Expanding Tech with Telescopes at the OSU Library

In response to our recent “What If The Library...” feedback campaign, Edmon Low Creative Studios now boasts a new addition to its hardware lineup: telescopes. The Tech To Go desk now offers a range of equipment for audio, photo, video and nighttime sky viewing.

The decision to purchase telescopes was based on student votes. Other options included checkout for Google Glass, more rolling whiteboards and free faxing. Along with telescopes, the Library also added bean bag chairs and more study rooms on the first floor.

There are currently three types of telescopes available for checkout. The Meade ETC 90 features a removable optical tube, which provides versatility to the model. It has an Audiostar handbox controller with a built-in speaker that offers information about objects in the telescope's’ view. Ideal for learning while stargazing, this is also the best choice for adventures requiring easily portable equipment.

The Meade Infinity 102 is great for beginners. It has everything necessary for amateur sky searchers. Its slow motion option allows the user to track moving objects while capturing bright and clear images. It comes with three eyepieces for varying levels of magnification, and the red dot viewfinder makes locating planets and constellations a breeze.

The Celestron C6N provides incredibly refined images of wide views by using diffraction-limited parabolic primary mirrors. This telescope is high quality and performs as such. It is operated by computer control technology, giving it a vast database and extensive knowledge on a number of identifiable objects. This piece of exploration equipment is ideal for space education.

The Celestron SkyMaster Binoculars present a high quality experience. This device is intended for extended viewing of astronomical and terrestrial scenes, so it would be an ideal gadget for searching across vast landscapes or spotting objects from long distances. Easy to use and equipped with user-friendly capabilities, these binoculars could change the way you see the world.

In addition to the new telescopes, Tech To Go continues to offer GoPros, cameras, microphones and projectors, most of which are available for three day checkout.

Post by Jennifer Barnett, E-Communications Intern for OSU Library Communications

Brianna Marshall on "Embracing Library-Supported Research Data Management Services"

Library employees may find the slides and notes from Brianna Marshall's April 7 presentation at http://www.briannamarshall.com/2016/05/02/library-rdm/

Information on previous Library Futures speakers can be found on the staff drive at U:\LibraryFutures.

Comments and questions on the presentations can be added to the comments section below.

Surplus of Creativity in the Digital Age

In our Feb. 8 blog post, we discussed how artificial intelligence could impact the library. The post's video "Humans Need Not Apply" argues that an economy built entirely on creative works could not exist, but in the age of social media could we see the beginnings of such a thing?

In his book, "Cognitive Surplus" Clay Shirky discusses the impact a globalized network has had on human efforts. The Industrial Revolution brought with it our modern work schedule, complete with time off and television to occupy that time. As Shirky observes, a good deal of our free time in the past had been spent gawking at this relatively new invention. However, the Internet has redirected that energy. The internet provides what Shirky describes as the "means, motive and opportunity" to put our energies into seeking, creating and sharing more personal and meaningful content.

Every time something is seen, enjoyed, or shared by us, we participate in a new content economy. Any time we make a modification, which can be something as simple as an accompanying caption or as transformative as a remix, we contribute to its gross domestic product. The new entrepreneurs in this economy are the ones who devote themselves to content creation. It's easy to view the surface of sites such as YouTube and Facebook and see just that sliver as a representative consensus, but the rabbit hole goes much deeper.

New movements within art, music, film and entertainment are being developed as you read this. Globalized genres of music such as vaporwave have emerged within just the last few years and already you can fill weeks' of continuous playlists and never repeat a single song. According to company data cited by the Wall Street Journal, as much as 12 hours of audio and music are uploaded to independent publishing site Soundcloud every minute.

Content creators in 2016 have the capability to publish exponentially more media than those of a just a few decades ago. You'll only ever have the opportunity to see a minute fraction of these publications. This blog happens to be a piece of it. If it exists, there's an audience for it.

For libraries this is a chance to be a hub for those who wish to engage in and expand their role in this content driven industry. Libraries already house many of the means of production. Computers, books, software, and peripheral hardware are all already in most of our libraries. Makerspaces are an example of this. These resources represent Shirky's means, motives, and opportunity for millions of creative people.

With an explosion of new art and culture occurring that is capable of rivaling that of the Renaissance, it is not unfeasible to imagine that a new generation of Rembrandts and Michelangelos are currently in their early youth, living near libraries that could give them the tools they need to discover their genius.

How do you view the library's role in this age of content? What services could the library provide to not only further the creative abilities of its users but also connect and engage with users beyond its doors?

Symbiotic Intelligence: How A.I. May Create Cooperative Education in the Future

A recent publication in the World Economic Forum titled “The Future of Jobs” asserts that over 5 million jobs may be lost to robotization by the year 2020. YouTube channel CGP Grey, a channel that specializes in discussing various concepts in depth, has created a fascinating video discussing just how technological advances can outpace human efforts:

This video raises many intriguing - and possibly unanswerable - questions. For those of us working in the library space some of those questions might include

• How will robotization and digital intelligences affect the way library services are provided? 
• Where will the librarian fit in with all of this? 
• How will those people whose jobs have been phased out utilize a library? 

As CGP Grey’s video posits, digital entities capable of learning, interacting, and producing creative output can accomplish quite a lot. It’s conceivable that even this blog post could someday be written by a well-educated computer intelligence rather than the intern with a penchant for procrastination. That said, it’s entirely possible these advances could see the creation of more effective libraries, more effective librarians and all around more effective learning experiences.

The path to creating smarter, stronger and more capable machines lies in replicating our own psychological learning needs. The conundrum this presents is that the human learning process is an innumerable sum of different ethereal mental mechanisms.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg describes a bulk of these processes as "unsupervised learning." Zuckerberg has invested a great deal of time and capital into the development of artificial intelligence, making it one of Facebook, Inc.'s largest development projects.

In a recent Facebook status update about his aspirations for artificial intelligence development, Zuckerberg said, “Unsupervised learning is learning how the world works by observing and trying things out rather than being told what to do... It's key to building systems with human-like common sense because it doesn't require a person to teach it everything they know. It gives the machine the ability to anticipate what may happen in the future and predict the effect of an action. It could help us build machines that can hold conversations or plan complex sequences of actions... We fundamentally do not understand how general learning works... Until we solve this problem, throwing all the machine power in the world at it cannot create an AI that can do everything a person can.”

This is to say that the human mind is a vast, complex and unique thinking machine that cannot be defined by sheer horsepower. Understanding all of the mechanisms in which it learns is the key to not only the creation of artificial intelligence, but also more effective learning and teaching practices. A thinking machine can not only learn from human teachers, but also teach human learners.

Imagine the impact such an entity could have on a library. Makerspaces, writing labs, research, database optimization, all manner of workshops, all could see a dramatic overhaul of how they're performed, delivered and absorbed by they're audience.

As for the librarians, certain functions librarians perform such as the analyzing, management and acquisition of materials or information and data processing could foreseeably be delegated to thinking computers in the future, but the more human functions of librarians - those directly involved with enlightening and educating the users of the library - need not be replaced because such functions are best fostered by human relationships.

For example, people like to use Siri, but no one really respects Siri as a person. "She" is not a mentor, or a teacher, or a researcher or a friend. "She" doesn’t recognize her user’s learning process or where it might be stumbling, and can only provide feedback in the form of suggestions of what "she" believes they might have meant based on her programming. Digital intelligence may be able to replicate operational functions, but the human capacity for learning requires a set of intangible qualities. A machine capable of learning and teaching may enhance a human's education to a degree, but it takes a human to best understand a human.

What does the development of artificial intelligence mean to you? How do you foresee it affecting your role in the library? How will education utilize intelligent technologies? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

Anne Kenney on "From Defining 21st Century Research Libraries to Implementing 21st Century Research Universities"

Library employees may find the slides from Anne Kenney's April 9 presentation (as well as the materials from our previous speakers) on the staff drive at U:LibraryFutures\.

Comments and questions on the presentations can be added to the comments section below.

Mark Sandler on "Building the Library of the Future, One Click at a Time"

Library employees may find the slides from Mark Sandler's Nov. 18 presentation (as well as the materials from our previous speakers) on the staff drive at U:LibraryFutures\.

Comments and questions on the presentations can be added to the comments section below.

Personality Types for Library Organizations: Part 5- Perceiving vs. Judging

post by Dan Chaney, Humanities and Social Sciences Division

Perceiving vs. Judging

Of the four dimensions, my favorite is without a doubt is this one, perceiving and judging. Judging and perceiving is the dimension that concerns itself with how we choose to live our lives – in either a very structured way or a very flexible open way.

First, let’s dispel a couple of stereotypes. When people hear this dimension is perceiving versus judging, the first assumption is that perceivers are people who are particularly perceptive or observant, and judgers are people who are judgmental. Not at all.

Judgers are people with a preference for living in an orderly, structured way and are happiest when their lives are structured and matters settled. Judgers love to make decisions and seek to control their lives (and sometimes the lives of others.) Judgers tend to see things in terms of black and white and they come down on one side or the other. They don’t like decisions that are left up in the air, in fact, decisions that aren’t settled actually can make judgers uncomfortable or cause them stress.

Perceivers, on the other hand, are folks that prefer to make decisions in an open ended fashion. And really, perceivers prefer not to make decisions at all. They love flexibility. They love to perceive options. They don’t like to make decisions because, let’s face it, something better might come along that they’d rather do so they’d just as soon not be pinned down on anything. Perceivers tend to hate day planners, calendars, to do lists, syllabi, etc. Forcing a perceiver to make a decision can actually cause them to feel stress.

So, why is this my favorite personality dimension? Background: I mentioned when you take the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, it’ll give you a score and a strength of that score ranging from 0 to 40. I also mentioned that most people fall within the bell curve on MBTI scores for each dimension, meaning that most people fall within about 10 on the strength scale for any particular dimension. That is certainly true for me.  My Introvert score is a strength of 7, which means I could go either way, depending on how I answered a particular question. My Intuitor score was also a strength of 7. My Thinker score was also a strength of 7. With me so far? A score of 7 in these areas is pretty typical. My score as a Perceiver is a  39 out of 40, meaning there aren’t many people out there more of a perceiver than I am. In fact, I would class myself as an archetype Perceiver, there isn’t much Judger in me. I tell my students that if they are perceivers, I am their king.

Now, why is this dimension fun for me? This is one of the easiest dimensions to recognize in your coworkers, your friends, you partner, your children. Want to know how to tell if someone is a perceiver or judger? Look at their desk. Look inside their purse. Look inside their car. It’s true. If their desk/purse/car is messy they are a perceiver. If their desk/purse/car is neat as a pin, they are a judger. Now, you may be wondering why this is so. How can Dan be sure? Well, it’s in the nature of perceivers versus judgers. Think about it. Judgers like to make decisions, they like structure, it follows that their desks are neat and orderly. Perceivers hate making decisions, so we don’t like clearing our desks. The surest way for me to lose something is to put it away. Personally, it took me 10 years to file stuff in the filing cabinet in my office. I’ve filled one drawer with files, and haven’t opened the drawer in months. The other three drawers are full of stuff that isn’t files. If you ask a perceiver how we can find anything on our desk, we will tell you we know exactly where something is, we just won’t promise to be able to find it fast. We employ organization by stratigraphy, an archeological concept where the further down the pile, the older the item is.

Here is an example of Perceiver vs. Judger. 

Nicole is unquestionably a judger, she loves being organized and everything on her desk has its place. When I see Nicole’s desk, I have to fight the urge to take her stapler and turn it a quarter turn, because I suspect the first thing she’d do when she returns to her desk is turn her stapler back the right way.

 My desk, on the other hand, contains pens that have run out of ink because I dislike making decisions like throwing away a pen that is out of ink. As if might start working again later. There are piles of stuff that I am not working on at present, but might resume working on later, etc. You could turn the stapler around on my desk, but first you’d have to find it, and my reaction would be “I have a stapler on my desk?”

So, you may be wondering what the organizational strength is of a perceiver, considering we don’t like to make decisions. Well, think about it. Judgers love to make choices, but they find it hard to relax. Who loves to relax? Perceivers love to relax, but they have trouble making decisions. Perceivers and judgers need each other because the judgers run the risk of scheduling themselves so tightly that they become inflexible and dogmatic, while perceivers run the risk of procrastinating their lives away

	Judging	Perceiving
Librarians (N=1600)	66%	34%
Library Assistants (N=84)	64.29%	35.71%
University Faculty (N=2282)	65.91%	34.09%