ALA 2008: Top Technology Trends

I've decided to take a break from cataloging this afternoon and opted for the easier on my brain 'LITA Top Tech Trends' session. Ironically this is the first session where I haven't been able to get online :( hooray - managed to get online.

The panelists are:

• Karen Coyle
• Eric Lease Morgan
• John Blyberg
• Meredith Farkas
• Roy Tennant
• Clifford Lynch
• Karen Schneider
• Marshall Breeding

Two online participants as well - one is Karen Coombs, but I didn't get the other persons name unfortunately the other was Sarah Houghton-Jan

All of these are Interesting how some of the same names keep cropping up - would be nice to spread the speaking goodness around a bit folks!

There is a chat room at http://www.meebo.com/room/toptech/ - might be testing my multi-tasking to the limit!

MB: Open source - already in public, will come into academic. Make sure that systems are actually open, not just called open etc. Also look for open data

KS: Broadband - quite political stuff - no proper telecommunication strategy at federal level I think is the basic message.

Open Access - small literary journals are doing this, because they can in the online world - gets rid of costs. No so visible to librarians, as we tend not to 'own' these things

Lots of tech problems with online participants - sound patchy, video not brilliant etc. Good that it's being tried though!

CL: After enthusiasm for Open Source we will see a backlash as people try to come to a realistic view - is he talking about the 'hype cycle'?

Collaboration across the network - people need to be able to work together in an agile fashion - sychronous and asynchronous. Report - 'Beyond Being There' - looks at the issues around virtual organisations.

Travel will get much more expensive and less common. Virtual presence in meetings needs to get much better much more quickly.

Need to look at how we regard privacy of information

Letting go of 'holdings' so they can be reused and put into contexts where they add value outside the normal venues.

Overload?

RT: Suprises are the norm! Google digitisation was a suprise. Hope that OCLC can suprise

We need to retool for constant change.

Need to get over the system upgrade cycle - need to be on the latest platform, and upgrade in timely manner

MF: Role of social s/w in collecting local knowledge.

Library as social hub, providing technology for community - e.g. slide scanner to digitise peoples slides

Combine h/w, s/w and education that people need to do digital projects

Blogs as historical artifacts. If someone is taking a class in 50 years time about library history - will they be able to see the blogs that started and developed the library 2.0 movement?

JB: Green technology - cost and environment concerns

Adding semantic markup to docs - extracting meaning from text

Mobile, always on devices

Personal relationship with information - connections etc.

KC: APIs!

ELM: Got to get your 'stuff' out there - a Web API is the way to do this.

KC: Handheld devices

Give up control on data

Didn't get so much of this - too busy taking part in the discussion in the chat room - oh well...

Technorati Tags: ala2008

Comments

[ekc]

Thank you so much for your summaries! You're one of the few bloggers linked from the conference wiki who's posted since arriving, and almost the only one who has actually written anything about the sessions. (Besides which, you went to sessions I would have liked to been able to attend.)