Kindle (and other wireless reading devices) creating a paradigm change?

Jaimie Prideaux posted at her blog "Talking Books Librarian" about kindle2. (I like the message "Still amazing only better" ^^) With that device you can store 1200 ebooks (which you buy at kindleStore, of course) and read newspapers and papers before newsstand (reminds me of the e-paper in "Minority report"). Will devices like kindle, Sony Flexible Full Color Paper Screen, PlasticLogic, Linux-based FirstPaper etc. create a paradigm change? How long will it take until it is common to use such "devices"? Imagine how fast Gameboys or Laptops were disseminated. The question is: When do the libraries have to adopt these technological changes? Until now there is enough time to monitor these developments...

"Why don't I think of that?" - Finding Innovation in Your Library

Previous Month there was a chat discussion about the topic innovation in libraries, its barriers and the librarians' experiences with implementing. (Unfortunately I discovered it now where it is over! :( ) The questions that were discussed are:

What is innovation? How does it happen? Who innovates? And, why does it happen to some more than others? This OnPoint chat will use attendees' experiences to understand how innovation does (and does not) occur in the academic library environment. Drawing on individuals' successes and failures, we will identify obstacles to innovation, discuss various models and theories of innovation, and consider how the individual fits in the innovative organization. David Dahl, Emerging Technologies Librarian at Towson University, will convene this month's chat.

"Rambling librarian" about google wave and its possibilities for librarians

Through the posting of Infobib (posting via Planet Biblioblog) I found my way to this interesting posting: "Google wave: possibilities for librarians" who comments on the Day 2 keynote speech of Google presenting Google I/O. He shares his ideas of service possibilities and/ or librarians' way of work:

As a librarian, the Google Wave demo shows how it could transform the way we provide Enquiry and Advisory services. Or how we research, collaborate and publish documents.

Further on, the "Rambling librarian" explains it. Thanks to him to share his ideas and thoughts! :)

In my opinion it is worth -and essential- to think about possible developments. Let's go on to share ideas and visions :)


Background: What is Google wave?

As Google explains

Google Wave is a product that helps users communicate and collaborate on the web. A "wave" is equal parts conversation and document, where users can almost instantly communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more. Google Wave is also a platform with a rich set of open APIs that allow developers to embed waves in other web services and to build extensions that work inside waves.

Horizon Report 2009

A friend of mine bookmarked the new Horizon Report 2009 and it popped up in facebook - thanks to social-networking :)

It is quite similar to the last Horizon Report but consists also of new stuff like e.g. "geo-everything". In the first adoption horizon we find mobiles and cloud computing, both of which are already well established on many campuses — and still more organizations have plans in place to make use of these technologies in the coming months. Institutions at the leading edge of technology adoption are also already applying the two clusters of technologies we have placed on the mid-term horizon, geo-everything and the personal web. All four topics on the first two horizons are already in common use in other sectors, including entertainment, commerce, and the world of work. The two technologies placed on the far-term horizon, semantic-aware applications and smart objects, are not yet commonly found in an educational context, although research is being conducted in both areas and the rate of development seems to indicate that these topics are well worth watching.
Each profiled technology is described in detail in the body of the report, including a discussion of what it is and why it is relevant to teaching, learning, research, and creative expression. Specific examples are listed there for each of the six topics

• Mobiles: New interfaces, the ability to run third-party applications, and location-awareness have all come to the mobile device in the past year, making it an ever more versatile tool that can be easily adapted to a host of tasks for learning, productivity, and social networking.
  - I would like to add: These developments make it even more difficult to gather these emerging tools and conclude its potential for teaching and learning.



• Cloud-Computing: The emergence of large-scale “data farms” — large clusters of networked servers — is bringing huge quantities of processing power and storage capacity within easy reach. Inexpensive, simple solutions to offsite storage, multi-user application scaling, hosting, and multi-processor computing are opening the door to wholly different ways of thinking about computers, software, and files.
  - How many/ Which universities are using Grids? Regarding Germany I only know of Trier, Göttingen, Mannheim and Würzburg.



• Geo-Everything: Many common devices can automatically now determine and record their own precise location and can save that data along with captured media (like photographs) or can transmit it to web-based applications for a host of uses. The full implications of geo-tagging are still unfolding, but the impact in research has already been profound.
  - More details are to find in the body of the report :)



• The Personal Web: Springing from the desire to reorganize online content rather than simply viewing it, the personal web is part of a trend that has been fueled by tools to aggregate the flow of content in customizable ways and expanded by an increasing collection of widgets that manage online content. Using a growing set of free and simple tools and applications, it is easy to create a customized, personal web-based environment — a personal web — that explicitly supports one’s social, professional, learning, and other activities. - Services such as Bookmarking, commenting and suggestion of similar media are also possible in a catalog: to offer a so-called OPAC2.0 is a goal.



• Semantic-Aware-Applications: New applications
  are emerging that are bringing the promise of the semantic web into practice without the need to add additional layers of tags, identifiers, or other top-down methods of defining context. Tools that can simply gather the context in which information is couched, and that use that context to extract embedded meaning are providing rich new ways of finding and aggregating content. At the same time, other tools are allowing context to be easily modified, shaped, and redefined as information flows are combined. - Which services are examples that are already in successful practice? What is possible in the environment of library and further learning environments?



• Smart Objects: Sometimes described as the “Internet of things,” smart objects describe a set of technologies that is imbuing ordinary objects with the ability to recognize their physical location and respond appropriately, or to connect with other objects or information. A smart object “knows” something about itself — where and how it was made, what it is for, where it should be, or who owns it, for example — and something about its environment. While the underlying technologies that make this possible — RFID, QR codes, smartcards, touch and motion sensors, and the like — are not new, we are now seeing new forms of sensors, identifiers, and applications with a much more generalizable set of functionalities.

Moreover the Horizon Report 2009 offers further information about several other developments which cannot be described with one specific buzzword:

Visualization tools are making information more meaningful and insights more intuitive. As tools of this nature continue to be developed and used, visual literacy will become an increasingly important skill in decoding, encoding, and determining credibility and authenticity of data.

Students are different, but a lot of educational material is not. Schools are still using materials developed decades ago, but today’s students come to school with very different experiences than those of 20 or 30 years ago, and think and work very differently as well. Institutions need to adapt to current student needs and identify new learning models that are engaging to younger generations.

Significant shifts are taking place in the ways scholarship and research are conducted, and there is a need for innovation and leadership at all levels of the academy. A challenge cited as critical now for several years running, academic review and faculty rewards are out of sync with the practice of scholarship. Clear approaches to assessing emerging forms of scholarly practice are needed for tenure and promotion. Students who are living and learning with technologies that generate dynamic forms of content may find the current formalism and structure of scholarship
and research to be static and “dead” as a way of collecting, analyzing and sharing results.

Libraries as places

- Uh, it's been a while since the last posting. I was just to busy with applying for jobs. -

The place "library" remains important although everything's is going to be digital and electronic services become more and more relevant. Libraries serve as a "third place" which was discussed mostly among American librarians.
Jin Tan remarked:

"Libraries are changing as we tell often enough. But we speak rather less about how the library should change to get the patrons coming into the library."

It's the goal of the new project "Zukunftswerkstatt" of the EKZ. It's interesting to see that the image at the project's page is from a former project which shows the envisioned new Brabant library.

What counts is not the architecture or the setting its important that the patrons feel good there. Yes, libraries are about feelings.

Beautiful Libraries in the World

View more presentations from Paulo Izidoro. (tags: libraries library)

Universities's Intellectual Property

In Kopenhagen the first conference on Universities' Intellectual Property took place: COPENMIND (1. - 3. September 2008). The organizer Muldow said in "University Journal" that universities worldwide are inadequately communicating their innovations to the industry. Therefore he has founded the conference as a kind of marketplace for building of close university-industry relationships that holds many unexploited opportunities. This is important for efforts that should result in a commercial product or service. But what about libraries: is such a conference of interest for libraries?
Depends on the participating organizations, one could say. The truth is: Libraries need to be in contact with other organizations from other fields. Why bnot cooperating with companies like Oracle: Such a company could create the technical infrastructure, whereas librarians are responsible for the contents.
Besides libraries have to strengthen their position in their environment. For instance, researchers have to recognize the academic library through their services. Libraries have to offer the right services to establish the library as a brand so that faculty members are saying: "Yes, I am a fan of the 'LIBRARY' !"
If libraries want to be the central information provider they have to offer services that justifies it. (This is one of the things I highlighted in my final dissertation.)

The problem of inadequatly communication is existing in the LIS-environment, too. Moreover, academic libraries are challenged more than ever:

1. there is a fast and easy access to information via the Internet


2. there is a rising number of information providers


3. statistics and studies show that libraries' users and/or visits are in a decrease


4. the library has to provide a better information supply while budgets are in a decrease.

The article "Libraries in the Converging Worlds of Open Data, E-Research, and Web 2.0" presents some of the key technologies, tools, and organizations within the open data movement and conclude that these have the potential to not only increase possibilities of knowledge transfer, but ultimately generate new knowledge.

The efforts that libraries take to better their services lead to a more positive image of the library (which would be good for all stakeholders).

"When librarians rule the world"

On 29th of February was held a workshop in the Central and Regional Library Berlin (Zentral- und Landes- bibliothek Berlin). The workshop had the title "When librarians rule the world: the skills and tools we need to thrive in a Web 2.0 world". This workshop should provide the participants with the critical skills they need to succeed and thrive in the new world of Web 2.0 and Libraries 2.0. The speaker was Ellen Bates who is an experienced information professional and a skilled speaker. Fortunately Anke Bruns and Susann Scharper compiled the contents of this workshop (thanks to them).

the 1st German "Library Act "- vision and reality

Following the IFLA-chairwoman's slogan "Libraries on the Agenda" I want to write about Library Acts, especially in Germany:
A "Library Act" provides a sustainable basis for maintaining libraries . More than a half of the European countries possess a "Library Act" (e.g. Spain, Poland, France, Estonia etc.). Let alone countries like the United States, Canada and Australia. (Some of the legal texts can be found here. Unfortunately the legislation pages of UNESCO Libraries Portal seems to be not updated for a long time)
In Germany there is no national "Library Act": Until now only the federal states are able to enact "Library Acts". On the 4th of July Thuringia made use of this federal competence. So Thuringia ist the first federal state of Germany that has a "library Act". But efforts started several years ago, mainly pushed by the DBV. They created a prototype of a "Library Act". Obviously Lower Saxony and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania will follow. Even in Berlin librarians call for a "Library Act". Hopefully these efforts yield results.
The DBV demands that the "Library Acts" not only should describe the state-of-the-art but have to consist of details regarding tasks and funding. Especially the funding should be embellished on a grand scale. Concerning funding the Thuringia's "Library Act" (§5) declares that libraries are funded by their supporting organizations. So it remains as it was: the funding of public libraries remains voluntarily. In view of local authorities' financial difficulties this is very disappointing for the "Library Act" should strengthen the libraries' situation and position. Therefore it seems to be an irony when Thuringia's minister of education Bernhard Müller remarks (as the Federal President Horst Köhler before) that the libraries have to be on the political agenda.

Why is it so important to develop a library 2.0 and what is critical about it? (discussed @ Bibcamp 2008)

Until now libraries were not forced to concentrate on reaching online communities. But within the last few years opportunities increased to build communities and share information within networks.

The question is: Will the library become unimportant in the future?
Several librarians don't think so (and we have to do so ;) ), e.g. Jochum: He (as several American LIS professionals, too) is the opinion that the abundance of virtuality is throwing us back to the analogue world.

But nevertheless we have to concentrate on online services and on serving Internet savvies. In this context the word "library2.0" evolved. But what is behind the word "library2.0"? What does it mean in detail?
Heller is describing it in the foreword to the "library2.0"-Issue of BuB (Vol 31, 2007, Issue 2). I only want to concentrate on a few things: library2.0 is about interaction with customers, participation of users especially in the regard of user-generated content, and so on.
Unfortunately, "library2.0" is used too much so that it will be screwed up in a few years. "Library2.0" is a buzzword. Therefore, librians have to find a better word that is decribing the root of the matter. Particularly, because "library2.0" causes confusion: Is "library2.0" an extension of "library1.0"? Or is "library2.0" displacing "library1.0"? In this regard: Is everything of the traditional library to change??
The core functions remain. Librarians always were distributors of information -but now librarians are not the only gateways to information any more: (Fortunately?) they lost their role as gatekeepers.
Moreover the word "library2.0" is not the correct one because it implies that librarians have to upgrade themselves to stay alive. In the sense of keeping up-to-date it's right but to communicate this to "conservative" librarians gives them a negative feeling (technostress).
But it's clear that librarians have to change -or else they are not able to change the library : Libraries should serve as windows to the multifaceted landscapes of the information world.