Photo by Cindi Trainor

Roy Tennant has been transitioning the paper words of yesteryears online for decades. He started working in libraries at age 17, and attained his masters in library and information science from Berkeley. He has worked both for the Berkeley library, the whole UC library system, and now the largest library cooperative in the world. He is a frequent speaker on the digitization of library systems and a resident of Boyes Hot Springs.

Web site: RoyTennant.com
Blog: www.libraryjournal.com/blog
Twitter: @rtennant

Questions and Answers:

DailyGeek: What OS do you primarily use?
Tennant: I've been a die-hard Mac user for many years. In fact, when taking my last two jobs it was non-negotiable, despite the fact that the organizations were All-PC shops at the time. In both cases it was the beginning of the end for Windows OS dominance for those organizations. I feel strongly that workers should have whatever OS in which they can be most productive. With the Intel Mac, I now run all three major operating systems: Windows (XP at the moment), Unix (OS X), and Mac (OS X). There is NO software program I can't run, so what's not to like about that? And what organization would not want you to be as productive as you can be?

DailyGeek: What search engine do you use?
Tennant: Google. Everything else continues to be an "also-ran", although only time will tell how long Google's dominance will last. I still remember when AltaVista was the search engine to beat.

DailyGeek: Your preferred Internet browser?
Tennant: I prefer Firefox, mostly because of the plug-in architecture, although I've noticed that photographs display better in Safari - the colors are more vibrant. Internet Explorer is not an option on the Mac, although the very few times I must boot into Windows on my Mac it's mostly due to web sites that require Internet Explorer. My opinion of any company that requires such a travesty immediately plummets. Have they not heard of standards?

DailyGeek: Do you have an e-book reader?
Tennant: You would think as a "techie librarian" I would have several e-book readers, but I've never owned one. For me they still don't pencil out economically. I've even predicted in print (my blog) that the Kindle would "go down in flames" - partly as an antidote to the amazing hype it gets despite the lack of evidence that it is a runaway success. Call me old-fashioned, but I still like my books on paper, at least with the current state of technology and the expense of the alternative. This is from someone who was a pioneer in putting books on the web.
Also, since my laptop is basically now an appendage of my body I can't imagine not using it to read books rather than paying $300-400 for a specialized device that only reads books. Between my laptop and a smartphone, I don't think there is a middle ground I'm willing to spend significant money on.

DailyGeek: What do you think is the future of the written word?
Tennant: The written word has an incredible future ahead of it -- look at how many people are not only writing but having their writing distributed much more easily and widely than ever before! It is the publishing and distribution infrastructure that has changed. I've published several books through traditional publishers, but my last one was self-published through http://Lulu.com/ . I doubt I'll ever go back, unless I'm desperate for the marketing assistance. Print on demand publishing is here, and it's straightforward, inexpensive, and easy. Whether it will survive economically is anyone's guess, but while it's available it's a great thing for authors. I also think it's interesting how self-published books that begin to look successful can (and often are) picked up by traditional publishers and mass marketed.

DailyGeek: What program(s) do you prefer using for Twitter?
Tennant: My favorite Twitter program is TweetDeck (available for all platforms via Adobe AIR), which enables you to keep several panels open at a time. Panels can be allocated to updates from your friends, or direct messages, or replies, or even a search. Naturally, I have a vanity search so I can see what people are saying about me. I keep it going as one of my many windows, so I can quickly check it as needed. Since I have Growl installed on my Mac, I get automatic, unobtrusive updates as things roll in and I can either choose to look or not.

DailyGeek: What other social network applications do you use?
Tennant: I use Facebook, although I have to admit not spending a lot of time hanging out on it. I check it probably daily, but mostly because I'm prompted by friend request or some other message. I use chat quite a bit and we use Yammer at work (basically a Twitter for an organizational audience). I also hang out in a chatroom for library software developers (Code4Lib) on a regular basis. Chatrooms are probably the single most under-rated social networking applications out there, mostly because it is under the radar of everyone except the most technical audience. From that chatroom we have developed a very successful annual conference, a journal, regional groups, and a very rich community -- see http://code4lib.org/ .

DailyGeek: Favorite Web sites?
Tennant: My web site is http://roytennant.com/ and from there I link to my personal "web empire". Some sites, such as the Online Medieval and Classical Library, http://omacl.org/ I have rescued from a former job where the organization I worked for was no longer going to support it. I wanted to keep it around, so I took it on personally. Another such site I arranged to move to Sonoma State University, which you can now see at http://london.sonoma.edu/ . Other sites I have created from scratch, such as http://FreeLargePhotos.com/ , which hosts both my photos (close to 2,000 of my best) as well as those of several other photographers. We offer full versions (at least 4MP for free for anyone wanting them for personal use (printing and putting on their wall, in PowerPoint presentations, etc.), to put on a web site so long as they give a photo credit and a link to the site, and then I charge $50 for commercial use. There are others as well.
I also can't avoid mentioning the absolute best web site for finding books you don't have to pay for - http://WorldCat.org/ . The outfit that I work for (the largest non-profit library cooperative in the world, http://oclc.org/ ) knows where you can find nearly 1.5 billion books in libraries all over the world. We have over 130 million item records, which is larger than any other bibliographic database on the planet, including Amazon.

DailyGeek: Favorite way to get news?
Tennant: I admit that I still like to get much of my news on plain old newsprint delivered to my door, via the Sonoma Index-Tribune, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat (where I've been a subscriber for over 20 years) and the Sun. The other main way I get my news is on KQED, NPR, the California Report, and IPR. That doesn't mean I don't check news web sites, but my primary means of getting news is on fairly standard channels.

DailyGeek: What type of phone do you use?
Tennant: I have been wanting an iPhone and finally got an undeniable reason this week to get one since my phone died. I would call it love at first sight. I will NEVER go back.

DailyGeek: What is your favorite cellphone application?
Tennant: Before I acquired my iPhone I didn't really have a favorite cellphone application. I used my phone as a phone, and pretty much everything else I did on my Sony Clié, a personal digital assistant (PDA) that is several years old and is being retired now that I have an iPhone. The Clié was one of the best technology purchases I have ever made, since it has now lasted perhaps 5 years and I still love it. The only reason I am retiring it is that the iPhone does everything it does and more. I don't yet have a favorite app on the iPhone.

DailyGeek: Favorite productivity tech tool?
Tennant: After many years (we're talking something like fifteen years of web work) I'd have to say there really isn't anything I can't do with Perl and my favorite indexing tool, Swish-e (http://swish-e.org/). With this combination I helped create the Librarians Index to the Internet, http://lii.org/ , my photos web site http://FreeLargePhotos.com/ and many other sites. Swish-e is both an HTML and XML aware indexing tool that makes it very easy to turn a bunch of text, HTML, or XML files into a virtual database. My latest project is to create a web site for tourists interested in wineries in the Sonoma Valley. It is still under construction, but it is available at http://sonomavalleywineries.org/ .

DailyGeek: Favorite piece of technology that is not mainstream?
Tennant: My Swiss Army Knife. When I travel, and I'm forced to leave it at home, I feel naked. I've had a Swiss Army Knife in my pocket for well over 30 years and it has gotten me out of more scrapes than any other technology I can name. And yet the vast majority of humanity live without it. How can they survive? I'm utterly clueless. As a commercial whitewater river guide, I know that there are only three things that bring you out of the wilderness alive - the right gear, the right decisions, and luck. A good knife is a long way to having the right gear, and a computer isn't going to amount to a hill of beans.

DailyGeek: What is your favorite Open Source software program?
Tennant: Probably Apache. I can think of no other open source software program that is as essential as Apache is to the workings of the Internet. It is by far the application of choice for web servers, and it has been the poster child for the benefits of open source software. Whenever anyone complains about open source software all you need to do is point to Apache. It is a universally acclaimed success story.

DailyGeek: What question should have I asked?
Tennant: What is the single best bit of advice you have for anyone wanting to make a career in technology?
Tennant to Tennant: Create your personal strategy for learning constantly. I talk about "strategic learning" where you first scan the horizon for potential technologies of interest, then quickly investigate, decide whether it is worthy of further investigation, and if not set it aside until it seems necessary to investigate again. Once a technology seems to be of sufficient promise to investigate further, learn just enough to take you to the next level. Only learn enough to do what needs to be done and no more. Use reference books, web sites, and experience to guide you. If you're not learning constantly you're either dead or retired, even if you're still holding a job.

Bonus Question from last week's participant Jeff Baudin, founder of Micromat, which makes the utility software TechTool that Apple includes with every extended warranty.

Baudin: Do you ever see a time in the near future when books will go the way of the parchment and scrolls?
Tennant: I firmly believe we will never be an all-digital society. Rather, we will enter a golden age of format choice where you will be able to get the written word as digital, print, or audio. We will pay not only for the content itself, but for the format. Perhaps digital will be cheaper than either print or audio, since the latter two formats incur additional costs in either printing or vocal talent. But the point is that soon we will be able to choose whatever format we want. And I think that can only be seen as a good thing.