John Miedema

Thinking Ahead 2008: “Book is Back” slides

15 March 2008 4 Comments

The Salt Lake City Public Library has just concluded its Thinking Ahead 2008 conference. What a remarkable library and conference! I was pleased to be invited to facilitate a session called “Beyond Technology” which examined the persistence of the book through the digital age and its implications for librarians.

The Book Is Back – John Miedema – Thinking Ahead 2008

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

You can download my PowerPoint slide presentation here. Please feel free to email me or comment here on anything about the presentation.

You can view all of the conference info and notes from sessions at the conference blog here.

Thanks again to the great folks at Salt Lake City Public Library for hosting the event, and the attendees who generated such excellent discussion.

4 Comments »

Head Tale - Yet Another Librarian's Blog :: Main Page said:

(and/or are doing work focused on technology and Web 2.0 stuff), it made me wonder what sort of relationship there is between having a blog and the “real world” of libraries? Classmate John Miedema of the Slow Reading blog recently presented atSalt Lake City Public Library’s “Thinking Ahead” conference. I’m not sure if his blog was how they found him and/or if it helped lend credibility to his application if he “cold called” them as a potential speaker but I’m sure it didn’t hurt. Maybe that’s part of it – you need to have a certain specialty or

# 29 March 2008 at 3:39 am

Jeff said:

Great presentation! I enjoyed the part about the need to save libraries. They are not in need of saving. As long as people say, we want x, and we give them x, libraries will be here.

# 17 March 2008 at 12:31 pm

Wendell said:

Enjoyed the p.point. ; )

I’ve been watching the “blogs are dead – everybody twitter” discussion for the past couple of months, and thinking that there are some very active, very fashionable voices out there that consistently miss the point of a whole world of reading and writing. To celebrate the fact that twitter confines the author to 180 or 200 characters is to betray an a-literate paradigm. For me, at least, blogs are about access – to other’s words, to my own voice – not speed or ‘connectivity’ (whatever that might mean).

I suppose, if someone’s e-communication is all about making witty remarks, then it makes sense that they would be confuse a web of comments for a conversation.

But in the literate West, reading and writing has been about so much more! That’s why blogs aren’t dead (and will no more be killed off by snarky remarks on the Read Write website than by snarky remarks in the NYT). That’s why book aren’t dead.

The essay, the poem, the story, the commentary… these things are not, are never, time-critical. They can be read slowly, years after the fact, across distance and culture… what amazing things books can be! (And, in smaller fashion, blogs.)

# 1 April 2008 at 11:18 am

John (author) said:

Hi Wendell, I followed the library blogs for a year before starting one of my own. The quality of the content persuaded me that blogs were a good way to discuss library topics. I have not given Twitter a second thought. An amusing innovation, a fun toy, but it holds zero interest for me, personally. As you observe, Twitter is about even tinier fragments of information. Make the fragments small and fleeting enough, and the meaning vanishes altogether.

Many technologies go through a cycle of hype, peak, and then settling into practical use. My hunch is that Web 2.0 has peaked. Many of the Web 2.0 startups will start to fall off the map, leaving the good stuff behind. My guess is that Twitter will go, and good stuff like blog software and tagging will stay.

Consider that “web-logs” have existed since the beginning of the web. Many people maintained a log on a simple HTML page, adding entries to the top with a date. The content was much like what we find on blogs today. Blog software just makes the process easier to manage. I suggest that the blog is a synecdoche for the web.

Re: books. I followed a conversation among teachers yesterday. It started with one teacher stating her delight at the demise of the print encyclopedia. After a long pause, a second teacher remarked that the history of the flute does not change, and her print reference will remain on her desk as long as she occupies it. Several other teachers chimed in to applaud her. Personally, I think this informs us that the changeable content of encyclopedias should perhaps be digital, and the enduring content should be print. Maybe the future holds hybrids like this … ?

# 1 April 2008 at 12:22 pm