The document discusses how technology is changing expectations for libraries and access to information. It notes that libraries serve to balance unequal access to information by distributing costs across the public. However, technology is disintermediating libraries as people now expect access over ownership of content. The digital divide also affects how technology impacts different groups. The document argues that libraries must adapt services to focus on access via licensing rather than owning content directly. It suggests the future of libraries involves providing services around user experiences and digital devices rather than just collections.

1. Not Evenly Distributed
what technology means to the future of libraries
Jason Griffey
Maine Regional Fall Council
September 23, 2011

2. The future is already here...

3. The future is already here...
...it just isn’t very evenly distributed.
- William Gibson

4. Effect of the Digital
Experiences & Expectations
Access & Divide
The Future

7. Photo by Stian Eikeland - http://flic.kr/p/6CCWXH

8. disintermediation

9. The Library

10. The Library
• Archive
• Collect
• Describe
• Insure Equality of Access
• Distribute Financial Burden
• Instruct
• Inform

11. “Libraries, especially public libraries, exist in
order to balance the inequality of information
access due to economic or other pressures. No
single average member of the public can afford
to purchase all of the potential information they
may want to access, and so libraries distribute
that financial burden across the public as a
whole, acting both as collective buyer for their
community and as access point.”

13. in other words...

14. in other words...
libraries are a middleman

15. disintermediation?

17. Ready Reference
Reader’s Advisory
Bibliographic Information
Periodical Indexes

18. Access > Ownership

19. Licensing > Ownership

21. Experiences
become
Expectations

24. Services

25. Photo by HackingNetflix - http://flic.kr/p/5rQKpe

35. Devices

36. Photo by thekellyscope - http://flic.kr/p/96nYuV

38. Access

40. 42.1% of all Internet
traffic at UTC was
streaming media

41. Photo by HowardLake - http://flic.kr/p/8zSXff

44. Digital Divide

52. Photo by Vermin Inc - http://flic.kr/p/4yxj6u

54. “When your old world is collapsing and
everything is changing at a furious pitch,
to start announcing your preferences for
old values is not the act of a serious
person.
It is frivolous, fatuous...

56. ...If you were to knock on the door of one of
these critics and say “Sir, there are flames
leaping out of your roof, your house is
burning,” under these conditions he would
then say to you, “That’s a very interesting
point of view. Personally, I couldn’t disagree
with you more.”...

58. ...That’s all these critics are saying. Their
house is burning and they’re saying, “Don’t
you have any sense of values, simply
telling people about fire when you should
be thinking about the serious content, the
noble works of the mind?”
Value is irrelevant.”

59. Masatoshi Ishikawa

60. Masatoshi Ishikawa

65. future of the book

68. “...some of the most significant aspects of
the new medium are yet to be recognized.
Guessing: There may not be hypertext
sequels so much as the instantiation of
new windows on the "reality" of the story.
Group participation both during initial
construction and in expanding the
ongoing reality may be one of the most
striking features of the art form.”

70. “I believe hypertext fiction will
ultimately be an entirely new
art form, as different from
novels as motion pictures are
from oil paintings.”

71. moving forward

73. “The movement of information at
approximately the speed of light has
become by far the largest industry of the
world. The consumption of this
information has become correspondingly
the largest consumer function in the
world...

75. ...The globe has become on one hand a
community of learning, and at the same
time...the globe has become a tiny village.
Patterns of human association based on
slower media have become overnight not
only irrelevant and obsolete, but a threat to
continued existence and to sanity.”

76. ?

77. Marshall McLuhan
McCluhan Hot & Cool
1967

78. Douglas Adams said...

79. Douglas Adams said...
1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is
normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of
the way the world works.

80. Douglas Adams said...
1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is
normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of
the way the world works.
2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re
fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and
revolutionary and you can probably get a career
in it.

81. Douglas Adams said...
1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is
normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of
the way the world works.
2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re
fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and
revolutionary and you can probably get a career
in it.
3. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against
the natural order of things.

84. If I’d asked
them what they
wanted, they’d
have said a
faster horse.
- Henry Ford

86. The best way to predict the future
is to create it.
-Peter Drucker

87. thank you

88. Jason Griffey
Email: griffey@gmail.com
Site: jasongriffey.net
gVoice: 423-443-4770
Twitter: @griffey
Other: Perpetual Beta
ALA TechSource
Head of Library Information Technology
http://pinboard.in/u:griffey/ University of Tennessee at Chattanooga