We’ve been working with the brilliant Dan Brickley all summer (he’s very modest, so now I’ve embarrassed him) trying to figure out how to use all available metadata to slot Web content into library categorization schemes automagically. For example, if we include in our collection—or, more to the point, if the DPLA includes in its collection—library-worthy material such as TED talks, is there a way in which we could automatically categorize those talks within the general mix of library items? We’d like to be able to do this at scale, even if roughly.

Read more of "Dan Brickley's Taxonomy of Everything"

This is a montage-y video of snippets from various library folk (including users) here at Harvard addressing aspects of the library’s present and future. We put it together as the opener at the first in a year of public conversations about the future of libraries.

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Soo Young Rieh is an associate professor at the University of Michigan School of Information. She recently finished a study (funded in part by MacArthur) on how people assess the credibility of sources when they are just searching for information and when they are actually posting information. Her study didn’t focus on a particular age or gender, and found [SPOILER] that we don’t take extra steps to assess the credibility of information when we are publishing it.

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We’re really really really pleased that the Digital Public Library of America has chosen two of our projects to be considered (at an Oct. 21 open plenary meeting) for implementation as part of the DPLA’s beta sprint. We worked insanely hard all summer to turn our prototypes for Harvard into services suitable for a national public library. We’re proud of what we accomplished, and below is a link that will let you try out what we came up with.

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Listen: 20:46

(Also in ogg)

How can libraries use the power of metadata—those little molecules of information that help describe the greater work—to help users get more out of their search for resources?

Read more of "Library Lab/The Podcast 008: The Molecule of Data"

Listen: 22:28

(Also in ogg)

With the web, people are reading more than ever before you could say. But what are we reading? Likely it’s all short form: blog posts, tweets, status updates. They’re words, but it’s not exactly literature.

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First, an email from Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive about Michael S. Hart

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We’ve had the pleasure of working with Dan Brickley this summer on a spectacularly difficult and interesting project, trying to figure out how to associate content from the Web with the sorts of categories used by libraries. In this podcast, Dan reflects on some of the general issues facing librarians trying to make Web-based distributed collections navigable, and how much hope we should have for a future of Linked Data. (I apologize for the sound quality. I recorded it from Skype, and without the expert help of the magnificent Dan Jones, the usual producer of our podcasts.)

Click to play: Dan Brickley on cataloguing the Web

Listen: 19:16

(Also in ogg)

Some might assume that libraries and museums have outlived their purpose. When every book and archive can be recreated and reinterpreted digitally to create an incredible user experience, how is the physical and human infrastructure of the institution still necessary?

Read more of "Library Lab/The Podcast 006: From Brick and Mortar to 1s and 0s"

Listen: 25:54

Also in ogg

If you’ve worked in technology at all you probably recognize the name “O’Reilly”—it has become practically synonymous with “tech help.” For anyone who has tried to code a line of html, or figure out what the heck that icon on the iPhone screen is, O’Reilly Media has produced a manual to explain it.

Read more of "Library Lab/The Podcast 005: Stock in Paper"