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Podcast about the DPLA’s status and its relation to public libraries

davidw — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 16:51:37 +0000

The latest podcast in the Digital Campus series focuses solely on the current state of the Digital Public Library of America. The discussion includes Dan Cohen who has just accepted the position of Executive Director of the DPLA, which is just wonderful news. Not only does he have a rare combination of skills and experiences — ever hear of Zotero, hmm? — but he is also — and there’s no other way of putting this — nice.

Also on the podcast is Nicholas Carr, who wrote an excellent, skeptical (or at least questioning) article for MIT Tech Review on the DPLA a year ago. Also, Mills Kelly and Tom Scheinfeldt. And me.

Dan explains what the DPLA is. Nick wonders if if the DPLA will hurt public libraries. I try to explain why I think it won’t. Amanda suggests the DPLA is the Mr. Potato Head of libraries. I thought it was a good discussion.

Interop: The podcast

davidw — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 06:08:21 +0000

My Radio Berkman interview of John Palfrey and Urs Gasser about their suprisingly wide-ranging book Interop is now up, as is the video of their Berkman book talk…

[eim] Ranganathan’s grandson

davidw — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 18:07:13 +0000

At the Future Forum conference in Dresden, I had the opportunity to hang out with Ranga Yogeshwar, a well-known television science journalist in Germany. We were deep into conversation at the speakers dinner when I mentioned that I work in a library, and he mentioned that his grandfather had been an earlly library scientist. It turns out that his grandfather was none other than S.R. Ranganathan, the father of library science. Among other things, Ranganathan invented the “Colon Classification System” (worst name ever) that uses facets to enable multiple simultaneous classifications, an idea that really needed computers to be fulfilled. Way ahead of his time.

So, the next day I took the opportunity to stick my phone in Ranga’s face and ask him some intrusive, personal questions about his grandfather:

[2b2k] Moi

davidw — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 20:08:48 +0000

EconTalk has posted an hour interview with me by Russ Roberts about some of the topics in Too Big to Know that don’t come up so often.

[2b2k] The Surprisingly Free interview

davidw — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 15:07:08 +0000

Surprisingly Free has posted its podcast interview with me, by Jerry Brito. Unsurprisingly, it’s free!

[2b2k] A conversation with Christopher Lydon

davidw — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 22:56:00 +0000

I’m delighted to count Christopher Lydon as a friend, albeit one I don’t see often enough. He has traveled the road, as a reporter for the NY Times, as an esteemed (and controversial) talk show host on NPR, and as one of the first adventurers in the world hybrid radio and Web.

Chris and I talked last week. Here are the liners notes, so to speak, and here’s the recording.

We friend people who are like us; we don’t become like the people we friend

davidw — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 12:59:06 +0000

Ok, so the title of this post grossly overstates the findings of Kevin Lewis, Marco Gonzalez, and Jason Kaufman who analyzed how tastes spread among friends on Facebook, at the one college they were able to study. Still, it’s interesting data, and I enjoyed interviewing Kevin Lewis about it for this Berkman podcast.

CBC Spark on ShelfLife and LibraryCloud

davidw — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 14:56:48 +0000

The CBC show Spark a couple of days ago ran an 8 minute piece about the two biggest projects coming out of the Harvard Library Innovation Lab, ShelfLife and LibraryCloud. It does a great job cutting together an interview of me with an illuminating narrative from Nora Young. (I co-direct the Lab, along with Kim Dulin, although credit for these apps goes to our team: Annie Jo Cain, Paul Deschner, Jeff Goldenson, Matt Phillips, and Andy Silva.)

Spark also has posted the full, uncut interview and a good blog post about it.

James Boyle on three frames for copyright

davidw — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 14:00:06 +0000