These top 5 tech trends for libraries were shared with the Gates Global Libraries Working Group in November, 2013. The presentation also continues resources and three ways to create a culture of innovation.
36. “And as the novelist Zadie Smith lamented
last year in the New York Review of
Books, apropos the closing of neighborhood
libraries in London, libraries are „the only thing
left on the high street that doesn‟t want either
your soul or your wallet.‟”
- Next Time, Libraries Could Be Our Shelter From the Storm by Michael Kimmelman
for the New York Times
37. “Books lost their chains and the library
remains one of the few spaces in which we
can feel we are citizens rather than
consumers, a place to which access is free, in
which we ourselves become free.”
- A new chapter for libraries by Edwin Heathcote for the Financial Times
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43. Articles
• MOOCs Try to Break the Language Barrier
http://www.inc.com/issie-lapowsky/mooc-providers-break-language-barrier.html
• Librarians Discuss Privacy, MOOCs, and More at LITA
Top Trends Panel | ALA 2013
http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2013/07/ala/librarians-discuss-privacy-moocs-and-more-at-lita-top-tech-trends-panelala-2013/
• Computer Science Pioneer Jaron Lanier Discusses Big
Data, Privacy at NYPL
http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2013/10/social-media/computer-science-pioneer-jaron-lanier-discusses-big-dataprivacy-at-nypl/
• Technology for Good: Innovative Use of Technology by
Charities
http://www.techsoup.org/SiteCollectionDocuments/technology-for-good-report.pdf
• Technology News and Trends from TechSoup.org
http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/community/b/tsblog/archive/tags/nptech+news/default.aspx
44. • American MOOC Providers Face International
Competition
https://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/american-mooc-providers-face-international-competition
• The Library as Lifeline: Getting Past Superstorm Sandy:
How Queens Library is stepping up in the Rockaways
http://www.ilovelibraries.org/library-lifeline-getting-past-superstorm-sandy-how-queens-library-stepping-rockaways
• The Internet of Things: Sizing up the business
opportunities
http://www.zdnet.com/the-internet-of-things-sizing-up-the-business-opportunities-7000009301/
• Edward Snowden Breaks Silence, Says He‟s Still In Hong
Kong
http://www.businessinsider.com/edward-snowden-breaks-silence-2013-6
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organization.
47. We hope you will connect with us at:
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Editor's Notes
Marnie Webb at Vizify
http://www.caravanstudios.org
I want to tell you why I think libraries are important.First, civic engagement and economic prosperity are linked. They have a reciprocal relationship. By encouraging and enhancing the civic health of a community, we increase the economic prosperity of that community. And civic health, I am learning, consists of four things: knowledge, connection, trust and action.Libraries are clearly places where knowledge is shared. By being common spots of access they are places connection and trust can be built. And they can be, I believe, a locus for action. Libraries are places where – just by checking out a book – people engage in the civic life of their community. That belief, for me, is core to what I see as the technology trends for librarians to pay particular attention to. I want libraries to be a center for that civic life because they are places where people can come together. Where you can check out a mystery novel or read a book about weight lifting or get a guide to setting up a small business. They are places where, via technology, we can access broader resources.
I want to tell you why I think libraries are important.First, civic engagement and economic prosperity are linked. They have a reciprocal relationship. By encouraging and enhancing the civic health of a community, we increase the economic prosperity of that community. And civic health, I am learning, consists of four things: knowledge, connection, trust and action.Libraries are clearly places where knowledge is shared. By being common spots of access they are places connection and trust can be built. And they can be, I believe, a locus for action. Libraries are places where – just by checking out a book – people engage in the civic life of their community. That belief, for me, is core to what I see as the technology trends for librarians to pay particular attention to. I want libraries to be a center for that civic life because they are places where people can come together. Where you can check out a mystery novel or read a book about weight lifting or get a guide to setting up a small business. They are places where, via technology, we can access broader resources.
I’m not talking about 3D printers and maker labs. I’m not talking about giant and (relatively) well funded libraries that get major architectural reviews in international newspapers. I’m talking about every library every where. Precisely because they are places where we engage in civic life, precisely because they are places where community members can come together. Precisely because they are places where people collect and organize and share. Precisely because of these reasons, every library can be a physical space of innovation.
The ability of a community to prepare for, respond to, and recover fromdisasters — both man-made and natural.Important in this process is making sure there are clear places in a communitywhere people can access information. Libraries can be a key partner in this — anda particularly important partner because resilience is very local — and what isneeded to make a community resilient may vary even between branches in thesame general metro area.
There is a lot of bandwidth spent on big data. We know organizations —TechSoup Global is one of them — with Medium data. Many of us, have tinydata. Then, there's the big mass of data that is being implied, collected and sharedthrough wearable devices and the Internet of Things. All the little sensors thatexist in our words. I want to take that all together. I want toto talk about complexdata.Big data is a stream of information that has a velocity, variety and volume thatBig data is a stream of information that has a velocity, variety and volume thatmake it impossible for structured databases to handle.Complex data is what is produced by most governments. Complex data requiresattention to made relevant to the concerns of a community. Complex datarequires a knowledgable local curator to be made relevant.Librarians also make connections between the data and the questions being askedby their communities.What can you do with this?Create a human readable, question base interface to data setsIdentify data sets that need to be made more accessible and work withtechnology activists to create tools that provide a useable interfaceExample: RangeCreate a map of information nodes (this may really be a graphic describingthem)Advocate for opening up information that may be particularly important toyour community it (which also means making the information trulyaccessible).Create stories from this data to record the importance to a communityExample: Hayward library film
Massive Open Online Courses aren't that new and they may seem an outlier tothe other items. But I do think that they are important to libraries because theyrepresent a significant change in the way knowledge is accessed and shared withlarge groups.MOOCs also represent an opportunity and a lesson on how to organize and sharecontent from your community. These are a way to get more visibility for localcontent. The beekeeper in Escondido? Rather than a video on VHS to be checkedout, the lesson could be in a format that allows sharing and teaching through thisexpertise.What can you do with this?Create a local connection to the MOOC ranging from hosting classes tocreating resource collections that provide additional informationCreate visibility to MOOCs and access points for other communitymembers (how do MOOCs change the way we may think of public accesslabs which is largely virtual)May proved an opportunity to create connections to local organizations.An opportunity to digitally archive and expand local content and throughthat provide greater visibility
http://www.khanacademy.org
http://www.veduca.com.br/home/index – first MOOC in Latin America
https://generalassemb.ly
There is an increasing demand on hardware. Tool lending libraries — I've got onein my community and it means my yard work doesn't suffer because I don't havea garage — are an example of libraries dealing with hardware. But here, I'mtalking about hardware that ends up looking like 3D printers or even the kind ofmanufacturing plants that are available (at a price) for people to build their ownthings. So, you may be a small library and you are already thinking “I can't affordthat, I don't have a place to put it.” But what if you start cataloging it? What if youlet your community members know where those resources exist? This can evenbe a shared project among libraries. And more than that, what if you startcataloging the things you community members might be doing with these piecesof hardware? This might be pointing to sites like (find the open source plans sites)and giving people examples or showing users in your community. It might be —think back to MOOCs — offering classes related to the interest areas that mightspring up in your community. It might be advocating with a funder*cough*Gates*cough* that could put some high powered computers in yourlibrary so that you can have the design and drafting tools available.What can you do with this?Create a catalog of hardware that people can access, often onlineCatalog the plans or things that might be built by your communitymembersProvide a place for hobbyists and entrepreneurs to meet and planAdvocate for powerful enough computers to run the design software thatattaches to these things(Microsoft and the print to the 3D that they've just added to some of theirsoftware is an interesting thing to bring up here)
http://www.bigshotcamera.com
http://students.autodesk.com
https://www.suprmasv.com
I worry about things like NSA and other institutions listening more broadly thanwe realize. About libraries having good habits so that the browsing of the patronsremains as secure as is possible. But more than that, I worry that privacy is goingbe the domain of the wealthy. What we have to give up, increasingly, to getservices is an expectation of privacy.This is not true in libraries but I worry that it is hard to protect.What can you do with this?Worry.* Because, let's face it, while we keep talking about the privacy invasionsomething like Google glass brings because I can look at you and see thatembarrassing picture that someone posted or the quote in a newspaper articlethat you wished would go away or your job history — the big potential privacyinvasion is that these are two-way devices — that means they can record where Iam, how long I look at something, and how close I was to it. It's the attentioneconomy that powers Google and Facebook translated to the physical world.
This means that you have to ask people what surprised them. What did they findthey didn’t expect to find? What’s the most unusual fact they learned? Anythingthat gets them looking at the edges of a problem and not just the big things in themiddle of it. In practice, I think this is also about hosting meetings that don’t havea defined output — that are about talking and sharing and listening to each other.
In the last couple of years, I’ve started many of my presentations by stating myagenda. It’s the point of view that I’ve come to in the preparation for thepresentation I’m about to give and the central concept around which I want toengage people. I think people need to have opinions — things they think aregood and bad ideas, things that don’t work, things that they believe can be madebetter. A point of view is necessary to make something new.
Share your curiosities and points of view with your teams, in publicpresentations. On blogs. Share it with well thought out discussion and with quicksound bites. Share it in the form of projects (that’s how I think of our projects;little embodiments of our curiosities and perspectives). Share it when you answersomeone’s questions but share it. And let the response influence you.
http://www.webbmediagroup.comWhile they focus much of their work on journalists, there intelligent and curious writing can help describe trends and their relevance to today’s work. Amy Webb’s tech trends presentation for ONA was very helpful in the preparation of this presentation: http://www.webbmediagroup.com/ona2013
http://www.quora.com/search?q=technology+trendsQuora’s question-and-answer platform is a wonderful place to be curious. It’s a place where you can follow links, follow people or topics. You can ask questions and you can answer them. Via blog posts on the system you can also use it as a way to aggregate resources and answers to questions (see mine on career resources, for example: http://thesearethethings.quora.com).
https://medium.comA wide range of articles — you can narrow in on tech or almost any subjector just cruise the editors picks. Tends to be pretty US-centric audience. Still,there's a lot there that can spark avenues of research and, more importantly,different ways of thinking about what is available. As a side note, their modelof platform and editors is an interesting one.
http://www.theatlanticcities.comConsistently good articles that help us think about place.
http://www.theguardian.com/dataThe Guardian’s data store has a blog that covers a wide range of big data related topics but also has a repository that makes it easier to find data sources from around the world. This is a good jumping off point to the data sources in your area.