Hype cycles

Gartner is a information technology research and advisory company. They are well known for their 'hype cycle', which shows the progress of technologies from their initial introduction to them actually being in productive use. They publish them in many different areas of IT, and although most hype cycles are only available to subscribers, you can access the 2005 'Special Report' for an idea of how they work.

They always make interesting viewing/reading, and I was intrigued to see a blog post from Christine Sexton, "Director of Corporate Information and Computing Services" at the University of Sheffield today which plots a hype cycle for University of Sheffield - this seems an interesting way of thinking about where we are, perhaps I should plot one for our library.