Category: future of libraries

en route.

I'm officially on my way to California, and unless I imagined yesterday's fajitas and rodeo I'm elated to find myself in Texas again. I'm resurfacing briefly to report that Library Journal recently published an article in which past mover/shakers offer a number of insights on how to protect/preserve/improve libraries. I wholeheartedly agree with what Jenna... Continue Reading →

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card goes in, book comes out.

I'm always interested in news about developing kiosk/remote/ library service models - particularly ones that seem like they will actually work - so I was happy to hear that a Contra Costa County Library BART station book lending machine is now operational. The program is known as Library-a-Go-Go, and you can read a press release... Continue Reading →

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lightning strikes.

I hadn't heard this before, but back in 1971 my library was apparently the first to catalog books electronically, in partnership with the OCLC. Lightning coincidentally struck OCLC headquarters that same night - perhaps signaling their "auspicious beginning," or perhaps as electrostatic retribution for those 17 OU cataloging positions that weren't refilled as a result... Continue Reading →

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slate covers library extinction, architecture.

Slate Magazine recently posed the question, "what sort of public library does the 'digital world' of Google, Wikipedia , and Kindle require?" Witold Rybczynski's brief photoessay covers a range of modern approaches to library design, with examples ranging from Chicago's (in my opinion, rather amazing) downtown library to the more recent Denver Public Library: As... Continue Reading →

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the open library project

Many thanks to Lia at the Experiment for forwarding this Chronicle article on Aaron Swartz, co-creator of RSS and Reddit who now apparently is interested in the "modern library." His vision, the Open Library project, could be described as a user-generated mashup of WorldCat and Wikipedia - very promising. Judging from his track record, I... Continue Reading →

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library 2.0 success/failure in practice.

Now that hindsight is offering a bit of perspective, there has been a lot of discussion recently about the net effect of the Library 2.0 movement (and I don't think it's hyperbolic to describe it as such), focusing on the perceived platitudes of "twopointopians" as well as whether the new technologies being implemented in so... Continue Reading →

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(understandable) ingrained coping behavior.

From the LibraryThing blog via Library Geek Woes, this insightful explanation of everything that is wrong with the world of locating books online: "You can't Google a book and find out where in town to get a copy. You can't Google a book and find out whether your public library has a copy. Your library... Continue Reading →

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food for thought on the “researcher of the future.”

I wanted to include a few quotes from a recent SLAIS/CIBER briefing on the complicated half-myths surrounding the "Google generation." I also can't resist showing the TERRIFYING cover on this thing: Apparently, the researcher of the future is a Vader-hater. From the Executive Summary: "Academic [library] users have strong consumer instincts and research shows that... Continue Reading →

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