Snow at the Smithsonian

Looks like the start of the first real accumulation of the season.

The new Arena Stage

Dan Cohen at CNI: Closing plenary

Dan Cohen at CNI
Originally uploaded by martin_kalfatovic

From the program:

The Web is now over twenty years old, and there is no doubt that the academy has taken advantage of its tremendous potential for disseminating resources and scholarship. But a full accounting of the academic approach to the Web shows that compared to the innovative vernacular forms that have flourished over the past two decades, we have been relatively meek in our use of the medium, often preferring to impose traditional ivory tower genres on the Web rather than import the open web's most successful models. For instance, we would rather digitize the journal we know than explore how blogs and social media might supplement or change our scholarly research and communication. In this talk, Dan Cohen explores what might happen if we reversed that flow and more wholeheartedly embraced the genres of the open Web.

Day 2 of the December 2010 snowstorm

Schools not closed, yet!

Presentation for CNI Fall Meeting

Giant Cliff at CNI
Originally uploaded by martin_kalfatovic

I was part of a panel at CNI this year along with Kris Carpenter Negulescu (Internet Archive), MacKenzie Smith (MIT), and Dean Krafft (Cornell), "Linked Open Data: The Promise and Pitfalls ... Where Are We and Why Isn't There Broader Adoption?".

Here's my presentation:
From Octopus on the Mall to a Community of Data. Martin R. Kalfatovic. Coalition for Networked Information Fall Membership Meeting. 13 December 2010. Crystal City, VA.

From Octopus on the Mall to a Community of Dat

View more presentations from Martin Kalfatovic.

Giant Cliff at CNI

Fall 2010 CNI Meeting in Crystal City, Arlington.

Tree shopping: Metadata problems

2010-12-12-IMG_0907
Originally uploaded by martin_kalfatovic

Bought our tree at the Optimists Club stand again this year. Metadata on the trees was confusing. There were different color tags for each type of tree and price. But the colored tags overlapped; thus, yellow could be a Spruce or a Scotch pine, each at a different price. You were still obligated to be able to identify the tree type, even with the tag.

This was a challenge both for us and for the Optimists. So, this was a yellow tag, might be a Norwegian Spruce. Might not.

Any tree people out there can help?

Let me take you down, 'cause I'm going to ... Strawberry Fields

December 8, 1980. I lived on the ground floor of a five story dorm room. I was already asleep when there was a knock on the window. It was my future wife coming to say that John Lennon was shot.

QotD: "The move from printed books to e-books has accelerated, and seems unlikely to stop anytime soon"

Three shelves of books
Originally uploaded by martin_kalfatovic

Great quote for the always interesting Scholarly Kitchen blog, so good I need to repeat it:

"The move from printed books to e-books has accelerated, and seems unlikely to stop anytime soon." - Kent Anderson

In a discussion of the move by the NY Times to add a "e-book" category to the best seller lists.

Another takeaway:

The Association of American Publishers reported recently that book sales were down 21% in September 2010 compared to a year before. Overall, book sales are up 3.8% for 2010, but this number keeps whittling lower as the year goes on. Most of the overall growth has come from sale of e-books, which were up 158% for September (2010 vs. 2009) and a total of 188% for 2010 overall compared to the year before.

So, for those of you in libraryland, think about this ... you need to start dealing with e-books, you need to stop thinking about growth space for shelving print publications. You need to start hiring staff that can handle the tasks that will come with information in digital only format. When push comes to crunch, is it libraries or IT departments that will manage scholarly information? Don't ponder this too long.

Read it all.

Black Friday, Smithsonian style

In DC,  you're either at the mall or on The Mall. Crowds in Dino hall, Natural History Museum.

More than art

Lichtenstein "Modern Head", formerly situated near the World Trade Center, NYC

Si si, je suis un rock star

2010-11-20-IMG_0853
Originally uploaded by martin_kalfatovic

Keri and I were quite popular at the Yonghe Temple, it was quite clear we were being mistaking for world famous celebrities, when, in fact, we are mere information scientists, biblio informaticians, nay, mere librarians.

So yes, just librarians, but as Keri said, "rock star was a career option."



Title of post courtesy Bill Wyman:

Je suis un rock star Je avais un residence
Je habiter la A la South of France
Voulez vous Partir with me
And come and rester la with me in France.

Mounted police @ Ten Penn

This beautiful horse has been at Tenth St. and Penn. Ave. for the past couple of days.