Welcome to the Disruptive Library Technology Jester. From here you can browse the musings and visions of a library technologist as he walks the fine line between the best of the library profession on one side and the best of technology on the other.

You can navigate through DLTJ several ways. Your first stop might be the introductory material about this blog and the jester himself under the "about" heading to the left. Another way would be to pick a facet below to browse: "by cagetory" for a rough categorization of postings, "by tags" for a finer granularity of topics, or "by date" for a chronological view. Third, use the search box in the left column as a keyword approach to content in DLTJ. And last, recent postings by the Jester can be found below the faceted list.

I hope you enjoy your visit. Please feel free to leave comments where you'd like or contact me directly.


Recent Posts

Thursday Threads: Websites for Small Libraries, Open Source in Govt, Measuring Reliability

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It has been the longest of weeks and the shortest of weeks. Longest because of a working weekend with the ALA Midwinter conference in San Diego. Shortest because the activities leading up to, during, and after the conference didn’t leave much time for reading items to prepare a DLTJ Thursday Threads article. This edition has three short pointers: a report from Midwinter on a project from OCLC to offer a basic website for every library, why governments are coming around to liking open source software, and a discussion of measurements of reliability.

This is a preview of Thursday Threads: Websites for Small Libraries, Open Source in Govt, Measuring Reliability. Read the full post (798 words, 3:12 minutes estimated reading time)

OCLC Introduces “A Web Presence for Small Libraries”

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Screenshot of Sample Library Website

Screenshot of Sample 'Web Presence for Small Libraries'

On Sunday evening, the OCLC Innovation Lab held a public demonstration of a project with the working title, “A Web Presence for Small Libraries.” It is a templated website that could serve as a library’s barest bones presence on the web. The target audience is small and/or rural libraries that may not have the technological infrastructure — human knowledge, equipment, and/or money — to host their own web presence. If it comes to fruition, the basic service would give a library four pages on the web that can be customized by the library staff plus dynamic areas of content that would be generated by OCLC algorithms and optionally placed on each library’s site. A more advanced version of the service could include a light-weight book inventory and circulation option.

They created a sample library called Loremville, TN public library to demonstrate key aspects of the service. I did not ask them how long that particular example will be around, so you may follow that link at a later date and not find it.

This is a preview of OCLC Introduces “A Web Presence for Small Libraries”. Read the full post (1702 words, 1 image, 6:48 minutes estimated reading time)

Options in Storage for Digital Preservation

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A last-minute change to my plans for ALA Midwinter came on Tuesday when I was sought out to fill in for a speaker than canceled at the ALCTS Digital Preservation Interest Group meeting. Options for outsourcing storage and services for preserving digital content has been a recent interest, so I volunteered to combine two earlier DLTJ blog posts with some new information and present it to the group for feedback. The reaction was great, and here is the promised slide deck, links to further information, and some thoughts from the audience response.

This is a preview of Options in Storage for Digital Preservation. Read the full post (566 words, 2:16 minutes estimated reading time)

Thursday Threads: Ebooks in Libraries, Prognostications for the Year, Open Source Adoption, Public Domain Day

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The turn of the year brings commentary on the past 12 months and thoughts on the future. This edition of DLTJ Thursday Threads looks at the relationship between libraries and electronic books with an offer by Sony to explain e-reader hardware to libraries and an opinion piece that libraries need to get their act together on the adoption of e-books. Then there is a look forward at possible trends for the new year; I try to pick out the ones that I think will have an impact on libraries. One trend that does seem to be emerging is the migration of libraries from proprietary software to open source software for their integrated library systems. Lastly, we’ll wrap up with a look at Public Domain Day.

This is a preview of Thursday Threads: Ebooks in Libraries, Prognostications for the Year, Open Source Adoption, Public Domain Day. Read the full post (1619 words, 6:29 minutes estimated reading time)