Actually, ‘today’ was in late October. I just noticed this draft and thought I’d push it out. It didn’t work out, obviously.

The Digital Curation Conference is wrapping up. There were some salient take-aways.

1. The UK has a much more focused national strategy for digital library development due largely to the structure of funding organizations.
2. Relatedly, the one off, silo-ed, unfederated, independent architecture of US digital collections, both within and without individual institutions, is due largely to the grant situation in the US.
3. Holding a digital library/data center/information management conference 2 stories below ground without wireless Internet or mobile phone reception is both hugely annoying and enormously beneficial.
4. The Library of Congress National Digital Information Infrastructure Preservation Program, while providing me with interesting work, doesn’t seem like it will provide the national direction that I think is necessary. I trust the digital preservation experience will be valuable to others, though.
5. Conferences that include food and Internet in the conference registration rock. It’s nearly impossible for most academics I know to request funding for Internet.

This is an IM conversation I had today with a friend.  Names have been changed to protect the sociopathic.

(10:56:16 AM) Friend: you up for lunch later?
(10:56:31 AM) me: Uh, well, why the hell not, right?
(10:57:01 AM) Friend: exactly. you would not be happy if I die this weekend and you gave up the last chance to eat lunch with me.
(10:57:34 AM) me: No, but my guilt would be assuaged by the thought of going through your stuff and reallocating that cool keyboard to my cube.
(10:57:37 AM) me: know what I mean?
(10:58:40 AM) Friend: oh yea, I’m a sociopath. I don’t feel any emotional attachment to other people. I live in a world of cardboard cutouts. I wouldn’t feel bad very long at all.

Maybe I should submit this to bash.org.  Or, maybe I should work on developing relationships with people who are sane.

I thought I’d upload the presentation from our Hackfest project in spite of the fact that the code isn’t ready.  The idea was to create a simple GUI interface to create library Facebook apps.  It’s based on the work done at Ryerson University Library.  I started the day working on the open source Evergreen ILS, but I thought I’d be more useful to the other group.  Fun stuff.  I’ll post the application if we finish it.

I also came across a few pictures from the June 2007 NDIIPP meeting in Maryland.

I was just getting ready to head to Pasadena for DLF and realized I’ve listened to all of the podcasts on my mp3 player. I thought I’d post a few sources that I look to for podcasts. Most of them are interviews with Free Software and Open Source luminaries and library, especially digital library, figures. I also try to work in some science and the occasional book.

• NerdTV
• FLOSS Weekly
• Radio OpenSource
• LibriVox
• This American Life
• NPR Podcast Directory
• Science Friday
• Open Libraries
• Open Source Conversations
• Educause CNI
• Penn Jillette

I’ll try to clean this up, categorize these, and add notes soon. I’m always looking for other technology/library related podcasts. Suggest some.