Walt Crawford's
Website: Online Extras
Libraries, Media, and the Future
This subsite contains "extras" relating to
my interests in libraries, media, and the future.
Such extras may include versions of speeches that carry some
particular interest, articles in this area that didn't get
published, or essays that don't really fit anywhere else.
Everything on this site is written by and copyright Walt
Crawford, with all rights reserved. If you think something
here would interest someone else, why not send them the URL
for this site or the particular page?
Three overall cautions:
- Some of these texts are much too long to read comfortably
on-screen; I suggest you download them or print them from
your browser.
- I have generally not made any effort to clean up Word's
idea of HTML output--and, worse, some older pieces were
formatted for Ventura publication. If you see strange
"<xx>" or "@xx = " stuff, that's the reason.
- If you're reading something identified as a speech, you
can be reasonably confident that what you're reading isn't
what I actually said. It doesn't work that way.
My keynote for the ACRL program "Byting into Video: DVD and
Networked Video Delivery," delivered July 8, 2000, at the ALA
Annual Conference in Chicago, IL. Converted and mounted here
based on listener request.
A tribute to the first decade of PACS-L--but not a memorial,
since PACS-L reappeared in March 2000.
Note: if this one seems much more like a formal article than
most of what's here, that's because it is--but I believe it's
too long and informal for formal publication in any of my
normal venues. (If you're an editor and disagree, let me
know!).
I plan to prepare a 2,000-word version of this 7,900-word
article and submit that shorter version to American
Libraries; if that happens (if I'm successful in boiling
this down to one-quarter its current size) and it's accepted
(not a sure thing), the Web article may disappear for a couple
of months around the time the shorter version appears (or it
may not). Similarly, if someone does offer to publish this
long version and the terms make sense to me, the Web version
may go dark for a while.
An informal response to a letter from Bella Hass Weinberg in
the January 2000 American Libraries.
Against my better judgment, I'm offering this lengthy, badly
organized commentary. I suppose the title makes it clear that
I'm not one of Coffman's Crusaders.
A few comments on the speech and handout (below)--noting some
of the failed predictions and good guesses in the two texts.
"The Death of Print, Project Xanadu, and
Other Nightmares"
The Arizona Talk: Added May 23, 1999
Until 1992, I had spoken once every year or two on some
fascinating topic such as technical standards, typefaces, or
personal computing. Almost all of my writing was on personal
computing and related issues, except for the occasional
article directly related to RLG (or, before that, UC
Berkeley).
Then the Library Automation Round Table of the Arizona State
Library Association invited me to give their program at the
1992 ASLA conference in Phoenix. The people inviting me
weren't sure what they wanted me to talk about, but would get
back to me.
By the time they got back to me, I knew what I wanted to talk
about--all the nonsense I was reading about the death of
print, and similar issues. They said OK. That was, in essence,
the start of almost all my speaking since then, quite a few
articles, and the two books I've written or cowritten since
then.
(Technically, I did do a speech about future libraries and
resources in 1989, at the California Library Association
conference, but I'd forgotten that speech and nothing much
came of it. The written portion has long since vanished.)
I wound up doing a "speech and a half."
Here's the speech as it was
prepared, and pretty much as it was given.
Here's the accompanying handout,
which added material that I knew I couldn't cover in an hour.
I haven't touched a word of this (other than trivial
reformatting); if my seven-year-old comments are odd in 1999
(and odder in 2005!), so be it.
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Updated July 18, 2005
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