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
I’m working with some colleagues at the Library of Congress on the on the description of complex analog and digital resources. In that research, we want to get a better sense of what people who read DLTJ call a “mash-up.” We invite readers to provide examples (in any medium) of what they think are mash-ups of different resources in the comment area of this post. If you nominate a web-accessible mash-up, please provide a link for it. If you nominate an analog mash-up (they do exist!), please provide a reasonable citation. If it is a hybrid – do your best! Also helpful would be a short statement as to why you think the example is a mash-up, and whether you like the results.
This is a preview of Mash-Up Request for Submissions
. Read the full post (218 words, 1 image, 52 seconds estimated reading time)
Tagged description, frbr, mashup
First, sorry about this getting posted prematurely through the DLTJ blog. I was trying the post-from-Flickr function, and it was telling me that the posting wasn’t working. So, it got posted here twice. And it got posted before I was ready; I was hoping it would land in the draft queue so I could edit it with further commentary. Oh, well; live and learn.

Charleston, SC Visitor's Center A/V Display
This is a preview of Charleston, SC Visitor’s Center A/V Display
. Read the full post (215 words, 1 image, 52 seconds estimated reading time)
Tagged technology, usability
Joshua Kim, senior learning technologist and an adjunct in sociology at Dartmouth College, recently had a series of posts about working with software vendors. Although Joshua’s focus is with learning technologies (course management systems, lecture capture systems, etc.), these are general enough to be useful in a variety of library environments as well. His posts, hosted by Inside Higher Ed, were:
Here are descriptions or excerpts from each of the posts.
This is a preview of From Joshua Kim, Ideas for Working with Vendors
. Read the full post (461 words, 1:51 minutes estimated reading time)
Tagged Higher Education, product evaluation, technology
Ron Murray, a colleague at the Library of Congress (and no known relation to me), sent me a note about the history of the term “mash-up” in the Oxford English Dictionary (subscription required). The definition of the first sense is “A mixture or fusion of disparate elements” with the notation that usage is rare before the late 20th century, and the OED includes this quotation:
1859D. BOUCICAULT Octoroon I. 13 He don’t understand; he speaks a mash up of Indian, French, and Mexican.
The reference to “Octoroon” appears to be for a play called The Octoroon that was first performed in 1859, making the mashup term about 151 years old.
Permanent link to this post (111 words, 27 seconds estimated reading time)
Tagged history, mashup
Using Twitter For Service Outage Awareness:
Riding the Waves of Content and Change:
The Complex World of the Textbook:
PocketModMac: MacOSX PocketMod Generator Via Print Dialog:
Amazon Catalog Updates:
Clay Shirky on the Need for Better Information Filters:
Fixing a Mac OSX Leopard Login Loop Caused by Launch Services: