The Future As Seen By Me In 2010

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Well looky here, things one has scanned in eh. (ignore the photo, that's some guy that made some accounting software, not sure what became of him ;) MIKE RIVERSDALE is fuming. The expensive headphones he bought in Sydney three weeks ago have just died. His first reaction is not to randomly spill expletives into his coffee, but to use his iPhone to vent his frustration to his Twitter con- tacts, under the moniker Miramar Mike. "I will also put, 'What should I do?' It's a conversation. I'm reaching out to the people following me." The council predicts hand-held digital devices such as smartphones will rule the world in 2040. They already rule the life of Mr Riversdale, whose company WaveAdept helps businesses adapt - their computing sys- tems to allow staff to work from anywhere - and with anyone. In order of fre- equency, he uses his iPhone to tweet (1136 followers; 8363 tweets since joining), e-mail, make phone calls and use online services, such as checki
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"What if every library in the world ..."

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New Year's generally bring out the "what ifs" and "this year we're gonna" - take a look at this one from Deborah Fitchett that I think reaches for the skies:
What if every library in the world brought their anonymised circulation data, their IM reference statistics, their anonymised usability testing and survey results, their project reports, their lesson plans and handouts, and their iPhone applications out from their hard drives and their intranets and made them publically accessible?


I cannot see why it won't work except for two things:
  1. Lack of librarians hearing about it
  2. Librarians not doing it
This post is my effort to help solve #1.

As for #2 then Deborah has a job of answering one question, "What's in it for me?"
The answer given then has to be a list of (relevant) benefits with "why" and not a litany of features.

And so, Deborah has kicked us all of, what about you?

Comments

  1. Dr Tim15 January 2009 at 06:24

    Some of them do! In my previous career incantation I was on the library usability mailing list!

    http://www.lib.rochester.edu/index.cfm?PAGE=652

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  2. Deborah Fitchett15 January 2009 at 11:16

    Thanks for the plug, Mike! "What's in it for me/us?" will definitely be the kicker; do you think I can convince everyone of fame and fortune? :-) (I do think that ultimately it will be a budget saver because people won't have to keep reinventing the wheel.)

    And Tim, thanks for the link - I've signed up to take a look at it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Mike Riversdale15 January 2009 at 16:49

    Chances are slim with "fame and fortune" but extremely high on "not inventing the wheel" :-)

    I'd imagine (through my stereotypical view of librarians, sorry) that "knowledge sharing" as "good practice" would also be a trigger point.

    ReplyDelete

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