Technology Trends in Libraries - Today & Tomorrow

Technology Trends in Libraries -
Today & Tomorrow
By Rachel Vacek
Web Technologies Librarian Candidate
Lupton Library @ UTC

Overview

• What’s HOT now
• Web 2.0 and Library 2.0
• Examples of libraries and technologies
• Lasting concepts and fading tools

Technology Trends in Libraries – Today & Tomorrow, by Rachel Vacek 2

What’s HOT
• OpenID or one-time • Plugins, add-ons, & extensions
authentication • Metasearching
• Open WorldCat • Faceted browsing
• Cell phones & texting • Mashups
• Tagging • Online photo sharing
• Social bookmarking • Citizen journalism
• Folksonomies • Social networking
• RSS feeds & aggregators • User comments and ratings
• Wikis • Being connected 24/7
• Podcasting, screencasting, • Fast delivery
and vodcasting • Instant gratification
• Blogs • Widgets and gadgets
• Gaming & virtual realities • Web applications replacing
• Open source ILS desktop applications
• Custom search engines


From Karen G. Schneider’s Library 2.0 Cookbook


Concepts of Web 2.0

• Collaboration • Radical trust
• Sharing • Personal data
• Ownership • Remixable
• Wisdom of crowds • Web-based
• Personalization • Perpetual state of
being in beta
• Self-expression
• Transparency
• Community
• Participation


Library 2.0

Any service, physical or virtual, that
successfully reaches users, is evaluated
frequently, and makes use of customer
input is a Library 2.0 service. Even older,
traditional services can be Library 2.0 if
criteria are met.

From “Library 2.0” by Michael E. Casey and Laura C. Savastinuk, Library
Journal, September 1, 2006


From Karen G. Schneider’s Library 2.0 Cookbook


The Long Tail

• Libraries provide a lot of services, some of
which reach users
• Far more people do not find or receive
library services and tools than those who
do
• The trick is to find ways of reaching both
groups

Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired, coined the phrase “the long tail”


Can libraries do these things?

YES!
Libraries should build,
engage, innovate, and participate
in Web 2.0 technologies,
especially if they foster
community and collaboration.

Libraries MUST meet user expectations
if they want to continue to exist.


Concepts vs. Technologies
• Don’t implement a technology for technology’s
sake
• Library 2.0 is more about the concepts, not just
the emerging technologies
• The concepts are what will endure over time, not
necessarily a specific piece of software or online
application
• It’s the human aspect – the users that are
important
• Technology is just a tool for helping people
interact with one another


Excerpts from Karen Schneider’s
“The User Is Not Broken: A meme
masquerading as a manifesto”
• All technologies evolve and die.
• You are not a format. You are a service.
• The OPAC is not the sun. The user is the sun.
• The user is not broken.
• You cannot change the user, but you can transform the user
experience to meet the user.
• Meet people where they are - not where you want them to be.
• The user is not "remote." You, the librarian, are remote, and it is
your job to close that gap.
• Most of your most passionate users will never meet you face to face.
• Most of your most alienated users will never meet you face to face.

http://freerangelibrarian.com/2006/06/the_user_is_not_broken_a_meme.php


So keeping these things in mind…


Social Software & Networking

• Allows people to build communities from
the ground up
• Enables collaboration in real time
• Encourages networking with both peers
and users


RSS Feeds & Aggregators

• RSS is a text-based format, a type of XML
• It’s information repackaged by provider or
creator to give the user more control over
delivery
• Can be web-based or client-side as well as stuck
in browsers or email clients
• Free, relatively inexpensive, or enterprise
• Most blogs and most major information
resources can syndicate a feed you can
subscribe to


General Sharing of Information


Blogs

• Have posts organized chronologically by date
• Self-archive by date
• Use a permalink for each individual post
• Most have RSS feeds that syndicate the content
• Benefits:
– Can humanize your library
– Communicate and interact with users and your
colleagues in new ways
– Allows you to focus on content, not process
– Can update from anywhere


Tagging
• Term given to a piece of information (like a picture,
article, or video clip), thus describing the item and
enabling a keyword-based classification
• Folksonomy vs. taxonomoy
• Examples
– del.icio.us - A social bookmarking site
– Flickr – Tag the images you upload
– Gmail – can use tags (labels) to help classify your email
– Technorati - A blog search engine
– Last.fm - A social music website and wiki that allows users to tag
artists, albums and tracks


Tagging on the rise

A December 2006 survey by the Pew
Internet & American Life Project found that
28% of internet users - and 7% on any
typical day - have tagged or categorized
online content such as photos, news
stories or blog posts.


Cell Phones & Smart Phones


Instant Messaging


Wikis & Online Collaboration

• A wiki is a website anyone can edit with
little knowledge of markup
• Allows for collaboration and sharing of
information


Photo Sharing


Video Sharing


OPAC & ILS

• Open Source ILS
– Koha
– Evergreen PINES
• Other alternatives
– Endeca
– Primo (ExLibris)
– Encore (Innovative Interfaces)


What libraries will look like…

• Web 2.0 concepts will carry on, but the
technologies will change
• More mashups
• More open source
• More customization and personalization
• More social interaction
• More interaction with virtual worlds


Specific examples of other
emerging technologies
• Drupal – a free software package that allows an individual or a community
of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on
a website

• OpenID - open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity

• AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) - a web development technique
for creating interactive websites
– Pages feel more responsive by exchanging small amounts of data with the
server behind the scenes, so that the entire web page does not have to be
reloaded each time the user requests a change.
– Increase the web page's interactivity, speed, and usability

• Ruby on Rails - a web application framework that aims to increase the
speed and ease with which database-driven websites can be created and
offers skeleton code frameworks from the outset


More Examples
• OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) - a
collection of RSS feeds can be shared by an OPML file
and imported by others into their RSS
readers/aggregators
– Great way to create reading or additional resource lists for
classes
– Can share the feeds you use to keep current with your
colleagues

• Architectures of Collaboration - a type of network where
web services and the integration between these tools
work together to provide a consistent and reliable
communication flow
– Collaboration isn’t just between users - it needs to happen on the
backend between systems as well


It’s all about the user.
• The user helps determine what technologies are relevant
• How do we find out what users need?
– Ask them
– Watch them
– Surveys
• Conduct local surveys
• Look at reports from Educause, Pew, etc.
– Look at traffic patterns on web servers
– Weblog analysis
– Give them the tools and let them build what they need
themselves
– Capitalize on the ubiquitous nature of open source


Thanks!
Current Contact Information:
Rachel E. Vacek
Electronic Resources Librarian and Technology Coordinator
Walker Management Library, Vanderbilt University
rachel.vacek@owen.vanderbilt.edu
615-322-3818
AIM: vacekrae1976
Yahoo!: vacekrae


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