Category Archives: information activist

The Deskset

Do you recall a NTTimes article about a “Hipper Crowd of Shushers“, which appeared about 18 months ago?  This article appeared all over the library blogosphere.  Well, this group of young library professionals is still getting together and hanging out.  But they also do so much more.

They now have a blog at the thedeskset.org.  And they are putting their collective talents to work.  They are hosting a holiday party in which the proceeds are benefitting literacy for incarcerated teens

I would call this group of young professional librarians, and book lovers, true information activists.  How great would it be if groups like this popped up in many American cities?

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Information Poverty

As I ponder information poverty and the implications of the read/write web, I wonder if some poverty allievation may be achieved through these new technologies. 

I am preparing to hibernate for the winter with a bunch of books:

The Future of the Internet–And How to Stop It – Jonathan Zittrain
Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations – Clay Shirky
Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies – Charlene Li
Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means – Albert-Laszlo Barabasi
Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge – Cass R. Sunstein
Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages – Alex Wright
Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder – David Weinberger (Repeat)
Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution by Howard Rheingold
The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google by Nicholas Carr
Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Anthony D. Williams, Don Tapscott
The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki
Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob by Lee Siegel (Repeat)
The Cult of the Amateur by Andrew Keen (Repeat)
The Social Life of Information by John Seely Brown
Tagging: People-powered Metadata for the Social Web by Gene Smith

This is what most of them look like:

Winter reading list

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The article is available

The article that provided the impetus to this blog has finally been published.  See American Libraries Decemeber issue, page 37.

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