Riverwalk Radio

Cathy was on Smart City this morning, a nationally syndicated public radio program exploring various aspects of urban life. You can hear her talking about the very exciting Chicago Riverwalk project she's been helping to coordinate here. (If you want to get right to it, her segment begins a little past the halfway mark.)

Damn, my girl has got it going on!

Warm, Scary Air

Recently Abby has recently been affected with a deep and abiding fear of our air vents. There's one in our upstairs hallway, on the far right, and Abby will hug the left wall as she walks by it. Another air vent is suspiciously close to her bookshelf. She no longer feels safe venturing over to browse. I've taken to sitting on the vent and assuring her that the area in front of her books has now been secured. "See," I tell her, "Daddy's sitting on the air vent and it's not hurting him."

"The air vent is our friend," Abby will say, beating me to the punch.

"That's right, the air vent is our friend! It's giving us some warm, cozy air on this very cold day!"

She nods appreciatively and drags a few books over to the middle of the floor.

Feel Free To Delete These

My Mom seemed newly determined to make some room for the Web when Cathy, Abby and I visited her and my Dad a couple weeks ago at their winter getaway in Tarpon Springs. That old clamshell iBook is most definitely ailing, so Cathy and I encouraged her to look into buying a new computer. But first we took her through some Web basics and Cathy ditched Safari and replaced it with Firefox. We did some searches, pausing briefly on Joe's blog, Through The Wire. My Mom's known Joe since high school, so I thought showing his blog to her was a nice way to demonstrate some of the intimacy the Web allows.

Later, after we returned, my Mom forwarded along an email, itself forwarded along to her by one of her friends. It contained a poem "written by a terminally ill young girl
in a New York Hospital," with the plea that all receivers "pass this mail on to everyone you know - even to those you don't know!" so as to generate small donations to the American Cancer Society's efforts to assist in "her treatment and recovery plan."

And, of course it's a hoax, circulating saccharinely since 1997. The American Cancer Society has a press release disavowing any involvement in this terminal whimsy.

Suddenly I imagined my Mom fretting as she read another email informing her of suspicious activity on a credit card. I wrote her back with dutiful warnings of the Web's many identity thieving cretins prowling about. I reminded her that any email telling her to forward it along "to as many people you know (one gentlemen was so inspired, he even forwarded to over 500 of his friends and business associates!)" is almost always a hoax. "Feel free to delete these," I told her.

Repeat the Sounding Joy: Chris's Best Songs of 2007

With any luck, copies of this years mix will eventually make it into the hands and ears of the usual suspects. If you're reading this and would like a copy, feel free to let me know and I'll get you one.

The bulk of it is made up of songs released in 2007, though a healthy number draw from the last 50 years or so. I wasn't able to include everything I would have liked, but at over 9 hours long it's a pretty good representation of what my ears perked up to.

I've tried, too, for those who might want to listen linearly, to create an interesting mix. I kept away, as much as possible, from balkanizing genres in hopes of allowing for surprising merges and occasional collisions.

Here's what made the cut:

A Paw In My Face: The Field
Paris, Tokyo: Lupe Fiasco
Mercy, Mercy, Mercy: Cannonball Adderley Quintet
Orange Skies: Love
Just As You Are: Robert Wyatt
Da Aurora Até O Luar: Dadi
Dive For Your Memory: The Go-Betweens
Rainy Night In Georgia: David Ruffin
Flashing Lights (Ft. Dwele): Kanye West
My Favourite Book: Stars
Comodn Johnson: Los Amigos Invisibles
Doca: Trio Mocotó
Levante A Cabeça: Som Nosso
Ai E Que Ta: Burnier & Cartier
Read My Mind (Instrumental): Metro Area
Do It All Night: Prince
Chromophobia: Gui Boratto
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi: Radiohead
Is There a Ghost: Band Of Horses
Sleeping Lessons: The Shins
Looks Like Rain: The Postmarks
Bach (JS): Piano Concerto #4 In A, BMV 1055 - 1. Allegro: Glenn Gould
Winter: The Rolling Stones
Do I Have To Come Right Out And Say It: Buffalo Springfield
Through My Sails: Neil Young
Running to the Ghost: James Blackshaw
Too Much Between Us: Procol Harum
Scythian Empires: Andrew Bird
Indoor Fireworks: Elvis Costello
To Build A Home: The Cinematic Orchestra
Blues Run The Game: Jackson C. Frank
I Must Have Been Blind: Tim Buckley
...3: John Barry
Can I Say: The Rice Twins
Lohn & Brot: Efdemin
Before: Contriva
Af607105: Charlotte Gainsbourg
Mima: Eddie Harris
Elsa: Cannonball Adderley With Bill Evans
Some People Are Crazy: John Martyn
All I Ever Wanted: Meg Baird
A Picture Of Our Torn Up Praise: Phosphorescent
Innocent Bones: Iron & Wine
Johnny's Garden: Stephen Stills
Kalumba: Gambuzinos
Gente: Caetano Velosa
Don't Touch That Thing: Sylvia Hall
I Used To Be A King: Graham Nash
Middlenight: The Sea And Cake
(Ain't That) Good News: Sam Cooke
Feel Pm: Lindstrom And Prins Thomas
Über Wiesen: Thomas/Mayer
Steal Away (Version 2): Johnnie Taylor
MRA: Chris McGregor's Brotherhood Of Breath
You Can Have Her: Waylon Jennings
Sweet Wanomi: Bill Withers
Elementary Lover (DJ Koze Remix): Matthew Dear
N.I.T.A.: Young Marble Giants
Myriad Harbour: The New Pornographers
4,738 Regrets: Trans Am
Someone Great: LCD Soundsystem
New Jack: Justice
Hussel (feat. Afrikan Boy): M.I.A.
Kingston: Rod Modell
Night to Remember: Cassy
Lay Your Head Down: Keren Ann
So Sorry: Feist
Warm Canto: Mal Waldron
Title Music: Satyajit Ray
Masculino, Feminino: Erasmo Carlos
Goin' Away Party: Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys
O Caroline: Matching Mole
Port Authority: Opsvik & Jennings
What Me Worry?: St. Vincent
The Queen Of Seville: The Clientele
Think She Knows Me Now: Mike Cooper
Into Eternity: Jens Lekman
Slap The Back: Cobblestone Jazz
Main Squeeze: Nate Evans
Oh Christine: The Cave Singers
Fake Empire: The National
LDN: Lily Allen
Scenic World: Beirut
Sheria Yatukataza: Maulidi Juma
Silently: Blonde Redhead
Parallel Life: Baby Ford
Water Soul: Melchior Productions Ltd.
Archangel: Burial
Cicely: DJ Koze
Synthacon 9: The Tuss
Garden Parade (Dandy Jacks Senti-Metal Mix): Copacabannark
Walden 2: Pantha Du Prince
Rabbit Tube: Lawrence
Soziale Wärme: Thomas Fehlmann
Intruder: Susanna
Keeping You in Mind: Mary Margaret O'Hara
The Wheel: Jerry Garcia
Hazel St.: Deerhunter
Impossible Germany: Wilco
All La Glory: The Band
Little Girl: Billy Preston
(This Is For The) Better Days: The Bees
Guitar Blues: Chester Atkins
Lovesick Blues Boy: Paul Burch
Breezin': Cornelius
Terremoto: João Donato
Persian Love: Holger Czukay
Wennder Sudwind Weht: Roedelius
Samba pa Negra: Jay Hoggard
Diamond Heart: Marissa Nadler
Dinoa & Hora: Jacob Hoffman and Kendal's Orchestra
All Cats Are Grey: The Cure
Gogol: Gonzales
Waltz for Debby (Take 2): Bill Evans
Reflections: Thelonious Monk
Caught In The Middle: Lusine ICL
The Shade: Eno Moebius Roedelius
Tippy's Demise: Stars of the Lid
Evening Star: Fripp/Eno
for Jim Hall & Kurt Kirkwood: Klimek
Ascent: Arve Henriksen
oto: fennesz + sakamoto
Sun Against My Eyes: Colleen

Help, I'm Obsolete!

My formally trustworthy PowerBook, just a little over 2 years old, seems to have crashed on the shores of Little People. A well-loved Little People DVD we attempted to play at 30,000 feet en route to Tampa Bay International Airport seems to be the culprit. Struggling to read it (it was, to be blunt, scratched to hell), the PowerBook seems to have given up all together. When we turn it on now it gives us that ominous blinking folder with a question mark. It whispers, "you're screwed." We're hoping the original startup disk will revive it.

So we've had to revert to using my parents weathered clamshell iBook (see accompanying picture), which was once our own. It was new in 2000. It was blueberry shiny and awesome. Cathy wrote her thesis on it in Berkeley looking out at rose bushes and rosemary. We gave it to my parents a couple years ago so they could have a computer in Florida.

And I gotta tell you, it really sucks. It's like using an old elevator--it shudders under the weight, lurches, pauses awkwardly between floors before shuddering and slowly moving on. It's a telling example of how quickly technology becomes antiquidated.

Cool In The Pool

It's currently 75 and sunny in Tarpon Springs, Florida. We're heading out for a picnic lunch in a few minutes. My apologies to any friends and family being bruised and battered by winter.
We'll be rejoining you, the cold and the slush, with some regrets, Tuesday morning.

Light Pillar

A light pillar captured out the window of our car on Lake Shore Drive this morning. A nice, freaky little meteorological phenomena to buoy our bout of chilliness.

Coffee With Balzac

It's probably not the best way to take the measure of French literary tastes, but based purely on the amount of times Balzac is referenced in any number of French films I've seen (most recently in Julian Schnabel's French production, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), it seems clear that he's still very much revered there. (I looked, but nobody has felt compelled to compile a list of all the Balzac references running through French cinema--or at least hasn't seen fit to make it available online.) I suppose a case could be be made that he's one of a handful of 19th century writers of fiction whose works are still widely read and respected. Even cherished. In France at least. Elsewhere, one imagines he can be found on the occasional syllabus, read because he must, any pleasure derived by the student merely a happy coincidence.

I have a copy of Balzac's Cousin Bette on my shelf. I'm looking forward to reading it, hoping to catch a glimpse of what makes him so revered and hoping, as I suppose most of us hope when picking up a work of fiction, to be delighted and transported. He was, according to the books introduction, a bit of a coffee fiend, drinking cup after hot, black cup as he wrote through the wee small hours of the night. 4 to 5 novels a year! Prolifically caffeinated.

Great-Grandma

Abby's Great-Grandma had a birthday party today. Her sons, of whom she had 4, threw it for her. She was born 85 years ago today in Chicago. There was a snowstorm that day. On the way to the hospitable her mom's car got stuck and she had to walk the rest of the way. Needless to say, she told us, she's never been all that fond of cold and snow.

She's a classy lady, Abby's Great-Grandma. We're so happy to have helped her celebrate today.

Oh, No, Frankie Valli!

Since finishing up school just before the holidays, I've had great luck choosing just the right book to fit my mood. Reader and books have been in perfect accord.

Over the last few weeks I read a gaggle of small books about big albums, a couple slices of fiction, back issues of Cineaste and Film Comment (which I finally organized) and one fat old biography of Abe Lincoln. I can't tell you how guiltily luxurious it's been to put some good reading music on, recline in the big brown chair, and read stuff entirely of my own choosing. In succession. No syllabus in need of attending, no paper to research, no group project coming up--just me and a book about honest Abe. Sometimes I've gone so far as to indulge my reading with a glass of wine.

And I learned something about Lincoln I didn't know. He was born in Kentucky. Really? Do most people know this? I assumed Illinois was the Land of Lincoln. I mean, surely such a claim naturally includes his place of birth. But it turns out those bragging rights belong to a log cabin on Sinking Spring Farm in Kentucky.

So I'm learning.

And when I'm done with Lincoln, I'm looking forward to moving on to LBJ--those three books by Robert A. Caro , the first of which has been flirting with me from the bookshelves, have been begging to be read for a few years now. The blurb on the back cover of Book One offers tantalizing hints of one man's "superhuman drive," of Hill Country Texas dustbowls, Congressional debuts, Senate races and pugnacious political genius. And that's just Book One. Eventually Vietnam brings him low, that much I know. Caro's still working on that one.

Who is going to write Robert A. Caro's biography? A biography of a biographer is the stuff of academic tenure. What does it mean to devote a significant portion to your life to diligantly chronicaling the life of another? Chapter 7: The Lydon Johnson Years. Such a chapter would include a moving account of Caro's exhaustive research methods, a lengthy summary of the books' rapturous critical reception along with the author's corresponding gratification, grants that made it all possible (including innumerable lonely lunches sorting through documents at the Johnson Library in Austin) and why Book One of The Years of Lyndon Johnson is dedicated to Ina.

Abby and I went puddle jumping yesterday. She helped me get her into her frog inspired rain gear (the matching green boots are a little big, so an extra pair of socks helps) and we headed outside. Cooler then the day before, but still freakishly warm. Abby pulled me toward the pothole puddles in the ally, tiny pools of snow melt, gravel and urban sludge. I wondered if maybe she shouldn't be jumping in them. Little flecks of mud clung to the bottom of her raincoat I imagined rare water born diseases.

We moved to less impressive sidewalk puddles. A cabbie rolled up to a stop sign, looked over at Abby attacking a puddle and hollered, "That's cool!" We walked to what we call the Old Park and ran in its circles of various sizes. "Little circle!" Abby yells. "Bigger circle....Biggest Circle!" Then we do it again.

Abby's favorite song right now is Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons' Big Girls Don't Cry. We've watched this YouTube video of it at least once a day for the last month. We both love Valli's giddy falsetto. Whenever he swoops up on "Cry" we look at each other in mock surprise and say, "Oh, no, Frankie Valli!"

Rain-Doh

All our Play-Doh is blended by little hands. No need to keep it white-gloved.

We love the smell, too.

Filagree and Snow

The snow that fell on New Years Eve and into the new year was wonderfully filigreed. All those wan, leafless trees were made stately, upholstered in a delicate cloth of snow. Even the cars took on an absurd opulence, their imperfections flattered by a few inches of fallen snow.

Later on, past 2 a.m, I read in our living room, pausing every now and again to listen as people walked past, their voices rounded off at the edges and muffled, swallowed up by the snow.

Birthday #2

Happy Birthday, kid! You are amazing.

Abby and the Magic Wurlitzer

We're home. Well, the house I grew up in at least. My parents have lived in the same home for almost 35 years now. They moved in when I was almost 2. It's a home steeped in family folklore and being in it conjures up all sorts of nostalgia and wistfulness. Something sad, too. Of time fleeting?

The blustery weather helps fuel this sadness. I woke up at 6:00 and listened to the sound of rain thrashing at the windows and the howling wind. When the sun came up, its light was diluted and made murky by a settlement of gray. This house, my parents house, is filled with my past. In the basement there are letters from friends dating back to grade school. I open random drawers and find pictures of my grandparents, of birthday parties in the backyard, of Christmas mornings from 30 years ago. I don't know what to do with all this. I wanted to make a documentary of it, try and make sense of all the emotions such artifacts stir up--but I feel overwhelmed and that, in turn, makes me feel listless. Or maybe it's all the cookies I've been eating and the sugar crash that always follows in their wake.

I'm at the library. It's quiet and they have internet access. It's another place where old ghosts linger but it doesn't impose its will so strongly.

Beyond the inchoate undertow of saudade, is Abby. Shes storms right through it, a little high octane engine of curiosity and demanding joy. My Dad's Wurlitzer, too. It wheezes and churns to life while its kick drum and trombones shake the entire house. Abby loves it and so do I.

LIS768 Summary

I agree with what others have already expressed--this course should be one of the fundamentals for any future librarian. I also agree with Michael that its title should be changed to "Emerging Technologies."

Library 2.0, no longer a nascent movement, is still in its evangelist phase. It's spreading the good word, surrounded by a relatively tight-knit, energized collective of academics, students and librarians. It's very good at introducing the uninitiated to emerging technologies but still finding its footing concerning the impacts, both good and bad, such technologies may have in a library setting. It's time for more Library 2.0 introspection. It's time, for example, for more case studies of what's worked and why. It's time for case studies of what hasn't worked and why. I wonder, for example, how the Library 2.0 movement might fruitfully draw from the field of Community Informatics, another relatively new discipline equally interested in community based information and communication technologies.

That said, I enjoyed the course but was sometimes frustrated by the introductory quality of it. That sounds somewhat condescending though I definitely don't mean it to. I was, however, already aware or avidly using almost all of technology we discussed. I wonder, once this course is more established, if it wouldn't be beneficial to offer a follow up that moves beyond the introductory and explores some areas that I feel need Library 2.0 needs to tackle. This includes:

1. Management. My LIS770 textbook, Management Basics for Information Professionals was over 500 pages long. Dull-as-dust, but plenty of Druckeresque meat to chew on. Idealistic graduates hoping to spread some of the good word concerning Library 2.0 are often leaving school and stepping into entrenched, change-resistant bureaucracies. So, introducing students to these new, potentially relevant new technologies is one thing but exploring ways for overcoming such resistance is another, equally important piece of the Library 2.0 equation. Additionally, what management models work best with Library 2.0? Perhaps we should be exploring or creating case studies for introducing emerging technologies in libraries and looking at how emerging technologies disrupt existing/popular management systems and how this might be successfully mitigated.

2. Evaluation. Earlier this year, the Americans For Libraries Council released a much needed report titled, Worth Their Weight: An Assessment of the Evolving Field of Library Valuation. It's well worth reading. Perhaps it's because the Library 2.0 field is so young, but I've seen distressing little talk amongst its proponents concerning how the technologies its advocating for are being evaluated. As the report makes clear, those of us advocating for libraries and the public financing and good-will needed to sustain them, must be able to, in quantitative terms, prove their worth. Increasingly, libraries are being asked to prove their social return on investment. This is a tricky, but evaluation methodologies are out there. While qualitative narratives/stories are important, funders trust and want numbers. We need to be studying these evaluation models.

3. Library Literacy. Libraries are still hopelessly bibliocentric. Ideas about what a library is (rather then what it could or should be) are firmly entrenched. They're about books. They're about reading. And, yes, reading is fundamental, but... I'd like to see a Library 2.0 follow up class that spent some time exploring a more expansive idea of what 21st literacy constitutes. Clearly some libraries are having success, making way for gaming, media labs and the like. There's a lot of great research going on in these areas and it would help fortify recent graduates moving into the public domain if they knew they had a lot of highly persuasive company working alongside them.

There's more, but Cathy is making cookies and a piece of cake beckons. I know this blog will continue to chug along. I hope others will allow their own to linger and will share, when inspired, their own thoughts.

Happy Holidays!

Del.icio.us and the Joys of Personalized Metadata

I've told this story before. Prior to Del.icio.us, I kept various file folders of interesting news clippings. I had a file for health related articles, one for foreign affairs, another for cultural news...roughly a dozen of these. Articles too good to lose forever. I'd cut or print them out, highlight some interesting sections, then file them away for later. I had grand plans.

The bookmarks on my computer were already sagging under their burden. Rows of bookmarks. Every so often I'd go through them and weed, separate the wheat from the chaff. Joshua Schachter, it seems, was having a similar problem, losing his way amongst the links. That findability thing. Del.icio.us doesn't need weeding--just feed it tasty links, tag 'em and move on. No more printing, no more file folders, no more overstuffed bookmarks.

I'm still refining my own folksomony, creating an organization system that will be as effectively retrievable as I want it to be. I get a little crazy with all those keywords. On the other hand, the process of tagging an article acts as a nice way to quickly run back through what I've just read, quickly summarizing what I found relevant. I become more attuned to a pieces themes, motifs and how it may be personally relevant. It allows for a dialog between myself and whatever it is I'm labeling. That others may be tagging with similar keywords, leading to articles or sites I overlooked, is like gravy-- a nice extravagance.

My Del.ico.us bookmarks are here. Everything bookmarked for LIS768 can be found here.

Group Project Rehash

For our group presentation we explored the idea of Library as place. I've been interested for a while now in how place effects our mental and physical well-being. Even more so in how little thought we often give to these effects, how unconscious we are of them. One of the best definitions of place we ran across came from the book, Library As Place, where Kathleen McCook defined what she called "Sense-of-Place" as "the sum total of all perceptions-aesthetic,emotional, historical,supernal--that a physical location, and the activities and emotional responses associated with that location, invoke in people."

Such subjective, highly emotional attachments to place fascinate me. Our group had originally flirted with the idea of making a video documentary exploring this in relation to libraries. I've long wanted somebody to more fully unpack that gem from the OCLC's "Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources" report noting the intense nostalgia people feel for libraries, a nostalgia often associated with childhood. I wonder sometimes if the good-will most folks harbor for libraries draws from this deep well of nostalgia.

Making such a documentary, however, proved logistically difficult given our groups personal geography. Nicole and I lived on the North Side of Chicago, so we decided to team up and explore Harold Washington Library, the mothership of Chicago libraries and a building I've long had an adversarial relationship with. Nicole and I used PBwiki to brainstorm what we wanted to do.

The resulting video was perhaps a bit more freewheeling then I would have liked--but we had a lot of fun doing it and lot's of good discussion, some of which we were able to distill into the documentary.

Civic Life, Youth and Libraries

It figures this would happen the day I turn in my LIS768 paper! As mentioned, my paper focused on how libraries can take advantage of the massive amounts of online content creation being generated by today's youth by offering services and programming that seeks to channel the energy and creativity found there toward a more dynamic, relevant form of civic engagement. Yesterday, the MacArthur Foundation announced the "the launch of the new International Journal of Learning and Media, through which core issues facing young people in a digital age will be explored."

Doh! Do you know how great it would have been to have been able to read these a few weeks ago?

The first six titles are available online and probably worth a look for anybody whose interested in youth and their relationship with technology.

Abby is taking her nap, so I'm reading the first title, "Civic Life Online: Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth," which might as well have been the title of my own paper. In the first chapter, W. Lance Bennett has the chutzpah to bring up all sorts of things I conveniently left out of my own paper or failed to even consider. I hate him. But he points out that there are two "sharply differing views of what constitutes civic engagement and citizenship for young people both on and off line."

The engaged youth paradigm, as he calls it, holds that the so-called lack of civic participation amongst today's youth is due to a failure on the part of our government to recognize the "generation changes in social identity that have resulted in the growing importance of peer networks and online communities." Traditional forms of civic engagement are viewed by today's youth with skepticism, lacking authenticity. New forms of civic engagement, while nascent, are occurring online, a "new spectrum of civic actions," as Bennett calls them.

The disengaged youth paradigm, on the other hand, acknowledges the possibilities of this new spectrum of civic engagement emerging online, but focuses "on generational decline in connections to government (e.g., voting patterns) and general civic engagement (e.g., following public affairs in the news) as threats to the health of democracy itself."

These two paradigms don't seem so terribly far apart to me, though if forced to chose my sympathies would lie more with the engaged youth paradigm. Millions of youth are creating, remixing and disseminating content online. Some of it could be said to taking advantage of this new spectrum on civic engagement emerging online, but a huge majority of it, as the disengaged youth crowd believe, is focused on self-expression and consumer advocacy with some fortuitous civic spindrift. But we can't simply chastise youth for not debating the merits and drawbacks, 250 years on, of our founding fathers belief in a representative democracy as opposed to a direct one. What we need to do, and this is what I suggested in my paper, is work to channel these online creative endeavors toward, as Peter Levine suggests, building the "foundations of civil society in the twenty-first society." After all, maybe what youth are doing with this explosion of online content creation is opening up new, reinvigorated ways to be a citizen. Maybe the fact that they're disengaged from the more traditional forms of civic engagement is because, as Bennett points out, they're flawed. "Telling young people to participate in bad institutions," Bennett writes, "is mere propaganda."

The goal, then, is to bring these two paradigms together and leverage the creativity and enthusiasm that's occurring online to help create new, exciting and tangible ways for youth to effect community change, to become engaged citizens. Libraries, long viewed, perhaps romantically, as bulwarks of democracy, have an opportunity to step in and facilitate this. This is especially true when you consider that civic education in our nation's schools is either extinct or exceedingly dull. Bennett writes:

A massive International Education Association (IEA) survey of 90,000 fourteen-year-olds in twenty-eight nations suggested that civic education, where it is offered, remains largely a textbook experience, largely severed from the vibrant experiences of politics that might help young people engage with public life.

So, how do libraries work with the youth in their communities to create a more vibrant civic experience, more aligned with their creative online endeavors? The opportunities for building new civic and political communities in such an environment is ripe for the plucking. Again, libraries need to be in the thick of this!

Public Libraries As Civic Content Creators

My paper builds on Jeffrey Lyons revelatory article, The Library: A Distinct Local Voice. Well, revelatory to me, at least! Lyons wondered how libraries, in collaboration with their users/communities could use "technology to tap deeper into reservoirs of local knowledge within their communities." Libraries have always played a role in disseminating this kind of local information--whether it be through online community portholes or making traditional print resources readily available. The tapping deeper part comes with having libraries move beyond simply aggregating such locally based content and more aggressively working to create, market, dispense and archive it. And not just any content. My goal is more pedagogic.

1. Capitalizing on the momentum and new thinking paradigms ("radical change") being encouraged by the Library 2.0 movement, libraries have a unique opportunity to use the Internet and Web 2.0 technologies as a tool to produce locally based content.

2. By empowering and facilitating the creation of such community-based content, libraries can and must play a more active pedagogic role in working with Generation Y (or whatever you choose to call them) to teach them how to effectively use information communication technologies to effect positive change. My hope is that such a process would, among other things, nurture media literacy, foster unique collaborative opportunities, encourage lifelong learning and, perhaps most importantly, enhance civic engagement and strengthen democracy by effecting tangible public change.

Hello Fellow YouTubers!

I didn't know about the Peter Oakely, the geriatric YouTube sensation, until I read Annie's post the other day. Now I'm hooked and completely fascinated.

He's got teenage fans from Germany ("Hey, old man!"), inspired fellow old timers with unfortunate last names to tell their own stories, had tributes made, spoofs, been the topic of academic papers had to deal with a nasty Youtube hoax announcing his death and, at 96 videos and counting, still cooking away.

I've been keenly interested in watching how his videos have progressed--how his technological agility improved. His first few videos are a bit fumbling-- he's apologetic about their quality. He's not a technological neophyte, but he's still learning the ropes. By the 4th video, however, he's got headphones with an attached microphone, and a nice introduction. The sound is vastly improved.

By the 5th video his grasp of multimedia storytelling is rapidly progressing. And, he's turned, unexpectedly, into a YouTube hit. He tells us that he woke up that particular morning and found "I had 4,700 notifications from YouTube in my e-mail...I am absolutely overwhelmed and don't quite know what to say...I just need to say thank you to all of you people." Youtube, he says, has given him "a whole new world to experience." And so he explores.

A nice reminder that all the user-generated content going on isn't simply coming from the so-called digital-native contingency, a term laden with some run away assumptions. As Henry Jenkins recently posted:

As long as we divide the world into digital natives and immigrants, we won't be able to talk meaningfully about the kinds of sharing that occurs between adults and children and we won't be able to imagine other ways that adults can interact with youth outside of these cultural divides.

What stereotypes, what detrimental ageist suppositions do we sustain by focusing so much of our attention and energy on Millennials and their relationship with technology? Watching Oakley's earliest videos, it's clear that he was seeking to have a conversation with his "fellow YouTubers," made up of, as he's very much aware, a much younger audience. Part of what he's seeking is a cross-generational dialogue, and in this he succeeds wonderfully, with folks replying in the comment section or even, more relevant to the medium, by video. In fact, as the above mentioned academic article by Dave Harley and Geraldine Fitzpatrick makes clear:

What begins as an individual effort by Peter soon develops into a collaborative endeavor through comments he receives from his viewers. They give him feedback in a number of ways which help him to develop his video presence within YouTube.

And these comments, it should be noted, are overwhelmingly positive and emotive--full of good will and encouragement. Yardly takes this encouragement and runs with it, focusing on an on-going narrative about his life incorporating old photographs, music and sound effects.

It's inspiring stuff and further evidence of the importance of telling stories. There's no reason, other than timidity and a failure of imagination, that libraries shouldn't be helping to facilitate these stories, making them part of their collection.

One last quote from the Harley/Fitzpatrick paper:

It's not the functionality of YouTube that inspires Peter to tell his life story but the social context that it appears within. The intergenerational nature of this context is highly influential, directing and informing the co-creation of the narrative. The commonality of human experience across ages and cultures that shows itself in the accompanying dialogue reminds us of a wider sense of kinship which transcends mere self interest. The appreciation of Peter's stories by his viewers also suggests that they see the relevance of the life stages of others in relation to their life stages. The creation of narrative, developed through Peter's videos, speaks of an affinity between different generations and a process of reciprocal learning.

Libraries should be in the thick of this.