The forthcoming 2015 issue of the journal Information Services & Use features two pieces by Kalev. The first is an in-the-trenches retrospective look back at 20 years of his work on data mining and libraries, titled "Mining Libraries: 20 Years of Massive Computing on the World's Information", while the second is a transcript of his 2015 NFAIS annual conference opening keynote address, titled "The User of the Future: Reimagining How We Think About Information." The abstract and preprint PDF of both papers are below.
Mining Libraries: 20 Years of Massive Computing on the World's Information
Over the course of the last two decades I have explored the informational undercurrents of the world’s information and the potential of mass data mining of libraries through a myriad lenses both technical and methodological. From founding my first internet startup 20 years ago as an eighth grade middle school student, to running one of the world’s largest global monitoring platforms today, my work has debuted a myriad new datasets, methodologies, and scales to the study of how we understand of our global world. A central theme of that work has been around how creative “reimagining” of information through the emerging world of massive computing power can offer powerful and unexpected new lenses onto the world around us and the incredible future that awaits as libraries transition from being museums of artifacts to becoming conveners of information and innovation that empower a new era of access and understanding of our world. This paper offers a unique detailed look at what it looks like deep in the trenches of the data revolution, surveying a selection of my projects over the last two decades and the lessons they offer libraries and publishers moving forward into our data-driven future.
Download the Preprint PDF. (19 pages).
Journal Final Press Copy.
The User of the Future: Reimagining How We Think About Information: NFAIS 2015 Opening Keynote Address
We live in world today where the average citizen can zoom into the planet from Google Earth, walk down a virtual street in Google Street View, access live imagery and video on breaking events from remote regions via YouTube and Instagram, and search 100 petabyte indexes that learn and evolve to tailor themselves to hundreds of millions of individual users and even adjust the material returned based on our daily life patterns, calendar, and present location. Searches look across hundreds of millions of distinct archives and deliver their results via APIs and advanced analytics accessible through mobile devices while we walk down the street. In this brave new world of information access, what does the information platform of the future look like and how does the user of the future think about, access, consume, and interact with this reimagined world of information? This transcript of the NFAIS 2015 keynote opening address explores the user of the future and what we can learn from current trends to reimagine how we think about information and how it is delivered.
Download the Preprint PDF. (7 pages).
Journal Final Press Copy.