Future | Library Bazaar

Archive for the 'Future' category

Are Britain’s libraries sleepwalking into the future?

Dec 01 2009 Published by Fiacre under Books, Future, Librarians

Britain’s culture minister Margaret Hodge published a paper today, Empower, Inform, Enrich – The modernisation review of public libraries: A consultation, looking at the direction libraries should take in the future.

The consultation paper includes 30 essays offering different views of what the important issues are, from people including authors Tracy Chevalier and Michael Rosen; Random House Chair and Chief Executive Gail Rebuck, Starbucks MD Darcy Willson-Rymer; and many others. It also poses a series of questions upon which the DCMS seeks views from as wide a range of people as possible including the library and publishing community.

According to The Guardian, elements of the paper could become policy early next year, and it is obvious that Hodge believes libraries in Britain require a radical shift in their priorities if they are to survive.

The incredible rise of easy internet access and use means that libraries simply have to compete and perform more effectively if they are to justify the public investment they need. Sleepwalking into the era of the iPhone, the eBook and the Xbox without a strategy, runs the risk of turning the library service into a curiosity of history like telex machines or typewriters.

Comments are off for this post

Tuesday tech links: The real time web

Sep 29 2009 Published by Fiacre under Conferences, Future, Information, Internet, Social software, Tuesday Tech Links

The idea of the real time web has taking on serious momentum, and is seen as a fundamental characteristic of the web’s next evolution. Here are a few real time applications that are worth keeping an eye on.

1. YourVersion. Winner of the People’s Choice Award at this years TechCrunch50, this application should certainly be of interest to librarians.

YourVersion is a personalized, real-time discovery engine that finds new, relevant content tailored to one’s interests and makes it easy to bookmark and share that content.

2. Aardvark. Aardvark is a way to get quick answers to questions using your extended social network. You can ask questions via IM or email, and the question is then passed to your friends, and friends of friends, based on what their profiles say their interests are.

3. PostRank. Based on social engagement, PostRank allows you to find the most relevant content on the web in real time that matches your specific interests.

PostRank measures engagement by analyzing the types and frequency of an audience’s interaction with online content. An item’s PostRank score represents how interesting and relevant people have found it to be. The more interesting or relevant an item is, the more work they will do to share or respond to that item so interactions that require more effort are weighted higher. PostRank scoring is based on analysis of the “5 Cs” of engagement: creating, critiquing, chatting, collecting, and clicking. By collecting interaction engagement metrics in these categories the overall engagement score is calculated and the PostRank value is determined.

Wildcard. Google Wave. Tomorrow, Google will issue 100,000 invitations to preview the new application, or “personal communication and collaboration tool.”. People already believe that it will overtake Twitter in the real time game, but Google has failed in the past so we have to wait and see.

One response so far

The catalogue of the future?

Sep 17 2009 Published by Fiacre under Cataloguing, Future, Librarians, OPAC

Imagine if your catalogue looked like Amazon Windowshop. Would this make you happy? Would it make browsing easier for your users?

We’ve taken out the text and created an immersive experience to help you lose yourself in exploration. Trailers for bestselling movies. Insight into the hottest TV shows and video games. Track samples from Tuesday’s new music releases. Audio reviews of books you should read. Amazon Windowshop lets you get a taste of many titles. They’re here – in one place – and all you have to do is move a few keys to zoom in on whatever flips your switch.

2 responses so far

Web Squared

Sep 12 2009 Published by Fiacre under Conferences, Future, Information, Internet, Social software, Technology

John Battelle and Tim O’Reilly, founders of the Web 2.0 Conference, have coined a new term (and released a white paper) on what they believe is the next evolution of the internet – Web Squared (Web²).

The Web is no longer a collection of static pages of HTML that describe something in the world. Increasingly, the Web is the world – everything and everyone in the world casts an “information shadow,” an aura of data which, when captured and processed intelligently, offers extraordinary opportunity and mind bending implications. Web Squared is our way of exploring this phenomenon and giving it a name.

According to Battelle and O’Reilly, Web 2.0 + World = Web².

One response so far