techMETRO

Prediction Markets and Emerging Technologies

I attended a session at the Coalition for Networked Information Task Force Meeting on "Prediction Markets for Emerging Technologies: An Experiment in the Wisdom of the Crowds." Bryan Alexander, Director for Research at NITLE, talked about their use of Inkling prediction markets platform to launch and track markets related to emerging technologies possibilities. For example, one market posits "Will Google Docs emerge as the dominant collaborative authoring service among faculty by spring 2009?" When I logged in, trading was down $1.85 on and the market is currently predicting a 35% chance that this will occur. When you sign up (free), you get $5k to trade with leverage your intution/knowledge/luck to make some money and add your voice to the crowd. Alexander was careful to mention a number of times that this is a more robust and fluid way to gauge public opinion than a simple survey, which really only gathers a static snapshot of opinion that may otherwise fluctuate if collected over a longer period of time.

One commenter at the session mentioned, accurately in my opinion, that market trading would vary greatly depending on whether it was a regional, national, or global market. NYC, as its own microcosm, might yield widely different trading activity and predictions compared with a similar market in different cities. I'm wondering if there might be a place for a prediction markets game in the METRO membership to help leverage our collective knowledge to gauge NYC's adoption/rejection/ambivalence of emerging technologies in our libraries.

If your curiosity is piqued, I'd encourage you to sign up and play the market yourself.

PALINET Annual Conference Materials Posted

Palinet recently posted audio and slides from their 2008 conference. I was there for one of the days, and I can definitely recommend checking out the sessions. The full run-down is pasted below (from the Palinet website) or you can view 2008 and past conferences here.

Keynote Address, Roy Tenant

Libraries, Archives+Museums (LAMs)Wide Open: Cultural Heritage Institutions in a NetworkedWorld

 

In a highly interconnected world, libraries, archives and museums (LAMs) have the best chance of being valued and adding value to society by being open. Being open can take various forms, from providing open access to digitized content, to collaborating openly with others, to creating and using open source software.  Strategies for becoming more effective and valued in a society that increasingly expects content and services delivered in open and personal ways will be highlighted in a talk that will seek to both challenge and inspire.

Audio Recording 

 

Laurie Gemmill, PALINET

Building a Regional Collaborative Digitization Program

 

Featured Guests

Kristen Yarmey-Tylutki, The University of Scranton

Jennie A. Levine, University of Maryland Libraries

 

The PALINET Mass Digitization Collaborative is a project supported by PALINET members and funded in part by a grant from the Sloan Foundation to support free and open access to the rich cultural heritage materials of PALINET member institutions. PALINET members are encouraged to participate in the project and the Open Content Alliance. The new digital assets created through the service will be available through the Internet Archive as well as through participating institutions’ own digital collections. Session attendees will learn more about the project and how they can participate including selection guidelines, costs, and digitization details. Representatives from participating cultural heritage institutions will discuss their experiences.

 

Presentation File

Audio Recording 

 

 

Scherelene Schatz + Casey Confoy, Jersey Cat+

Using ISO Messaging for Resource Sharing

 

The New Jersey State Library serves as a broker for libraries for interlibrary loan requests that are placed outside of the state of New Jersey through our JerseyCat+ service. In July 2007, the JerseyCat+ service began to use ISO messaging between our statewide interlibrary loan system, JerseyCat, and OCLC. This has saved the amount of time staff at NJ State Library spent on searching for items, placing requests, and updating request statuses. It has greatly improved delivery times as well. This session demonstrates how the system works.

 

Presentation File

Audio Recording

 

 

Gregg Silvis, University of Delaware

The Impending Demise of the Local OPAC, 3 Years Later

 

This program is a follow-up to the program given at the 2005 PALINET Annual Conference, "The Impending Demise of the Local OPAC." In the intervening 3 years, OCLC has significantly developed the WorldCat program resulting in WorldCat Local. An overview of these developments will be presented as well as a discussion of the outstanding issues that still need to be resolved.  

Presentation File 
Audio Recording

 

Grace Agnew + Mary Beth Weber, Rutgers University Building a Digital Cyberinfrastructure for NJ Education

 This presentation will describe the scaffolded development of a digital cyberinfrastructure for New Jersey, through a collaboration of the state’s educational and cultural heritage institutions. The cyberinfrastructure development began with a statewide IMLS funded cultural heritage portal, New Jersey Digital Highway, which developed a Fedora-based repository architecture and a digital object ingest and METS-based utility, the workflow management system.  Development continues with the IMLS-funded NJVid statewide digital video portal, which will provide statewide  multimedia streaming and a Shibboleth authentication and authorization architecture to increase the types of information, including licensed commercial resources as well as collaboration with statewide Internet2 provider, NJEdge. The project culminates with Rutgers/VALE involvement in OLE, open library environment, which will seamlessly blend analog and digital collections and services.

 

Presentation File
Audio Recording

 

 

Tom Clareson, PALINET -

Communities of Digitization

 

Featured Guests

Janet McNeil Hurlbert, Lycoming College

Julia Maserjian, Lehigh University

Marilyn McKinley Parrish, Millersville University.

Heather Tennies, Lancaster County Historical Society

 

In the PALINET region and across the country, cultural organizations are banding together to develop digital projects and programs to highlight the history and treasures of their communities. How can we reach across borders to begin building these partnerships? How do we build on each others’ strengths? Where are the resources to fund these types of programs? This session will highlight regional and national models for community cooperation in digitization.

 

Presentation File - Clareson

Presentation File – Hurlbert           
Presentation File – Maserjian
Presentation File – Tennies 
Audio Recording

 

 

Stephen Marvin, West Chester University

Copyright Issues for Libraries in a Web 2.0 + Web 3D World

 

Daily, libraries are faced with questions concerning copyright and fair use. Libraries are barely keeping current with podcasting, cell phones, text messaging, wireless connections, and other forms of computer mediated communication. Information delivery has transformed in numerous ways, not only facilitating the speed and

ease, but redefining and reshaping norms. We value the social dimension of computing to provide collaborative interaction. This program will explore copyright applicable to libraries with emerging use ofWeb2 andWeb3D and the growing mobile software movement.

 

Presentation File
Audio Recording

 

 

Doreen Herold + Tim McGeary, Lehigh University

Come to the Fiesta–Join the OLE Project

 

Led by Duke University, the OLE Project intends to build a design document for an open source library management system which will be based on the software design philosophy of service oriented architecture (SOA). SOA is becoming a dominant trend in technology as early adopters have shown that it provides the benefit of an agile

system, one that is flexible in response to information demands. Lehigh’s Doreen Herold and Tim McGeary will present the status of the OLE Project, its process, its goals, and how other PALINET members can participate.

 

Presentation File 

Audio Recording

 

Amy Begg DeGroff, Howard County Library System Hidden Downsides and Possible Future Directions of Open Source Software for Libraries

 

Howard County Library has deployed and continues to deploy open source / free software wherever it is feasible. Join Amy Begg De Groff, Director of IT for Howard County Library to talk about what "feasible" means and learn about the work flow used in the deployment of a collaboration product (DeskNow) and an integrated library system (Koha).

 

Audio Recording 

 

Open Source Round Robin Presentations

 

Participate in this engaging session with PALINET members who have implemented open source initiatives at their institutions. Hear how John Brice and Cindy Murdoch of the Meadville Public Library integrated open source solutions such as the Linux Terminal Server Project and the Koha ILS. Other presenters include Andrew Nagy, the lead developer for vuFind and Drexel University’s Gabriel Farrell, who shared information about Helios, a Drexel Library developed discovery tool.

 

Presentation File

Audio Recording

METRO Participates in Statewide Digital Heritage Collaborative Project

The Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO) recently added 14 digital collections to the New York 3Rs collaborative digital heritage website, www.NewYorkHeritage.org. The site connects more than 170 digital collections from around the state, contributed by libraries, archives, museums and other cultural institutions, and builds on existing digital repository services administered by each of the nine reference and research library resources councils.

METRO's contributions to the collaborative project consist of collections from Queens College, Brooklyn Public Library, CUNY Graduate Center, Yeshiva University, Brooklyn College, SUNY Maritime College, Lehman College, and the Metropolitan New York Library Council. These collections total 3016 items, and represent a broad range of research interests, including Brooklyn Democratic Party Scrapbooks, Fulton Street Trade Cards, Murray Hill Collection, Sailors' Snug Harbor Archives, Waterways of New York, Breslau Memorial and Prayer Book, and Bronx Business for Everybody collections.

A variety of materials can be found among the New York Heritage Digital Collections, including photographs, postcards, correspondence, manuscripts, oral histories, yearbooks and newspapers. Many kinds of institutions from New York State have partnered to make this project possible, including public, academic and school libraries, museums, archives and historical societies. The power of collaboration is what makes this new service possible.

Participants to New York Heritage Digital Collections are committed to enhancing the site by adding both content and contributing institutions on a regular basis. The goal of the project is to eventually connect one thousand collections and one million items from throughout New York State. All institutions interested in participating in the project are encouraged to contact the 3Rs organization that serves their region.

NewYorkHeritage.org uses OCLC’s CONTENTdm Multisite Server to bring these collections together, allowing the public to search across all items simultaneously. This project provides free, online access to images of cultural and historical significance in New York State.

The New York 3Rs Association is a partnership among New York’s nine reference and research resource systems. The New York 3Rs was incorporated in 2003 to further the ability of those systems to provide statewide services. The members of the New York 3Rs Association are: the Capital District Library Council, Central New York Library Resources Council, Long Island Library Resources Council, Metropolitan New York Library Council, Northern New York Library Network, Rochester Regional Library Council, Southeastern New York Library Resources Council, South Central Regional Library Council, and Western New York Library Resources Council.