When I was in school to get my MLIS, I had an assignment in my Reference class to observe reference librarians in real-world situations. I sat in at the reference desk at my local branch of the Chicago Public Library over the course of several days. I noticed something odd about the way the reference librarians dressed at this branch: sometimes they dressed in more formal professional attire – long-sleeved, button-up shirts and ties for the men; blouses and skirts, or dresses for the women – but at other times they dressed very casually; sometimes the same librarian would be dressed professionally one day, and the next day casually. I saw no rhyme or reason to this.
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Tag: context
The True Scope of History, Part II
Homo sapiens is unique on this planet in that we’re the only genus with only one species. It’s not normal to be the only species within a genus! All other animals exist in a world in which there are others very like themselves, but not them.
Humans, by contrast, take it for granted that there are no other species in the world like us.
It didn’t used to be that way, though. We used to share this planet with other people who weren’t us.
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User Centered Design: The New Card Catalog for the Digital Information Age
The Kansas City Public Library just posted a new position: User Centered Design Specialist
I love that we’re doing this! I know that it’s become something of a cliché to talk about UX, but the simple fact of the matter is that user experience and interaction design are only going to become more important as we proceed in our Digital Information Age.
The landscape of information access is undergoing radical evolution. We have a wider variety of information accessing technology than ever before: desktop computers, laptops, tablets, smart phones, gaming systems – with different operating systems and coding platforms for each. More importantly, these technologies have created a near-infinite variety in points of access – wherever we can carry our devices (and still have signal) we can access information at will.
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The True Scope of History
Human anatomical modernity began approximately 200,000 years ago.
Human behavioral modernity began approximately 50,000 years ago.
The entirety of humanity’s known written record dates back approximately 5,000 years.
Consider what this means: Our brains have been as complex as they are now – we’ve possessed the same curiosity, drive, wanderlust, intelligence, and creativity – for at least 50,000 years. We’ve been exploring, experimenting, testing, learning, and figuring things out this whole time. It may be that we’ve been this curious and intelligent for the full 200,000 years of our existence.
If we take the 50,000 year mark – this means we only know, at most, 10% of everything we’ve done in that time. 90% of our own history is unknown to ourselves, except through some cave paintings and fossils.
If we take the 200,000 year mark – that percentage drops to 2.5%, leaving 97%-98% of our own history completely in the dark.
Humbling, ain’t it?
Thoughts on the Future of Technology
I’ve developed a passion for UX and I do my best to keep up with the professional literature on the subject. There’s one blog in particular that I keep coming back to: A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design by Bret Victor. It’s almost a year old at this point, but I think the critiques it offers are universally relevant.
This post encourages me to think deeply about the future, and more generally about how we approach technology. I think Mr. Victor is absolutely correct – both in his critique of the currently popular vision of the future, but also, and more essentially, in his argument that our technological future isn’t something that just happens. It isn’t inevitable. We can choose where we want our technology to go – what we want to design and build and pursue.
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Context Matters!
In library school, we spent a lot of time discussing the nature of data and information, debating the differences and relationships between them. This may seem frivolous to some, but remember that the essence of librarianship is to curate and provide access to quality information in a community. While there are many competing definitions of information, most people are willing to accept some version of this:
Information is data put into context.
It’s the “put into context” part that’s important here – raw data doesn’t really tell us anything in-and-of itself; it must be placed into meaningful context in order to be useful.
Context is everything.
Continue reading “Context Matters!”
John the Librarian 