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David Weinberger

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Back when the Digital Public Library of America was gearing up, I got invited to participate in a day of brainstorming about what could be done to make the US. State Department Diplomatic Reception Rooms more accessible to the public. About twenty of us spent the day talking in the Rooms themselves, and we also got a tour of some of the inner offices on Secretary Clinton’s floor. I don’t know how much the day helped the State Department, but it was certainly an interesting day for me. I do remember suggesting (along with Martin Kalfatovic, probably) that State give the DPLA its spreadsheet of objects + metadata, which I think they are getting close to doing. The Rooms are ornate and even palatial, which strikes a discordant note for a humble democracy. On the other hand, are we supposed to pretend to visiting dignitaries that the U.S.A. can’t afford to do up a room... (more)

[annotation][2b2k] Philip Desenne

I’m at a workshop on annotation at Harvard. Philip Desenne is giving one of the keynotes. NOTE: Live-blogging. Getting things wrong. Missing points. Omitting key information. Introducing artificial choppiness. Over-emphasizing small matters. Paraphrasing badly. Not running a spellpchecker. Mangling other people’s ideas and words. You are warned, people. We’re here to talk about the Web 3.0, Phil says — making the Web more fully semantic. Phil says that we need to re-write the definition of annotation. We should be talking about hyper-nota: digital media-rich annotations. A... (more)

Changing where you work is changing your job

CNN.com has posted my op-ed about why where you work is not about the quality of your life so much as about the substance of it. Judging from some of the reaction, I should emphasize that if the only way to save Yahoo were to require everyone to come to work every day, that would certainly be the right decision. But it seems clear to me that Marissa Mayer was sending a signal with this policy, for surely there are some people who were working productively from home. So, if the new policy is a signal and is not actually required to save Yahoo, then I think she has underestimated ... (more)

[misc] The loneliness of the long distance ISBN

NOTE a couple of hours later: OCLC has discovered a problem with the analysis. So please ignore the following post until further notice. Apologies from the management. Ever since the 1960s, publishers have used ISBN numbers as identifiers of editions of books. Since the world needs unique ways to refer to unique books, you would think that ISBN would be a splendid solution. Sometimes and in some instances it is. But there are problems, highlighted in the latest analysis run by OCLC on its database of almost 300 million records. .oneborder{border-bottom:1px solid brown;} Number of... (more)

Lobby for FaceBook, Yahoo, NewsCorp and Elsevier opposes the White House Open Access order, among others

Peter Suber points out that FaceBook, Yahoo, Elsevier and Yahoo have joined the NetChoice.org lobby that has issued a clarion call against open access that blurs the line between lies and gibberish. Peter blows the statements apart, leaving nothing but clean air and a whiff of ozone. NetChoice.org is publicizing its monthly “iAWFUL” (Internet advocates watchlist for ugly laws) list of policies that it doesn’t like. The list has little to do with advocating for the Internet, and everything to do with supporting the interests of Internet businesses (“committed to tearing down barr... (more)