
Is the catalog metaphor dead?
“It is astonishing what a different result one gets by changing the metaphor!”
George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss
“It is astonishing what a different result one gets by changing the metaphor!”
George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss
Stanford University Libraries and Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech) are pleased to announce that Dr. Anu Masso, Dr. Anna-Maria Osula, and Dr.
Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech) and the Stanford University Libraries, in association with Stanford's Program on Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance invite applications for the Global Digital Governance Fellowship at Stanford University for Estonian Scholars.
In April, 2017, I had a debate with David McClure and Karl Grossner — at that time both were Stanford colleagues. They argued that everything is data. I vehemently opposed the notion.
The Stanford RegLab and the Stanford Literary Lab have both been processing and analyzing large text corpora for many years now and both recently received a chunk of OCR content from Stanford Libraries thanks to work that DLSS has undertaken to retrieve the digital files of more than 3 million items from the Stanford Libraries catalog that were scanned by Google.
Last week 38 people from units across Stanford Libraries completed the six-week Elements of AI course. Of those who responded to the course survey, all said they would recommend it to colleagues. They also unanimously agreed that meeting weekly in groups to discuss each chapter was the most rewarding part of taking the course.
In the beginning of March, managers at Stanford Libraries began talking about working remotely and decided to set up shifts in each department – half working two weeks on site and half two weeks remotely. By the 6th of March the teams for our Collection Services group out in Redwood City were assembled, and the first group – Aries – stayed home for their first week. The Libraries were only one week into that first shift, when the state of California and Stanford decided that everyone should shelter at home starting on the 16th. The Aries team was taken off guard - we all were. Although we had discussed and lined up remote projects, not everyone had taken their computer and ergonomic equipment home with them. A few of us went in to grab equipment (desktop computers, monitors, etc.) and forgotten items (like reading glasses!) and drove around making deliveries – not everyone in the Bay Area drives a car!
The image associated with this post is from "Autonomous Trap" by James Bridle.
If you attended or watched the talks at Fantastic Futures December 2019, you know that the answer to that question is emphatically No. Both of the keynote speakers addressed the essential role of libraries in providing curated data to improve AI and in preserving the data, models, and records for oversight of how the technology is implemented. Lightning talks (recordings available) demonstrated applications of AI by practitioners operating within libraries, archives, and museums. And Teemu Roos presented Elements of AI, a free online course for everyone designed to demystify AI.