Comments on: Trends! Trends! Trends!

By: Jenny Levine

Jenny Levine — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 16:20:30 +0000

_ “People increasingly rely on and trust the web for news and inormation.
_ Many more people have IM than you might think.
- Everyone has a cell phone….”

I’ll take those three things and add them up together to go one step further to say that there is an already large and still growing contingent of people (read: users) who have moved away from the web, email, the voice call, and IM to texting with their cell phones for texting certain types of messages and information. This trend will continue to grow, and it is one that libraries are not only oblivious to, but completely absent from as a channel. In fact, libraries still do not recognize that the rest of the world views cell phones as voice calls *and* information devices. And isn’t one of our businesses information?

By: kgs

kgs — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 00:32:54 +0000

Oops, I left out a segue up there. Fear (irrational or otherwise) plays a role in the switch to the open source ILS. Well-founded, evidence-driven concerns play a role in the adoption of metasearch.

By: kgs

kgs — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 03:58:17 +0000

Art, I’m with you on all counts. We too have Google Scholar on MPOW’s main page. I should not have tossed off “marketing” without adding “and the resource to back it up.” Regarding the performance issues of metasearch tools, can we even get there from here?

I’d say irrational fear of change plays a big part in this. Or maybe it’s not irrational fear; it’s somewhat strategic, if not well-informed (because it’s a daring leap to move an ILS).

By: Melinda Baumann

Melinda Baumann — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 00:59:30 +0000

My current interests lie in the skill set(s) needed by library staff in order to respond to the technology trends discussed here. These skills include complex project management; and XML, perl, XSLT, and MySQL programming to extract/enhance/export MARC and circ data to display in a future national union OPAC. An easy prediction: all libraries, big and small, will soon not only be contributing holdings records to OCLC or another major cataloging entity, but will contribute live circulation data; and will rely on OCLC wholly for search and display so as not to need to maintain local OPACs. We also, as a profession, need leaders who are skilled at strategic planning while still being able to turn the ship around when it is called for.

By: art

art — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 19:15:38 +0000

Marketing definitely comes up for fostering better use of licensed resources, but I would like to see some strong measures for response time and familiarity. Google is fast and familiar, and despite many other factors that put Google in a negative light, sometimes I think we are kidding ourselves about what users put a premium on. Despite this, I don’t think we need to put all of our eggs in a Google basket, but it is silly not to do some hard thinking about maximizing the space that our users are already in. The University of Texas at Austin puts a link to Google Scholar on the front page, if our overriding concern is connecting users to content, then I would say their decision making is rock solid.

I am so biased on the OSS question that I should probably not say anything more, but I am still amazed that the single most common comment I hear about Windsor’s partnership with PINES from my academic brethren is that “we would never do that”. My sense is not that there are OSS options that can’t meet every kind of requirement for a new ILS, but that there’s an irrational fear of making any kind of change that is a huge barrier. Still, I think the prices will skyrocket in 2007 and the playing field will become more level as a result. The big institutions with the deepest pockets may be able to avoid change by paying for the privilege, but the ILS is already cracking many technology budgets and the planets have never aligned in quite the same way before in the ILS environment.

By: kgs

kgs — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 15:34:56 +0000

Actually, I would be extremely surprised if “preemptive licensing for a lot of content” could be financially justified in most cases. We have wonderful content in slightly dubious packages that is horrifically undermarketed.

Maybe Google Scholar should be the de facto preferred campus entry point and we should reorient our investments of time and money around that to ensure it meets our needs. Yes, no?

On the ILS consolidation, I cannot imagine prices going down or products rapidly improving. With that in mind, a preemptive (word of the day!) strike with open source ILS software may be prudent. I mean, why DO we spend a lot on ILS software if at least one OSS product that hits all the high marks of functionality is available, and as The Lorcan has pointed out on his blog, at least two companies are offering paid support?

By: art

art — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 07:49:44 +0000

I wonder if 2007 will be a year of unsettling numbers. What happens when the private equity funders in the ILS marketplace weigh in on the pricing for 2008 and the biggest item on the tech budget goes through the roof? What will investments in federated searching and other “one search to rule them all” solutions mean if the statistics start showing Google Scholar as the preferred campus entry point to licensed content? What if preemptive licensing for a lot of content doesn’t make sense anymore when the numbers are crunched? I think Dale’s point about the assumptions being made is really key, the cost-benefit analysis will show many winners in the slate of library services, but there could be some serious math waiting to be tackled in the coming year.

By: dale_in_queens

dale_in_queens — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 06:37:15 +0000

Excellent observation of trends. This is not a trend, but I’d just like to comment that at many urban libraries, including the one in which I work, people are lined up both to check out books and to use computers (well, that’s what administrators say, including me, though I think it would be more accurate to say they’re using bandwith). That is, there is still clearly a desire and need for both pre-digital and digital “stuff” (I choose that word carefully, as people are not really, as best I can tell, looking for “information” or “recreation” or “culture”; instead, they’re looking for a sort of mix of all of that, with “friendship” mixed in.)

I think there are a LOT of librarians nowadays who don’t use libraries. The more true this becomes, the more concerned I am about libraries and the assumptions librarians are making. If the library doesn’t work for you, why do you think it will keep working for others? Myself, I do use the library, but really almost just to see if it’s still working!

By: K.G. Schneider

K.G. Schneider — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 12:20:02 +0000

Sarah's trends are excellent, and that's not mere uncritical me-tooism, it's admiration for her ability to have a bird's-eye view. Alane, it would be fun to quibble the date for that tip, though I suspect you're right.

By: Alane

Alane — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 04:20:08 +0000

I think we actually live in a vastly different world…probably “tipped” in about 2000 and nothing to do with Y2K. Think about doing without the web, or Google. It’s hard, isn’t it? Look way, way above predictions about specific formats or professions and trends suggest we are a fundamentally different people than we were in 1989. Goodbye age of the individual. Hello age of the collective hive mind.