Thing #15: Future of Libraries, 2.0 & Beyond

Our eagle-eyed Learning 2.0 team has pointed out me that I have gone from #14 to #16 without a stop at #15. Math has never been this old bird's strong point, but she does want that laptop, so...

Apparently the future of libraries is 80% male. Does anyone else think it odd than is a discussion of the future of a profession that's still at least 80% female, only 1/5 of those OCLC articles we were asked to read were written by someone with 2 X chromosomes? The Old Crowe, unapologetic and cranky Boomer feminist that she is, notices things like that. Perhaps I digress. Perhaps not.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Wendy Schultz came up with the concept I like best--Library 4.0, Experience, "knowldge spa." Yeah.

If I could predict the future, I would have bought stock in certain companies many years ago--not to mention California real estate--and we would not now be having this conversation because I would have long since left the working world to live off interest and dividends. I like Dr. Schultz's notion that Library 4.0 will not replace Libraries 1.0-3.0, but incorporate all its predecessors. After all, despite many predictions to the contrary, paper has not gone away as things have gone digital. Formats seem to have exploded rather than contracted. In some ways we've gone back in time a couple of millennia--a web page is more like a scroll than a codex, after all.

I think Book as Object will be around for many years to come, even as it migrates, perhaps, in the direction of Book as Art Object. It's becoming increasingly effective to combine word and image digitally, but not yet the tactile aspects of a book. Books are going in two directions at once--content migrating off on one end and dissolving into the digital; and morphing on the other end into an art medium that sometimes deconstructs the concept of book almost as completely; and sometimes looks at just what constitutes the essential bookness of a book.

Egad, she's getting all arty on us. Go see something like http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/exhibits/artistsbook/index.htm or http://content.otis.edu/collections/artistsbooks.htm...or look in our own OPAC under artists books as SUBJECT (especially the ones in Special Collections).

Anyway, the Library as Place better not disappear anytime soon. I'm looking forward to my post-retirement appreciation of my local public library, longtime feeder of my mystery book habit. Soon I'll have time to hang out in their very attractive periodicals room by the fireplace, spend lots of time browsing the stacks instead of just running in and out, research lots of non-academic and non-work things like how best to apply ceramic tiles to the side of a stucco house. Until everybody has equal access to the net, equal comfort levels with technology (or at least a certain baseline comfort level) and one learning style, some aspects of Library 1.0-3.0 will hang around--including librarians to help people navigate and discover.

Check with me after I've been retired as long as I've been a librarian, and we'll see. You might need a medium. You might not.

Oops, some good carrion over there. Gotta go.

Thing #13: De.licio.us

Well, I tried to look at the tutorial--four times. The first three I got a message that the image couldn't display. The fourth time it actually showed up and I assumed you could just click on the image to start it. Nothing happened. I was nervous about clicking "download," what with our IT paranoia (although it isn't really paranoia if they are out to get you). I finally clicked, which seemed to work. It started fine, but kept stopping for no apparent reason, then eventually starting again--multiple times. I got tired of listening to dead air so I gave up. The other tutorials were fine. I took a look at the San Mateo PL site, since they're in my neighborhood, sorta. I liked their idea to organize their tags by the Dewey Decimal system--clever.

I'd be the first to agree that the bookmarking features of Internet Explorer suck hugely. I have a lot of bookmarks on my office computer, and if I wasn't paying attention to the title when I added one I find I often have no clue what it is when I look at it later. Being able to add tags at that point would be nice. The advantages of the status quo are (1) the ability to organize in a hierarchy--that's not a bad thing; (2) speed of access. If I'm answering a question on the phone in my office--from a patron or colleague--in most cases I could put my virtual hands on a bookmark faster without going to a web site where I had to sign in first.

On the other hand, I can really see the value of it when you have a lot of different people adding and wanting access to the same set of bookmarks. One application that immediately leaps to mind is the desktop computers at the Reference Desk. I'm always finding that several different people have made links to the exact same page, but each has put it in a different place. You end up with a mess. With something like De.licio.us everybody could call it whatever they wanted and all could find it under what made sense to them. (This is assuming that De.licio.us either doesn't let you make duplicate links or makes it easy to spot and eliminate them.)

The other big deal is being able to access all your bookmarks from one place, no matter what computer (or mobile device) you were using. I'm not a big traveler, and generally I prefer not to think about this place during my precious time at home. But there have been occasions when I've been home and wanted to access a site that I knew I had bookmarked at work--but couldn't.

Overall, tough call for me whether the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. I might explore this further after I retire. Which, 11 months from today, I will have already done. Excuse me, I need to go meditate upon the wonderfulness of that phrase.