TLA 2008 Conference Notes, Day Two: Net Fair I

Net Fair I session (at exhibit hall)
Session title: Keeping up with technology: Top trends.
Presenter: Richard Wayne, of Strategic Information Management Services. He also works for the UT Southwestern Medical Library

Here is the presentation powerpoint, from the Strategic Information site. However, it is either not friendly to Firefox or may not be working.


(I did something different this year, and I went to one of those semi-vendor sessions. I say semi-vendor because Net Fair sessions are either fully sponsored by a vendor or by someone in the IS field not necessarily a librarian. Just making the observation. Anyhow, this was a 50 minute session, and it did get packed.)

Notes:

• Used Surveymonkey with 144 responses this year to the survey on trends (seems like a low sample to me). Respondents were from Texas. 1/2 of the respondents from public libraries, covering a time frame around September of 2007.
  
• The highest rated trend was downloadable/streaming media. This includes e-books, videos, podcasts, lectures. (This is something we are not really talking about at my work. We do have e-books, and I think the term podcast was thrown out once or so, but not high on the radar. To do something like podcasting requires time and equipment, neither of which we have now). As an example, the Denver Public Library was highlighted, see here. Note that in our audience at Net Fair, when asked, only 2-3 people raised their hands that they did podcasts (out anywhere from 40 to 50 or so).
  
• Next trend was social software. This includes blogs, wikis, IM, Facebook, MySpace, Meebo, Twitter, etc. Again, when asked, only one or two people in audience said they had an FB or a MySpace presence (and one of those two was me. I have a Facebook profile. I did open a MySpace on a limb recently, but have not fully worked on it. It is not exactly user-friendly.)
• Number three was Open Source ILS, things like Evergreen and Koha. This seems to be picking up interest.
  
• Number 4 was InfoCommons. This includes computers, services, and comfort. The actual definition can vary. Examples include UI-Urbana and Indiana University (where I worked while in library school).
  
• Number five was gaming.
  
• Number six was technolust. Asking if technology should be adding some value. Should have a reason to have the technology in the library. (This sounds nice in theory, but we know a lot of my professional brethren suffer severely from technolust and want every single toy in libraries. I'll quit here while I am ahead.)
• Number seven was the death of MARC.
  
• Number eight was risk tolerance. It should be OK to try things and fail. People are saying we need to challenge the status quo.
  
• Number nine was mashups. This is combining data from more than one source into one integrated tool. Things like iGoogle and Yahoo! Pipes.
  
• Number nine was SUSHI (Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative). It is a standard for gathering user statistics.
  

(Presentation was alright, though most of it was stuff I knew already. The SUSHI thing I did not know. May need to look into it and check it out.)