Connecting Librarian

As I have noted before, I have a load of reading, from journals and many blogs (thanks oh you faithful bloggers) and time and time again I find themes within my reading. The one I am blogging today is Future Trends.

Libraries have been around in some form for centuries, but never have they had to cope with so much change as now. Technology developments, which really started impacting public libraries in the latter half of the 20th century are now happening more quickly and its all we can do to keep in touch. Not only that, but we have to decide which is appropriate for us to get on board with and which ones are safe to ignore. It could be our futures in those decisions, if we don’t keep pace with our users needs and expectations. How useful it would be to be able to anticipate them and meet them before they reach critical mass. We can’t but we can make studied guesses, so useful reading, such as those items I am about to discuss, are vital in helping us to stay one step ahead.

The Technology Watch List for Small Libraries gives a good survey of things to watch for. It comes from Web Junction – which is a useful source to be tapped into, if you are not already. It recommends the things to keep watch on and ultimately be involved in (if appropriate of course).

Amongst those are Application Service Providers – where you pay monthly fees to service providers to use their tools over an Internet connection. Blogs and webmail already work as ASPs, but for free. Paid services include library blog hosting. My immediate thought is not here, not yet. We aren’t ready and when we do head down that path (which we will), I hope that we will be in a position to host this sort of thing on our own servers. If not, it could be a viable option.

The rest we are already into or will be: digital preservation, wireless access, blogging and RSS, thin-clients (although the jury is still out on whether they are a good thing or not) and e-books/audio books. Nice to know that others recommend the type of directions we are already considering or taking.

The daVinci Institute puts out some very thought provoking articles, the relevant one here being The Future of Libraries: Beginning the Great Transformation. It commends that libraries stay on top of communication systems and technologies, because they are ever changing. Storage will become tiny, yet enable us to store much. Search technology will become more complicated. One that we are already seeing is the fast lane – our patrons have too much to do and too little time, so they will have more needs faster – we will need to be able to match them on that. Verbal input will ultimately take over from keyboard and global systems will become much more ubiquitous. Global information will be more greatly desired – especially that which has not before been available in English and there will be a move from a product base to an experience-base. Finally, even as libraries in our state are moving towards a community hub, expanding on Libraries Building Communities, DaVinci’s last trend is that libraries will move from being information centers to cultural centers. The suggestions and recommendations are well worth investigating further.

Finally, the EDUCAUSE Evolving Technologies Committee presented their findings at their annual conference. A summary of their white papers was published as “TomorrowLand: When New Technologies get newer” in EDUCAUSE Review November/December 2005. The areas they considered are having the most impact on higher education. Although I am a public librarian, we are seeing the same sorts of things happening in the local public library.

These papers recommend that institutions (and I believe our public libraries too), need to get more involved in Wireless access, portals, IT Outsourcing, Gaming and collaboration tools. We have just launched our first Wireless Hotspot at our main branch – not free unfortunately, it is Telstra sponsored, so patrons must have an account with them, but its a start. Portals aren’t even on our radar yet, IT Outsourcing has been part of our technology plan for years and Gaming and Collaboration tools are on the radar, but we haven’t identified how its going to work for us yet.

Its hard enough coping with the technology we have today, but that’s more because we are running behind. If the trends that these and many other papers are suggesting will happen, do happen, then we will have to run a lot faster to get ahead and be in the best position to serve our community. Ready to run? I don’t know if I can keep up, let alone overtake, but I’m willing to try!

I love technology, as you are probably well aware if you know me or have read any of the other of my blog entries. But sometimes even I am not impressed by it when it doesn’t work properly.

Take tonight for example. I am sitting down to blog – something I haven’t done in a month for a multitude of reasons. First problem – I upgraded my browser and lost my automatic sign-ins that I had fixed in the old browser. That’s OK, just login in and save the details for next time. Second problem, I can’t remember my password, which then extends to not even being sure of my login. Whoops!

Blogger is great on the second problem, both parts of it, in that it has password recovery procedures to get you back in and will even help if you can’t remember your login. So I try all the alternatives and await the one email which will inform me which of the guessed logins is the correct one. And I wait, and I wait, and I wait. In the meantime, my virus checker keeps starting up, to check an email which never seems to arrive and because it doesn’t arrive, neither does my Blogger login or password.

Finally, after a lot of mucking about, the virus checker starting email is sorted out, I get the one email I need with my real login (which I hadn’t guessed) and I’m off and running. Or so I thought. Then for some reason, maybe its the virus checking another dodgy email, I can’t get an edit page up to commence this blog entry. It took me 3 stops and reloads to finally get here.

Now I know that some of these problems were my fault – like forgetting my logins and not recording them somewhere just in case – a lesson in point of not trusting the technology too much I guess. But I am not the only one to blame. Another is people who send you vastly oversized graphics files at Christmas (if you are one such person, please think of the person at the receiving end, who although you think they may enjoy the content of your email gift, may not have the connection to be able to enjoy it before July 2006!). Then I will add our ISP who we will be leaving shortly due to inconsistent and unprofessional service with our broadband connection – such as it is at times. I could probably come up with some more, but those are the obvious ones.

But enough whining. Christmas is nearly upon us and there is not enough satisfaction to be gained from blaming a machine. However, even after this short level of IT frustration, I know that my devotion to it will be renewed in the morning, regardless of tonight’s occurrences. Kind of like my own personal reset button!

The very sobering thought in all this is that even though I will reset, what about our patrons who use the technology, but aren’t as immersed or as forgiving of it when things don’t go right. Or who don’t understand why things go wrong and don’t know what to do about it. Many of our library users are like that. That is who I have to keep in mind with all the potentialities available to us in the years ahead. Thus endeth the lessons……

I was planning on talking about the future trends I have been reading about in this entry, but its getting too late now so I will get to that next time. In the meantime, to those who have dropped in for a quick read, thanks for spending some time with me here. I hope I have contributed something positive for you. If not, stick around and I’ll see what I can do in 2006. Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a safe and prosperous New Year.