Summer in Hyperlink

“Tell your story. People want to hear your story.” My friend, Al Baccari Stories are the thread that weaves between generations: A mother’s tale, a father’s anecdote; a family’s saga. We each bear a story, guardians of our past. History reminds us that we are accountable now and later; it is in the looking back that we can plan forward. Each story is a thread, and the threads weave together to create the patchwork quilt blanketing our community, nurturing our young, asking them each to one day add their particular stitch to the story. The story-tellers, sages of the ages, the historians who protect our glorious and sometimes sorted pasts,…

Innovation Strategy & Roadmap: Reading the Future with Ray-Ban Metaglasses   The Idea Using Ray-Ban MetaGlasses we will create a reading lab to support our literacy volunteers in teaching children and adults alike to read, or sharpen their reading skills. This technology can also read to those with low vision who can no longer read to themselves, easily expanding the documents available to non-sighted patrons. According to the ALA, 7% (12 million) Americans suffer vision impairment, with that number set to double by 2050. (2025). Ray-Ban MetaGlasses (herein referred to as “metaglasses” or “the glasses”) are available with clear, non-prescription glass. The glasses require very little training, and can be…

Consider NYPL’s launch of InstaNovels: digital novels presented through Instagram. In short, it is a graphic novel experience in an animated format. New stories and classics both in a new-wave format. At first, I scoffed, and then I reflected: my older son, now 13, struggled to find his way to reading anything half his lifetime ago. While other parents “humbly bragged” about how many books their little geniuses had devoured, I was struggling to get this kid away from Flat Stanley readers, which were, frankly, boring. And then DogMan (Dav Pilkey) arrived. At first, I hated it: endless comic strips of a dog policeman. But night after night my son…

One of my earliest memories is accompanying my mother, a life-long student and author, to the main branch of the San Francisco public library. The building was a gem: enormous, imposing, marble and limestone with a grand staircase, quite reading rooms with long tables and green crook-neck study lamps. I remember holding her hand and walking up the grand central staircase of white marble, looking down all the while and watching my red Mary jane shoes skip steps alongside her. Mom asked a librarian for assistance, and he guided us through this room to that one, and finally to a tiny (closet-sized) space, painted deep Pompeii red, lined floor-to-ceiling with…

“Hyperlinks are people, too,” says Prof. Michael Stephens. This statement is the heart of the matter. People are linked by a variety of networks: school, culture, neighborhood, city, nationality, family… and on and on. As individuals, we “wear many masks” as per George Orwell, and therefore we are hyper-linked. These links don’t often have a brick-and-mortar building associated or necessary to establish or confirm their validity. The link between siblings, parent-to-child, student-to-student/teacher, boss to employee, are all intangible, but very real links. And they are the first types of “networks” we create as humans. Simply put, our hyperlinks are infinite. With the onset of communication technology, our links went beyond…

“The library is everywhere” is an overwhelming thought. It’s similar to “God is everywhere,” a typical lesson for young emerging Christians, with the guiding principle that if you look, you will find it. Equally perplexing is Briet’s famous claim that the antelope is a document. These concepts, while excellent fodder to chew on, are difficult to construct a building upon. In fact, they even scare people away. How, then, do we create a modern library?             The ancient Greeks used the agora as their exchange space: ideas, politics, and gossip were traded alongside foods and other goods. It was an open space that was full of information. Today’s library is…

Summer in Hyperlink- It sounds like a place I should go… maybe? Let’s see where this brings me.