The Rosetta Disk

The Rosetta Disk is the physical companion of the Rosetta Digital Language Archive, and a prototype of one facet of The Long Now Foundation's 10,000-Year Library. The Rosetta Disk is intended to be a durable archive of human languages, as well as an aesthetic object that suggests a journey of the imagination across culture and history. We have attempted to create a unique physical artifact which evokes the great diversity of human experience as well as the incredible variety of symbolic systems we have constructed to understand and communicate that experience.

News from the Rosetta Project of interest to archivists and others! I like how it's not platform-dependent.

For the extreme longevity version of the Rosetta database, we have selected a new high density analog storage device as an alternative to the quick obsolescence and fast material decay rate of typical digital storage systems. This technology, developed by Los Alamos Laboratories and Norsam Technologies, can be thought of as a kind of next generation microfiche. However, as an analog storage system, it is far superior. A 2.8 inch diameter nickel disk can be etched at densities of 200,000 page images per disk, and the result is immune to water damage, able to withstand high temperatures, and unaffected by electromagnetic radiation. This makes it an ideal backup for a long-term text image archive. Also, since the encoding is a physical image (no 1's or 0's), there is no platform or format dependency, guaranteeing readability despite changes in digital operating systems, applications, and compression algorithms.

Also, it looks really cool.

David Lee King's 10 Presentation Tips

As I continue with my library science program, I'm finding that presentations are being stressed as important. I wasn't expecting that when I entered the program! Librarians - all kinds - have to learn how to make good presentations. They have to learn how to make people believe something they didn't believe yesterday; it's a survival technique to make sure libraries and librarians (and information specialists) keep getting funding and keep getting acknowledged as important.

Some people in my program are better at presentations that others. They tend to be the ones who volunteer to present for group projects, and you can see their skills improve with each presentation. Those presentations help them stand out from the crowd, give them practice with selling their ideas, or ideas in general. It's like being a wallflower at a dance - sure, you might be more comfortable, but you're more likely to be overlooked.

I don't like presenting. I'm not afraid of it and I am willing to do it and I make myself volunteer to do it, but I can't say I find it fun very often (Children's Readership Advisory book presentations are an exception). I'm not all that outgoing a person, either; I'm pretty shy. (Yes, a shy librarian. Who'd've thought?) I guess my tip would be to treat presentations of any sort as a performance: you are acting, you are pretending to be a presenter, and your acting can trick people into thinking you're comfortable.

David Lee King is a much more accomplished presenter than I am, and he has a whole list of tips for presenting.

10 Tips to Do Presentations Like Me:

1. Don't Use Templates
2. Use Presenter Notes
3. Use Presenter View
4. Learn Your PC
5. Use Screenshots
6. Do What You Said You'd Do
7. Tidy up Those Transitions
8. Rehearse
9. Interact with the Audience
10. It's a Performance

Oh hey, look at that last one.

Sir Patrick Stewart Geeks Out About the Internet

Scott Cawelti On the Meaning of 'Elite'

Scott Cawelti on the meaning of the word elite and how it comes with a stigma.

Whenever you want something done well, you seek a member of the elite, meaning a specialist, a board-certified doctor, a recognized, experienced expert, someone who's practiced a craft or art beyond an apprenticeship.

If you don't believe in an elite, you're welcome to take your chances with the quacks, frauds, con artists and all-around amateurs who've learned the talk, but didn't finish, or even start, the walk. Good luck with that.

Sometimes it makes me think of 7331 hax0rs. Oh, internet. What have you done to vocabulary?

Penguin Books' Spinebreakers

First off, kudos for coming up with a badass name about reading. I almost want to join just to say I am a member of SPINEBREAKERS. Instant street cred! Sadly, I am too old. The site is for teenagers 13-18.

Inspired (?) by Facebook, Penguin Books has introduced a social site dedicated to reading. Site founder Anna Raffery, managing director of Penguin Digital, said:

"There are too many distractions out there for teenagers which pushes reading down the list of hobbies. Even other social networks are a major distraction for teens, which is why I hope giving reading its own social network, which is written and edited by teenagers, will help keep reading relevant in the digital age."

Though not intended to be commercial, the site does feature brand-related promotions, but does not have any commercial advertising (and more kudos are given for that).

I know I would've been all over this site as a teenager aged 13-18. I love talking about books but never had the opportunity to do so in high school. One reason why I enjoy my library technician program is that finally I have a large group of associates who like to read.

Ancient Tweets Were Made in Stone and Clay

Time to play some catchup after Thanksgiving!

Let's make science interesting by comparing it to Twitter!

It was interesting anyway!

When ancient scribes invented the world's first systems of writing by cutting symbols into stone and clay, they unleashed an anxiety the Facebook generation can relate to: worry about how the new technology might upend their culture.

As the technology caught on in Egypt and Mesopotamia, ancient writers recorded the anxiety of some in Pharaonic Egypt that the written word would impair memory and turn humans into ignorant fools.

Maybe Amun had something, though:

...Amun predicted trouble for readers and writers.

He said it would cause forgetfulness in writers because they would not use their memory. Moreover, he predicted, readers would give only the appearance of knowing things while remaining "ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise but only appear wise."

Social Media and Death

From Mignon Fogarty, aka Grammar Girl: Social Media and Death. Excellent discussion in the comments.

I think the internet in general (including Facebook) has affected the way I react to news, yes. I know more about the personal triumphs (and tragedies) of people I know or once knew. I've been active online for over half my life now and I've 'met' a lot of people over the years, some of whom have passed or knew someone who passed. 'News' has become more real now, as I found last week when my brother's friend's grandfather disappeared, his body found days later in the woods. The family used Facebook to spread the word and keep people updated on the situation. Facebook allowed me to give my condolences as well.

It's hard, sometimes, when someone far away has died and there's no way to attend a funeral. My brother experienced that earlier this year when his Guildmaster in Warcraft was killed by a drunk driver. He organized a memorial meeting online and that helped people with their grieving process. At least I think it helped with his grieving process. Maybe it seems silly - a Warcraft funeral, really? - but these connections we make with people happen in all kinds of ways nowadays. As unlimited as we are now forming new connections, we are still limited in some ways.

I for one am glad to have met as many wonderful people as I have, even if I haven't met all of them face-to-face.

[Related to the blog post: I also read Where is Raed? back in 2003. Read more about it on Wikipedia. One entry I recall vividly is the one where a guest blogger and Salam were talking about the best ways to duct tape windows and lavendar scented candles. They didn't duct tape the candles, it was just mentioned that... oh, go read it.]

"One day, like in Afghanistan, those journalists will get bored and go write about Syria or Iran; Iraq will be off your media radar. Out of sight, out of mind. Lucky you, you have that option. I have to live it."

Twitter Police

I've been snickering at this one for a while: some Twitter users take it upon themselves to correct the spelling, capitalization, and grammar of other posters.

“It would be kind of nice if people cleaned up their grammar a little bit and typed in lowercase, and made the Internet a little bit smarter,” said one of them, Nate Fanaro, a 28-year-old computer programmer in Buffalo, whose Twitter handle is CapsCop.

Last October, Mr. Fanaro wrote a simple program that detects tweets written in capital letters and automatically sends one of several snappy responses, like “This isn’t MySpace so maybe you should turn your caps lock off.” So far, he has issued more than 130,000 of these helpful reminders, including at least 205 to one particular user, a woman in Singapore. (Oddly, with little effect.)

“Some people don’t really understand that it’s just not good Internet etiquette” to type in all capital letters, Mr. Fanaro said.

Yes, he and the other Twitter cops do get quite a backlash, much to their delight. Mr. Fanaro posts a phone number on his Twitter profile page, and his voice mail is full of death threats and foulmouthed rants. For laughs, he sometimes takes his phone to a bar and plays the messages for his friends.

Good luck, guys. That stuff's been in decline ever since the internet expanded itself from just the nerds and geeks. (And as a nerdy geek, sometimes I miss those days, but most days I'm glad everything else has expanded, too - meaning it's easier to do research.)

The National Braille Challenge

June 26th was the day of The National Braille Challenge, a competition where the best blind students in the US and Canada compete for prizes and savings bonds. They are tested in areas like reading comprehension, braille spelling, chart and graph reading, proofreading and braille speed and accuracy.

"This competition is unique in that it tests a very specific skill. The great thing about The Braille Challenge, is that it gives us the opportunity to celebrate braille literacy and bring this issue to the attention of the public,” said Nancy Niebrugge, director of The Braille Challenge. “Most of the participants who make it to the national competition are the only blind students in their school. They go through their entire lives being the exception. This competition gives them the opportunity to build camaraderie among kids who have shared similar life experiences."

Very cool! And hopefully another reason to fight the decline of learning Braille.

Earthquake Twittering

Okay, I admit it: Twitter can be useful.

On June 23rd I was sitting at a computer when I thought I heard a truck go by. A really big truck, for a really long time, and everything started to shake. Within a few seconds I figured out it wasn't a super monstrosity truck passing by, but an earthquake.

It's been a long time since I've been in an earthquake - years and years and years. It was unsettling. Once I was convinced it was over, I registered it at The US Geographical Survey Earthquake Hazards Program site and then started Googling to see what news there was. Nothing that fast - except Twitter.

Lo and behold, checking on Twitter's front page gave me oodles of information. I learned how far the quake had gone and got reasonable guesses as to how far from the epicentre I was. Instantly. It was... useful. It wasn't just about people reporting on what they'd had for lunch. It was actual stuff I was interested in.

Disturbing.

Letters With Character

Letters With Character is a fun project encouraging people to write letters to fictional characters. Very cute; also funny and touching at times.

It also reminds me of a book I enjoyed when I was younger called Dear Mr. Henshaw by Beverly Cleary, even though that was a book about a kid writing to his favourite author. I suppose it's because it seems like the kid, Leigh, is writing to a figure that will never write back, just like a fictional character. It was a funny book and I can't remember if Mr. Henshaw ever wrote back. I think he did.

Execution Twitter

Is using Twitter to announce an execution appropriate? Utah attorney general Mark Shurtleff thought it was alright.

"I just gave the go ahead to Corrections Director to proceed with Gardner's execution. May God grant him the mercy he denied his victims."

While Twitter's Tweets are 'legitimate' enough to be included in the Library of Congress, how appropriate are they in this situation? I'd say not at all. Mark Shurtleff Tweeted about an execution he was involved in. He Tweeted. Say it a few times, think about how silly that sounds. Tweeting. Tweeting about someone's death.

I have no sympathy for the man executed; it's more that I imagine that would be a terrible thing for a family member or other relative to hear about. It's irreverent, and even if they guy was horrible, it's still not quite appropriate respect for the taking of another life. Even if it's by death squad shooting.

Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.org

Snaked from Wired, who in turn link to the New Yorker website - No Secrets: Julian Assange’s Mission for Total Transparency.

Assange is an international trafficker, of sorts. He and his colleagues collect documents and imagery that governments and other institutions regard as confidential and publish them on a Web site called WikiLeaks.org.

I don't know about you, but I kind of feel like a secret agent just reading about it.

TED Talk: 4Chan

The virtues (and downfalls) of anonymity on the internet. Mostly I like the Dusty story.

Spelling Bee Protests

Four people dressed in bee costumes protested the Scripps Spelling Bee in Washington, DC.

According to literature distributed by the group, it makes more sense for 'fruit' to be spelled as 'froot'...

While I agree literacy is important, I don't think dumbing language down will help anyone. In fact, I think it might be UNGOOD. Perhaps DOUBLEPLUSUNGOOD.

An Endangered Language: Braille

In the 1950s, half of blind of Americans read Braille. Now, fewer than ten per cent know the language, most relying on audio materials. Not a big deal?

...There was a really interesting study of two groups of blind children. One group had grown up learning Braille and the other group had grown up using audio technology. And the authors of that study said that there was a significant difference in not just the way that they wrote but the way that they seemed to think. And they referenced theorist Walter Ong, who writes that the act of seeing our own words and then tweaking them and rewriting them, and in that process, rethinking, really creates a new kind of cognitive style.

So they said that the students who didn't learn Braille, it was as if they had shaken up their ideas in a container and then thrown them out on a piece of paper, and that there was really no clear organization, and it lacked the kind of complexity that they saw in the students who had learned Braille.

People who don't know Braille can't really take notes, can't edit your own writing, and you can't edit your own thoughts, and that’s a really significant part of the way that people learn to think.

That's true of visual readers and non-readers too, though, isn't it?

Libraries and Communication, Communication, Communication

A short article from AndyW at LISNews on the importance of communication in libraries.

If the three L’s of buying a house are “location, location, location”, then the three C’s of librarianship should be “communication, communication, communication”. I don’t think what I’m going to list is anything revolutionary; I do think it might be a novel way to remember the basic interactions that keep the library moving forward.

'Help Me Help My Friend in DC'

Through the efforts of various posters on MetaFilter, two Russian women were possibly saved from human trafficking.

Newsweek reported on their blog and a site called Mother Jones ran an interview with the original MF poster.

This is an example of the good power of social sites.

Internet Archive Has One Million Books for the Visually Impaired

Internet Archive launched a new service today that will provide more than a million books in a specially designed format that can be read by visually impaired readers. The new service is part of the the non-profit’s Open Library project, which has been scanning and digitizing hundreds of thousands of books for the past several years and now has more than a million in its index. Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle, who funds some of the Archive’s costs through his charitable foundation, said the new service more than doubles the number of books previously available to visually impaired readers.

(They didn't do it today. This is a news story from May 6th, 2010. I've just been very lax.)

Silentale

So Silentale (and there's an ominous name) is a web service that backs up and archives all your electronic communications. All of them - Twitter, Facebook, GMail.

Well, that's just creepy. Consider the privacy issues with Twitter, Facebook, and GMail separately: there are many. Facebook is now notorious for farming personal information, slowly revealing more and more of its users over the years and never, ever deleting it even if the user deletes their account. As for GMail, people don't realize that everything they send around via Google documents becomes property of Google. It is not secure at all.

Here is a database that clumps everything together, all in one spot. At least make identity thieves and corporations work a little to get information.