox.

With the current conflict in the middle east and knowing that Portman is Jewish, I thought that it might be something related to the crisis between Israel and Lebanon. But, no, it was a story dated March 26, more than four months ago, about her movie “V for Vendetta.”

Of course, the page does have a link to the side to a video clip that says it’s about Natalie Portman’s views on terrorism. Is it? It’s a minute long clip of a longer interview locked away in the premium video services.

A lot of the ABC News site seems to be all about getting you to click on the links and convince you to pay out for the premium service. Of course, that’s the online business but it’s rather annoying. I’ve always thought as the major networks as commodities when it came to their news offerings. If I choose a premium service with one of these networks, I’m only going to select one….which one?

CNN - first I clicked on the button for paid premium service. Not what I want even at $2.95 a month, though I’m sure that price is low enough to get a lot of people to sign up.

Then I went to the non-paid service. The video displayed but no sound. I selected another news item which gave me a message that my Windows Media Player needed to be upgraded to version 9. So I click on the link CNN gives me to download the latest update. I get an error message saying that Firefox can’t connect to the page. Sorry, CNN, too much trouble, you lose, I’m going to the next news service, bye.

But, wait, just to see what would happen, I selected the option to proceed to the CNN video without downloading the latest Windows Media Player. It’s not bad but not great. But CNN warned me that it might not be so great without the newer player. After a slow start the audio was fine. The video wasn’t continuous, more like a series of still images but perhaps that was because of the codec. At least, it wasn’t jerky. The image quality was quite good. So, I’ll try it a little more and see if I can ever get that latest download from Microsoft.

ABC News: they have their premium news service, also. Sign up is rather complicated, a lot of options. Then it says that the premium service is available free to subscribers of the “flowing services“. What the hell is a flowing service? Is that some new net jargon that I’ve missed or did they misspell “following”. The services listed are comcast, aol, bellsouth, sbcyahoo, verizon.

I check into ABC news site several times a week but how many times are they going to keep highlighting the Sheryl Crow talks about her cancer video?

So, now for the free video from ABC. The player tells me to download Flash player 8 or above, sigh. Why can’t watching all online video be as easy as watching YouTube?

Ok, so I follow the link from the ABC site to the Adobe site where I download the installer for Flash player 9. I’m excited….Shit, I have to close Firefox to install the player…need to save this post you’re now reading in WordPress…can’t Adobe install the player, restart Firefox automatically and return you to all the same pages and tabs that you had open? Seem like I’ve seen some installers that do that, no?

It’s later in the day and I now see a link to the ABC World News webcast. There’s a 15 second commercial before the webcast…ok…this looks pretty good. I’ll try to remember watching.

The link for the RSS feed is more prominent on the ABC World News page than at CNN. The feed also includes enclosure tags for the video and not just news headlines. I’m going to monitor both the CNN and ABC news feeds for a few days and see which one I find more useful.

I like having the less than half-hour nightly world news program available as a webcast. While there are a lot of individual videos on these news site, I (being lazy) prefer a package. Yes, that limits the news that I learn about but I don’t have to spend time choosing. Also, on the individual segments it’s hard to know whether those are current items or segments that have been online for a week or more.

I’ll look at some of the other news services in part 2 in a few days or so. Meanwhile, I’ll see how ABC and CNN work for me.

On many occasions I hear about breaking stories from entries on blogs, just regular, ordinary blogs where someone thought it relevant to post about something happening in the world. More than once, I’ve seen something on a blog and went to a news site for more info only to find that nothing was available. I ended up going to Google news for the latest info.

Perhaps I just haven’t figured out how to customize the offerings of online news so that it works for me. Indeed, writing this post made me think about going to check the CNN page just to finally notice that CNN does offer headlines via RSS. I’m going to try that and see what I think. I’m also going to examine some of the online news sites closer to see if I can a good solution that keeps me informed. I’m a news junky and always watched a lot of news on TV back in the U.S. But, somehow the online world just hasn’t yet satisfied me in the same way even with all the online video that’s available.

Anyway, I feel like I have to go searching for the best online news solution rather than having good options easily presented to me. I’m lazy and so are a lot of people. So, it does seem like the online news services have more work to do.

I’ll post more on this topic as I explore the options.

But what if the author doesn’t want to engage in a dialogue with readers? Of course, no one will force anyone to do so. I suspect that when a lot of authors finish writing a book, then they’re finish with that topic. They want to move on to something else, research another subject. They may be sick to death and be repulsed by having to moderate comments.

Yet, we all know that most scholarly books are never read. I’m a librarian and I’ve seen those circulation statistics. So, why would the number of readers of networked books be any higher? These online books are now novelties and attract a lot of attention but that always will not be the case. Sure, there will be some Internet trolls but when thousands of networked books appear every year, then the readership for each work is likely to be low and manageable. Authors may be thrilled to learn that there is actually someone reading their writings.

Still, I suspect that some authors will not want to take part in a dialogue about their networked book. In that case, can it still be called a networked book if the author doesn’t participate in the discussion? How do readers respond to a networked book if the author is not responsive? Do the readers then view that specific networked book with less validity? Or, does the networked book then take on a life of its own, fostering a new community that is interlinked with other networked books and researchers exploring the same field of study? What happens to a networked book when the author dies?

Undoubtedly, as with printed books, the dialogue resulting from the networked book will go on long after the author’s involvement, either from lack of interest or physical incapacity.

I also suspect that there will be some authors who will get so carried away with the ongoing discourse surrounding a networked book that they never get around to completing another. (Will some futuristic tenure committee set quotas to prod junior faculty into producing a greater number of networked books?) Or, can one’s lifetime of research be embodied in an ever changing, evolving networked structure that has no analogy to books?

For some authors there may be a point where a particular networked book becomes so popular that an author may have to step away from the dialogue in order to pursue other research. In those cases, will the networked book site be closed to comments and considered complete or will the site continue growing without the participation of the original author? Perhaps there are opportunities for graduate assistants to take over the moderation of the dialogue.

I like the way that the book is structured as a Web site that allows dialogue and feedback at the paragraph level. You can view a paragraph of text and then see the comments in a sidebar - neat! There’s also a discussion forum. I’m also impressed that the site is built as a customized theme on top of Wordpress. While the graphic design is rather bland and the color scheme seems more appropriate for a pre-teen girl, it’s still a good effort.

I really like the way that you can subscribe to a feed and receive five paragraphs a day. It’s great how the feed starts from the beginning on the day that you subscribe rather than forcing you to go back and catch up with everything. Of course, it’s not a blog but it makes very good use of the way that I read blogs (i.e., bloglines). I would like to see this approach adopted in other projects that have a lot of text. Yeah, I always mean to go back and read those fifty page PDF documents that I download but, somehow, never get around to it. So, getting a reasonably sized daily delivery into my news reader means that I’m more likely to read (or, at least, skim) most of GAM3R 7H30RY.

The writing style of GAM3R 7H30RY seems a little hyper, as if I’m reading some Wired magazine article but maybe it will get better. One thing about presenting books on the Web in this manner is that you don’t have the usual conventions of a book’s print layout that informs you about how you should think about this book: is it a serious academic study or is it a breezy opinion piece.

My biggest problem, and maybe it’s only my problem, is that I still don’t know how to read this type of online book. With a printed book of non-fiction I take the classic approach to reading the blurb on the dust jacket, then the table of contents, then skimming the book from cover to cover to get a full for the text, perhaps dropping in to read a few sections closely. Then I go back to the beginning and read the intro or first chapter.

I’m sure that someone can argue that you can take the same approach here. I tried that with GAM3R 7H30RY and it just didn’t quite work for me. To their credit there is a section labeled “How to read this book” on the GAM3R 7H30RY site but I didn’t locate that until I’ve used the site a few times. Of course, users hardly ever look at those type of pages anyway.

Of course, we’re at the very early stages of placing such books online (and I do consider them books even if they’re not in print). We’re in the very early stages of defining the conventional structures for networked books. Yet, one of the benefits and possible drawbacks of networked books is that there may never be a universally defined structure as there is in print. But, I suspect one will develop even if it’s not the best structure. Just as accepted structures, however flawed, developed early on for Web sites, the same will happen for networked books. For that reason, it’s very important that there be a lot of discussion about these issues in the early stages.

Computer games often have a high learning curve (at least for those of us who are not 12). When I play a new game I often have to use the tutorial to get started. Again, though, I notice that isn’t true when I observe a 12 year old use the same game for the first time. But with games, learning to master the interface, the controls, movement and the weaponry are an essential part of playing computer games. I’m not sure that we want to require readers to learn navigational structures for each new networked book. So, it would be nice to see what features and functionality works and what doesn’t. At the same time, I would hate to see people locked into a box. I suspect that in the future there might be a career for networked book designers just as there is for print book designers.

I know that the Institute for the Future of the Book is working on something called Sophie (PDF) that appears to have some promise in developing networked books. I’m looking forward to seeing what they come up with.

One of the problems in reading GAM3R 7H30RY is the ease of commenting and providing feedback. What is that a problem? Isn’t that one of the great features of networked books?

I find myself wanting to respond, to comment, too quickly because of the way that GAM3R 7H30RY is structured and presented. As I read I realize that I may be forming conclusions too quickly, that I’m only reading a section of a chapter, that I may not have grasped the author’s full argument. In these bit-size chunks, it’s difficult to retain the context of the author’s argument. I’m concerned that if I make a comment on paragraph 003 that at paragraph 005 I will have realized the foolishness of my thoughts as the author expanded his explanation. But, I suspect some readers will jump in and start blasting away comments as they go.

Indeed, in the comments to the first chapter of GAM3R 7H30RY, this is the case when someone makes a comment and GAM3R 7H30RY author McKenzie Wark responds, “You might want to read on a bit more and then decide if i’m missing the point or not.” In another comment, just two paragraphs latter, Wark replies to another reader, “You’re only a bout 900 words in to the book. The ’stereotype’ as you put it is about to get flipped around.” So, perhaps people should refrain from comments before reading the entire book. But, that seems to bring up a serious problem with presenting books in this fashion. Or, at least, with the ways that one reads such a book. Or, the way one writes such a book. At this point, I find myself wanting to read the entire text before commenting on specific points at the GAM3R 7H30RY site.

I look forward to continue reading GAM3R 7H30RY and applaud McKenzie Wark and the Institute for the Future of the Book in their efforts. My criticism (recognizing that it is easier to criticize than create) is simply based on trying to think about what does and doesn’t work in this environment. We’re still at the very early stages of learning to read and write in this medium.

In my previous post I mentioned my time away from massive doses of technology this year. During that time I did sense that my own thinking was deeper and clearer than when I’m spending hours & hours a day online.

I suspect that it’s because I was more focused on thoughts and ideas rather than absorbing new information or learning the mechanics of a technological tool. I also was only focused on only one or two topics rather than the onslaught of ideas that come to me online. Indeed, now is such an example. I should be working on the draft of my novel rather than addressing this topic, but here I am.

I still find that my best, most creative writing is done with pen and paper. The longer process forces me to think about each paragraph, each sentence, each word. When writing with a word processor I really have to force myself to slow down. It’s too easy too ramble. Obviously, my blogs are always written not by pen otherwise my postings would be much more concise. Also, with word processors it’s too distracting knowing that Firefox is so nearby.

I think that indepth learning can take place with technology and it’s certainly an almost necessary way to engage today’s students. Yet, being away from technology forces us to slow down. I’m not sure exactly what but there does seem to be something positive about being offline when it comes to learning and thinking. (Can’t believe I’m saying this since I, of all people, am no critic of teaching & learning with technology). Or, perhaps, we just haven’t yet developed critical forms of introspective intellectual engagement in the digital environment. (Not sure what that last sentence means, if anything; I need to go offline with pen and paper to think about that more fully).

Part of the enjoyment of this period is becuase I’ve been spending more time thinking and writing, not reading many books, many blogs, or blogging much myself. I will be spending more time online now but I’m going to approach it differently, I think.

I have over 250 feeds in my bloglines, though I only really look at a handful regularly. The others are just there to remind me that someday I might be interested in looking at those topics closer.

I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s okay not attempting to keep track with everything that is happening on the wide range of topics that interest me. It’s more important, for me at least, to think about what I am reading, its impact on the areas that interest me - libraries, teaching, learning, research.

When blogging does one need to read a lot of blogs? Does reading a lot of blogs and commenting in short, quick bursts make one a better blogger, more of a participant in the dialogue of bloggers? Some blogs exist to keep others informed about a topic, other blogs exist as a tool for expressing detailed thoughts on a subject. Blogs don’t need to be useful to anyone other than the writer.

Lately, because I’m researching a specific topic I find myself looking at more blogs that I find via search engines than the ones in my bloglines . A long entry that someone wrote a year ago can be more interesting than the current, short take on a hot topic.

The other day I came across a quote by Borges: “It is not the reading that matters, but the rereading.”

Perhaps what matters is not the blogging, reading the blogs, keeping up-to-date with everything, but simply reflecting about what we do read. And writing - whether it’s on paper or a blog - is a way of organizing our thoughts. Of course, this is nothing new, most educators know that it’s the thinking that really matters.

Jon Udell stresses the limited accessibility of podcasts to non iPod/iTunes users. More importantly, he talks about the importance of doing more with the course feeds than just listening: linking, tagging, blogging, playlisting….That is the kind of intellectual activity that Stanford wants to encourage, isn’t it?.

CogDog is skeptical of iTunes U also but points out the reality of many institutions:

On the other hand, our community college has NO infrastructure in place for every day mortal faculty to put rich media online. We have no streaming servers, no podcast publishing platform available for all of Maricopa. We are not Michigan, Stanford, MIT. And we are considered more advanced with technology for community colleges. The current strategy is dumping video and audio files on the web server (and at some of our colleges they have small disk quotas). So the option that Apple may host stuff, a lot of stuff, for free, and more than just lectures, but student work, digital video, is tantalizing. I cannot fully ignore it. Yet.

Gardner Campbell critically examines the perceived merits of iTunes U: “wouldn’t be nearly so concerned about iTunes U if I were more confident that folks in higher education saw it for what it is, and if Apple’s iTunes U campaign weren’t so much of a piece with its larger campaign to make truth, virtue, individualism, and innovation into corporate brands.”

D’Arcy Norman writes a very pragmatic posting that the alternatives to iTunes U, at this time, are not so simple.

Tama’s eLearning Blog points out that iTunes U could be a useful service but shouldn’t be the only hosted service. Tama also picks up on Udell’s concerns:

iTunes U is thus somewhat at odds with the ease that a lot of social software provides when having conversations across posts, podcasts and other digital flotsam. Sure, that might be a good thing for some people (I know that locking podcasted lectures behind a university-specific interface will ease the concerns of many academics about the intellectual property), but it’s also important for any university podcast system to be linkable and accessible for content that they want to make publicly available (also an important part of good university PR). iTunes U doesn’t cover all our needs, but it can be part of the podcasting solutions. Just not the only part. And, as always, we should be working toward finding/thinking/creating the next step…

In a postscript to iTunes U Gardner asks and answers, “Will institutions, especially starved-for-cash public schools, be willing to fund home-grown open alternatives when they can make money on a home-branded, outsourced, turn-key operation like Apple’s? I doubt it.” In a comment to this posting, Brian Alexander asks a legitimate question: “how come academia hasn’t come up with this on our own?”

Coming from a totally different direction, Mills Kelly at edwired writes about the increasing number of history courses being podcasted and the concerns of some teachers:

When I talk to colleagues about podcasting and ideas like iTunesU, some are intrigued, but most worry that podcasting a class will lead to significant declines in classroom attendance. After all, if a student can listen to/watch class without attending, why would he (or she)?

This anxiety is important, but not for the reason given by those feeling anxious. What’s really at stake here is a bigger problem…if students will choose to skip class and just listen/watch, then isn’t there something wrong with the class? If our classes are so dull that a student might just as well access them while on the treadmill or the bus, then I submit it’s time to teach differently.

Technology planning
I have my doubts as to whether iTunes U is the right platform for universities to adopt in their long-term use of digital media. (Indeed, that’s an understatement). iTunes U is both the beneficiary and result of technology planning (or the lack of it) in higher education.

In many cases, the decision to use iTunes U will come from a senior administrator who had a persuasive visit from Apple reps. (I’m reminded of being at an institution when a VP in computing made the decision that the university would use the IBM Digital Library Software to create a digital library; no input from the library, the decision was just based on good sales tactics by IBM).

Yet, many of us also have been on year-long technological task forces and planning groups in universities that didn’t result in anything. Universities have the bad tendency to overly examine a topic, developing the best conceptual solution, writing a grant to develop the grandest standards-based technical solution, and - five years later - still be no further ahead.

Technology planning is largely about deciding where an institution needs to focus its resources. If anything, iTunes U can get an institution kick-started down the path of distributing digital audio content.

The danger of iTunes U is that university administrators might become complacent and assume that Apple will solve all of higher ed’s issues with digital media. Universities, especially those adopting iTunes U, should be actively examining the long-term future that digital media will play in teaching, learning, and research. Yep, that sounds like one of those infamous technology planning task forces. But the discussion needs to be taking place within our institutions. And that discussion needs go beyond just podcasting course lectures, that’s only the beginning. There’s all sorts of content, both audio and video, that universities should be developing. There are all sorts of uses of that content that universities should be exploring.

As Udell asked, there needs to be more discussions about the types of intellectual activity that can be facilitated through digital media; more specifications as to what technological capabilities are needed to realize those activities. Maybe iTunes U will evolve, maybe Apple will eventually abandon it. Regardless, the distribution of digital media content created within higher education and the use, linking, and re-mixing of that content is not solved solely through iTunes U.

(I’ve written before about Seaman and his thoughts on the malleability of content).

Seaman points out that the next generation of library services also is not all about technology. A lot of it depends upon changes in library policies and the behavior of users.

I do strongly agree that what Seaman calls malleable content is one of the most important issues facing academic and research libraries. Indeed, rather than continuing to massively digitize collections, as much effort needs to be put into making that digitized content more useful. As Seaman says, “while mass is good and necessary, making that content malleable when it hits our teachers and scholar is necessary.”

In the podcast Seaman also talks about DLF initiatives such as Aquifer, OAI, DOI, and electronic resource management.

people with the requisite skills to work with faculty, to work with researchers, to create the kind of digital architecture where massive amounts of information, multimedia information, can be brought together and queried most effectively for the discovery of new knowledge, so it-s a pretty complex set of issues that converge on this term.

Henry points out the need for national coordination in cyberinfrastructure developments, particularly across disciplinary boundaries – even across the humanities, sciences, and social sciences. “Needs of scientists, humanists overlap quite a bit…rather than have disaggregated activity going on, a more central approach on campus and nationally to these shared interests.”

While agreeing that there is a strong legacy of publishing printed books in the humanities, he states that “many disciplines will soon become completely dependent upon digital resources. These resources are creating different strategies, different questions posed.”

He points out that there’s the opportunity for libraries to continue working more collaboratively in order to develop national (I would say, international) digital libraries that can be federated.

Finally, Henry points out that a weakness of libraries is their isolation from scholarly societies and the isolation of librarians on campus as a separate group. Henry calls for more programmatic integration into scholarly societies. That’s an interesting approach. Librarians should certainly be attending the scholarly conferences in their disciplines rather than just attending library-related conferences.

Also, unfortunately, it seems that at some campuses the academic librarians are still so focused on integration simply through giving librarians faculty status and tenure, which definitely is not the solution.

As most librarians know, information literacy only really comes about through being integrated into assignments like this, ones that focus on research and writing skills. What’s key to the assignment that Mills talks about is that it shows how digital media, along with personalized topics, can be a motivating factor in a student’s learning.