While this is just a series of slides, I think a narrative can be made that combines them in lieu of the actual talk that was given. Library Technology 2004: The Current State of Library Automation and Future Trends. Of particular note: bigger libraries, and more of them, are going with similar vendors so consolidation of large library resources becomes simpler and searching gets more federated. And, on the next to last slide, “Small, rural libraries continue to struggle with automation.” Too bad. [unalog]
Category: ‘puters
Google + libraries = I still don’t know
I’d like to see this Google/library overlap really hit the popular culture consciousness. I’d like to see folks songs about the bookmobiles and people writing me letters at my library saying “I will still come there, even if all the books are available online” I’d like to see some good library art and some good library rallying songs and manifestos. I don’t think we have to be anti-Google to do it, I think we just need to stick up for our own wonderful selves and explain why the idea of a publicly owned space for enhancing your own info-lexicon is a social good and one worthy of funding, support, and appreciation. Google will always be a wonderful tool for librarians and others to use, but Google will never belong to me. Google will never have a comfortable chair, and sometimes you just want a comfortable chair.
RFID from another angle
Are libraries looking at RFID implementation in other industries? The Ska Librarian, who is now also an agribusiness librarian, sends this link to a 2005 RFID survey from Beef Magazine.
quick, before the meme gets away from us
Breaking news: Google + libraries = ??? Will Google’s ads appear by Harvard’s libraries’ content? I’m sort of dying to know how this is going to work out.
We have agreed to a pilot project that will result in the digitization of a substantial number of volumes from the Harvard libraries. The pilot will give the University a great deal of important data on a possible future large-scale digitization program for most of the books in the Harvard collections. The pilot is a small but extremely significant first step that can ultimately provide both the Harvard community and the larger public with a revolutionary new information location tool to find materials available in libraries. The pilot project will be done in collaboration with Google. The project will link Harvard’s library collections with Google’s resources and its cutting-edge technology. [genehack]
steal my stylesheet
The stylesheet that I used for my recent talk and all the other talks I’ve given over the past few years is available for use by anyone else under a Creative Commons license. Amanda used it, with some modification, for a nifty talk on Weblogs in the Classroom. The advantage to doing your talk in HTML is that it can be immediately made available on — or even given from — the web with hyperlinks [as we see more and more people at conferences with laptops, isn’t this useful?], it can be standards compliant, it’s available to anyone with a browser, and a quick tweak of the stylesheet gives you the talk in notes format for printing. I also like to think that it’s easier to use and easier on the eyes than Powerpoint, but that may just be snobbery on my part. In any case, please avail yourself of it if you think it would be useful to you.