The End of Cyberspace

links for 2006-09-29

• Wireless Networking May Soon Get Faster. Will Anyone Care? - New York Times
  "Many in the industry seem split over whether the technology, known as fourth-generation wireless, or 4G, will usher in a new era of instant Internet availability or become a multibillion-dollar flop."
  (tags: wireless Korea internet)
• EducationGuardian.co.uk | higher news | Britain risks losing generation of scientists, new body warns
  "The next generation of UK scientists could be lost if "urgent, concerted action" is not taken, according to the new body set up to tackle the decline in young people studying sciences."
  (tags: UK education science)
• Environment Unlimited | Climate change | Earth's temperature is dangerously high, Nasa scientists warn
  "Earth's temperature could be reaching its highest level in a million years, American scientists said yesterday."
  (tags: science climate environment)
• Fred Turner - From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism - - New York Times
  Long review of Fred Turner's “From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism”.
  (tags: counterculture computer internet Silicon_Valley culture cyberspace)

links for 2006-09-28

• Maki building launches new era for MIT Media Lab - MIT News Office
  New building "designed to provide the flexibility to respond to emerging research priorities. High levels of transparency throughout the building's interior will make ongoing research visible, encouraging connections and collaboration among researchers."
  (tags: architecture innovation collaboration MIT)

links for 2006-09-26

• ARL Statistics Home
  "ARL Statistics is a series of annual publications that describe the collections, expenditures, staffing, and service activities for the member libraries of the Association of Research Libraries."
  (tags: library university statistics)
• ARLStatistics 2003-04: Research Library Trends
  "ARL Statistics 2003-04 is the latest in a series of annual publications that describe collections, staffing, expenditures, and service activities for the 123 members of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL)." Includes good 10-year trends table.
  (tags: l library statistics university)
• ARL 226: The End of History? Reflections on a Decade
  "Were the '90s the end of history [for libraries]? Of course not. Only another fin de siècle (not only David Stam can recall apt French terms) in which each of the institutions represented here came together to sustain our responsibility to society."
  (tags: library university future)
• Aaron Cohen Associates
  "Our associates are an interdisciplinary group of library planners, designers, and development consultants. We support library building projects through pre-planning, bid documentation and construction. "
  (tags: library architecture design)
• Alex Cohen and Elaine Cohen, "Academic Libraries in the Participatory Age"
  "In this participatory era, libraries must let the public know that they are centers of communication, education and culture for the colleges and universities that they serve."
  (tags: library architecture design)
• ALA | Excellence in Academic Libraries Award
  ACRL's "Excellence in Academic Libraries Award Program... recognize[s] an outstanding community college, college, and university library each year."
  (tags: university library architecture design)
• Power Users—Library Buildings 2005 - December 15, 2005 - Library Journal
  What does it take for an average patron to find his way around your library?... In a society that jealously guards its time... [libraries must] get patrons in the door and in front of the materials they want quickly and easily."
  (tags: library architecture design)
• A Storm Rains on Our Parade—Library Buildings 2005 - December 15, 2005 - Library Journal
  Overview of "185 public projects and 31 academic buildings" completed in FY2005.
  (tags: library architecture design)

links for 2006-09-22

• What is a library anymore, anyway?
  "Libraries in the future will undertake local control, especially for long-term preservation and accessibility of digital as well as analog collections."
  (tags: academia library community university culture)

links for 2006-09-20

• 2005 RLG Annual Membership Meeting: Spotlight on Innovation
  "The program was an exploration of what characterizes innovation—and innovators—and how the cultural heritage community is developing new means to deliver information."
  (tags: culture innovation collaboration library)
• The Future in Context: How Librarians Can Think Like Futurists, John Fenner, Audrey Fenner
  Argues for the importance of futures thinking for librarians.
  (tags: future library)
• Librarianship and the Philosophy of Information, Ken Herold
  "[T]he dawning of this age of information brings to light a host of subtle changes in how we think" about libraries.
  (tags: philosophy library)
• Talking in the Library: Implications for the Design of Digital Libraries
  "[D]igital libraries must take account of the social aspects of information seeking and support the processes that occur in social information seeking."
  (tags: library design digital-physical)
• shimenawa: Organized Mind
  "Truly, therefore, books are scanned to be consumed by an AI."
  (tags: reading AI books library)
• University Business: The College Library in the New Age
  "Yes, the new college library is about access to information, but it's about more than that, say out 'virtual roundtable' members: It's about enabling the quest for knowledge."
  (tags: library collaboration culture)
• University Business: History Meets State of the Art (October 2002)
  Comparison of Illinois Wesleyan University's Ames Library, and Williams College's Schow Science Library.
  (tags: library university design architecture digital-physical)
• SU [Blackwell Library]
  "Today’s academic libraries enhance community, facilitate learning, harness emerging technologies for access to information and centralize resources that define the quick-paced Information Age."
  (tags: library university)
• The Life of the Mind: A Study of Faculty Spaces in Academic Libraries
  Examines "[t]he value of the academic library as 'place' in the university community... by investigating the use of 'faculty spaces'— individual, enclosed, lock-
  (tags: library university collaboration community)
• The Next Decade of the Internet Revolution: Will the Internet Kill Sport Libraries? [pdf]
  "I want to examine the impact of the Internet on sport libraries, archives and information centers" to 2015.
  (tags: library sports future)
• Law Librarians and Library Design, Construction, and Renovation: An Annotated Bibliography and Review of the Literature [pdf]
  Very comprehensive review of the library design literature.
  (tags: library design law)
• Being there: the library as place*
  (tags: library future place-space)
• Paper and Digital Repositories in the United States [pdf]
  "What you’ve asked me to talk about today is basically what can libraries do with all the stuff they have and continue to get. Where do we put it all; what do we do with it?"
  (tags: library future books)
• National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Home Page, a part of the U.S. Department of Education
  "The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), located within the U.S. Department of Education and the Institute of Education Sciences, is the primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education."
  (tags: library US statistics academia education)
• The New American Library
  1997 article arguing that "our libraries are fast becoming sophisticated communication centers," and "talk of bookless libraries is part of a "false paradigm.""
  (tags: library future design collaboration communication)
• "Boldly Bookish," CLA: What's New (2000)
  "At a time when technology is being accused of threatening the future of books, governments the world over are spending fortunes on the construction of new public libraries. Is it a coincidence or is there some kind of link?"
  (tags: library design architecture future)
• ALA | Statistics About Libraries
  (tags: library statistics US)
• ALA | ALA Library Fact Sheet 1 - Number of Libraries in the United States
  There are an estimated 117,341 libraries of all kinds in the United States today.
  (tags: library statistics US)
• E.D. TAB: Public Libraries in the United States: Fiscal Year 2004
  "This report includes national and state summary data on public libraries in the 50 states and the District of Columbia, with an introduction, findings, and numerous tables."
  (tags: library statistics US)
• E.D. TAB: Academic Libraries: 2000
  "This report is based on information from the 2000 Academic Libraries Survey. The tables... summarize library services, library staff, library collections and library expenditures for libraries in degree granting postsecondary institutions."
  (tags: library statistics US)
• ALA | Academic Libraries in the United States: Statistical Trends
  Borrowing and circulation are up between 1994 and 2000; total number of visitors is down; but number of participants in group presentations is up.
  (tags: library statistics US)
• Collections, staff, and operating expenditures of college and university libraries: Selected years, 1976-77 to 1999-2000
  A big table.
  (tags: statistics library university US)

links for 2006-09-19

• America's Most Literate Cities
  Rankings of the most literate/literature-friendly cities in the US. Some of the most tech-heavy cities, like Seattle and San Francisco, also have the best support for traditional print culture and its institutions. Bits and atoms aren't natural enemies.
  (tags: books library cities culture endofcyberspace)
• COMMENTS OF THE AMERICAN BOOKSELLERS ASSOCIATION TO THE ANTITRUST MODERNIZATION COMMISSION ROBINSON-PATMAN ACT PANEL
  On the impact of the rise of chains, superstores, the Internet, and allegedly anti-competitive practices on independent bookstores.
  (tags: books business)
• Turning a page, finding a niche | IndyStar.com
  "Independent [book]stores have figured out how to survive," said Oren Teicher, chief financial officer of the American Booksellers Association.... "They are smart entrepreneurs adopting techniques that you need to operate a successful retail business."
  (tags: books business culture)
• Chain Reaction: Do bookstores have a future?
  On the recent history and future of independent bookstores.
  (tags: books business)

Most literate cities

One of the most gripping stories about the end of cyberspace involved the overthrow of books, and more generally of print culture, by the Internet and e-books. Depending on what side you were on, this was either a technological inevitability, or a sign of the end of all things Great and Good.

There are lots of ways you can measure how wrongs these predictions turned out to be-- the book industry has certainly had its share of structural adjustments, and some high-profile closures of independent bookstores-- but one suggestive one is John Miller's study of America's most literate cities.

The thing that grabs my attention is that Seattle and San Francisco, two of the centers of software and new media in the United States, rank among the top 10 most literate cities in America. They're also in the top 10 cities for magazine publishers. Finally, they rank #2 and #1, respectively, in per capita concentration of bookstores. Of course, both cities have a long tradition of serious literary endeavors, strengthened by the presence of large universities and student populations, and a (now almost-defunct) combination of cultural richness and relatively low cost of living that attracted all kinds of interesting countercultural types (a phenomenon dissected in John Markoff's really great book, What the Dormouse Said). So it's not entirely surprising that there would be a correlation between high literary ranking and tech concentration; arguably, the former is an (at least indirect) attractor for the latter.

Technorati Tags: books, cities, city, end of cyberspace, library

links for 2006-09-18

• Franco Mastroddi - Electronic publishing trends and advances
  1997 article on the future of print and electronic publishing.
  (tags: books publishing Europe future newspapers)

links for 2006-09-15

• String theory is claptrap. By Gregg Easterbrook - Slate Magazine
  Review of Lee Smolin's new book, "The Trouble With Physics."
  (tags: science physics string_theory)

links for 2006-09-13

• The Cause and Effect of Shrinking Workspaces
  "Shrinking technology, increased collaboration, and rising real estate costs have been the catalyst for space-planning changes in the modern office."
  (tags: office culture collaboration business work workspace)
• Living Labs Europe
  "Living Labs Europe is a growing network of European cities facilitating innovative city-based projects to provide advanced services" and promote "economic growth and regional development through high technology and knowledge intensive production."
  (tags: science cities Europe future mobility digital-physical)
• Living Labs Europe Blog
  Blog discussing developments in "living lab" concepts and projects.
  (tags: Europe science cities technology innovation)