Simon Chamberlain’s library weblog

Techdirt asks whether Twitter and other blogging services could replace partially traditional journalism, by enabling on-the-spot reporting by amateur eyewitnesses. The article suggests that “if mainstream news outlets can get better at tapping these kinds of decentralized news sources, they should be able to report more news with fewer reporters.” I can see the argument - news of the recent UK earthquake broke on Twitter long before any news site had a story. But on the other hand, real reporting requires thought, analysis, contextualisation. Those qualities (to me) are more important than getting the story a few minutes earlier. Newspapers, to me, are caught in a bind - they’re slower than the web, but don’t contain as much depth as magazine or journal articles. Which is why I don’t read print papers anymore, and my online news reading habits are highly omnivorous - newspapers are just one option.

Chris Anderson’s article in Wired discusses why free is the future for businesses. Guess who already gives stuff away for free? (Via several sources including Librarian In Black). He doesn’t write directly about libraries, but it’s worth a read for anyone who wants an insight into (one view of) a new economy.

Sarah Houghton-Jan posts an image showing 50 (bad) reasons not to change. Worth checking out to see how many of these you use. Although I can’t help feeling that some of them could be good reasons not to change. If you really don’t have enough money to introduce a new project, then that sounds legitimate to me. I guess it’s the difference between giving a reason and an excuse not to change.