Gottesman Libraries Blog

Library BlogJeff Frank's posts

13 years ago

One trend I continue to notice is the advertisement of free activities. Ocean City Maryland, for example, is running an ad campaign called 100 Free Things to do in OC. Though these activities have been in existence for a long time, it is only recently that they are highlighted as free. Similarly, one of my new favorite “parenting” magazines FamilyFun is focusing on the “free-ness” of their activities as well. I think libraries and academic institutions should follow suit, and re-brand themselves–at least for the moment–with a focus on “free-ness.”

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Jeff Frank in FYI

13 years ago

Disruptive Innovation

This article in the Times reminded me of our seminar on disruptive innovation. Lauren Luke, using relative rudimentary technology, is hitting an audience that traditional media and the cosmetics industry are losing, despite expending tremendous resources to retain it. Interestingly, attempts by traditional media and the cosmetics industry to replicate Luke's success fail. There is a lesson here for institutions like the one we are at. A good deal of learning is going on online, and a large number ...

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Jeff Frank in FYI

13 years ago

The Dissertation Trailer

A pretty funny concept.

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Jeff Frank in FYI

14 years ago

Design Thinking

Checkout this Buddhist temple made from recycled beer bottles. It was fascinating to learn that Heineken was thinking so innovatively in 1963.

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Jeff Frank

14 years ago

New Opportunities for Academic Publishing

The Perseus Group just announced its plan to offer a host of services to small publishers. Having struggled to put TCR PDFs into a manageable format for the Kindle, I am pretty excited about exploring this. More, having the opportunity to do small print run stuff or print-on-demand will open up new possibilities for the Record in the near future.

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Jeff Frank in FYI

14 years ago

Online (Sex) Education

I always like when Dan Savage reads on This American Life, so I decided to check out his podcast, where he gives advice about love, relationships, and sex. I quickly found while listening that nothing–absolutely nothing–is off limits. A listener might feel put off by the candor of this type of approach. But, I had the exact opposite reaction. Many of the callers are young and confused. They come from backgrounds where they can not receive the...

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Jeff Frank in FYI

14 years ago

Amateur Scientists

The Times ran a nice story about two New York City students who used a simplified genetic fingerprinting technique to test the accuracy of sushi labeling. What is striking to me about this story is the claim made at the end by Jesse H. Ausubel of Rockefeller University. Ausubel sees experiments like this as a return to a time when science was conducted by interested amateurs. Unlike similar claims made for Wikipedia (where what I normally find is copy and paste jobs from authoritative sources) this one seems to have som...

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Jeff Frank in FYI

14 years ago

Education Podcast

Though some may feel it is too long (~20 minutes), the Gadfly Podcast is an engaging look at education in a roughly FOXNews-ish format.

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Jeff Frank in FYI

14 years ago

Huddle: A Powerful Sports Technology

I was thinking about our upcoming discussion of Epsilen while reading this New York Times article about Huddle, a networked environment designed to help football teams do what they are currently doing in a more powerful way. A technology like this is bound to succeed, because there is potentially a tremendous competitive advantage for teams–the New York Jets just signed an exclus...

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Jeff Frank in FYI,Events

14 years ago

Books Online, or John Hodgman is more than just the PC

In preparation for the seminar tomorrow with Professor Sullivan, I am trying to think about online presences for books that I like. I will list a few below, and look forward to hearing about sites that you have seen. John Hodgman–who plays the PC in Apple advertisements–wrote a book that I really enjoyed called The Areas of My Expertise, and created an interesting complementary site. Also interesting are the websites (1) (2) created by writer/artist Miranda July.

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