Note: be sure to read this post if you AREN’T going to ALA Annual — because there’s some free (as in zero-cost) participation opportunities here. For this conference’s LITA Top Technology Trends, I am part of an online team honchoed by Cindi Trainor that will facilitate a concurrent online discussion. I will post to here, Twitter, and Facebook when I know the URL.
This time we are being given a series of “discussion starter topics,” some of which read like subliminal sales fodder, but no mind, it’s interesting to be told what my trends are. 
My comments below.
LITA Top Tech Trends Discussion Starter Topics
ALA Annual Chicago, July 2009
~IT, the Economy, and the Environment
In five years, shrinking institutional budgets, shifting user needs, and heightened environmental awareness will create a library profession largely based in online and virtual worlds. A new Internet and rapid change in communication and collaborative technologies will bring about a new commodity information profession in which half of all librarians will be unaffiliated freelance professionals who contract their services remotely to multiple institutions. The conference model for professional development will be gone, and ALA and other professional organizations will serve the role of coordinating online tools and training for information service specializations.
Not that fast and not that extreme. These are all real trends but they will happen more slowly. As for “virtual worlds,” I think we’ve seen Second Life come and go. Fun experiment, now move along folks.
~Open Everything (software, data, systems, etc) and Network Effect
In five years, further consolidation and upheaval will turn the library software market on its head. The drive towards open source systems, open linked data, open APIs, and network-level data and services will have gained full steam as libraries come to own, develop, share, and manage all of their own systems and data. A few major players will provide the network and service backbone, but the majority of the vendor market will shift to providing contract consulting and development services along with offerings of plug-ins and modules that they have built to augment to the unified data / systems superstructure owned and cooperatively managed by library governance bodies and co-ops. [With their new-found unity, libraries will band together to force Elsevier to open it's article content and drop prices.]
Holy grammar, Batman! Never mind these exotic predictions. In five years librarians still won’t be familiar with Mr. Apostrophe and his twin cousins, the Parentheses. Call the copy editor, STAT!
There is indeed a trend toward openness and self-managed data and systems, and it is a trend that will grow and needs to grow, for the simple reason that it is necessary and healthy for us to build the tools we use to manage our content. How that fits into the cloud-computing model that is headed our way like a Cat 5 hurricane is unclear to me. I think it’s a good thing for vendors to get out of the proprietary-licensing business and into service and development — good for us, good for them.
~Mobile Computing, Virtual Computing, and the Cloud
In five years, handheld and mobile devices will outstrip desktop and laptop computers as the dominant computing platform, backed by an ever-present data and computing cloud run by private industry. Libraries will leave the storage and hardware business behind, abandon their one-stop-shop web sites and systems, and start profiling users based on their transaction and usage history, interests, social networks, and community/campus activities. Libraries will focus on two main areas: 1) Building tools and services that push content into the user’s personal and social computing environment, and 2) providing in their physical space for large displays and interactive peripherals that users can plug their own devices in to.
“In to”?
Anyhoo, I agree the desktop is fading and mobile/ubiquitious devices are on the rise, but what interests me here is that it seems to overlook what most public libraries do these days, which is transact huge quantities of physical materials. I think this the kind of trend it’s easy for academics to overlook, since behavior on campuses is so different. I spend a lot of time thinking about (worrying about, really) the fate of public libraries when physical media is preempted by whatever device(s) are imminent. The movement toward digital, on-demand reading/experiential materials has many ramifications, few of which any of us have explored.
(It’s so interesting to me, as a writer, how librarians forget how people actually use libraries — to like, you know, find things to read.)
~Current and Future Trends for the Library Catalog
In five years, the local catalog will join the card catalog as a thing of the past. The next-next generation catalog is no catalog at all. All content and data will reside at the network level as one pool that intermingles with the other major pools in the information string of “great lakes”–Google, Hathi Trust, Open Content Alliance, and a handful of Journal aggregators. The niche role of libraries will be aggregating and digesting information from diverse systems and custom-packaging it for their local audiences and local services.
Ah yes, the Haughty Trust (bad me, did I say that?). If we really do move to the all-important cloud (again, five years? I think not), we won’t be worrying about the Big O, or Hathi Trust, or anything else, because we’ll be out of business. The “niche role” won’t be enough to sustain a profession.
About to board, or I’d do my own trends. Thoughts? Additions? More typos to correct?
This afternoon I drive to Norcross, kicking off over a month of travel here and there (with many mini-trips built in).
10/12 - 10/16: TLH to Norcross. Working on-site at My Place Of Work. Mini-trips include Newton County Library System, Athens Public Library, and COMO. I wanted to touch base with a colleague who said sorry, she’s a bit busy with the 2nd annual Atlanta Queer Literary Festival.
WHAT!! I said. But of course I must put that on my homosexual agenda! So in between doing research for various trips and reading excellent drafts of software documentation by the illustrious Evergreen Docs Crew, I am gulping down Heaven’s Coast in preparation for hearing Mark Doty — and waving at busy Cal Gough from afar! I’m trying to see if I have courage to approach the open mike or will just sit there feeling like a wimp (and no, I’m not the Karen G. hosting that mike!).
10/16-10/17. Return to TLH. I’m largely pre-packed for Cincinnatti (just need to grind fresh Peet’s), which fortuitiously requires a very different set of clothes than what I’m wearing in ATL.
10/17 - 10/19: LITA National Forum. I was really going to learn (I find Forum is a great learning conference) but last week my colleague and fellow UIUC alum Aaron Trehub asked me to emcee a panel on distributed networks for digital preservation. I’m thrilled, because this is a topic that I feel very strongly about but don’t work directly in these days. I hope Tim Spalding’s talk is taped because the way the flights went I am going to walk in halfway through it at best.
10/19 - 10/22. Shelter in place in TLH. Vote on 10/20 (first day of early voting).
10/22 - 10/25. Statewide directors’ meeting in Baton Rouge; talking about open source and what it means to be a community librarian (good for me to have it figured out by then!). I get to Louisiana with enough time to make some liberry visits — I’m flying into NOLA specifically for that reason. I stay over in NOLA Friday night because Sandy has a conference there. Handy! We fly back to TLH together.
10/25 - 10/26. Wash, pay bills, and pack.
10/26 - 10/29. Norcross, with some internal round-trips.
10/29 - 11/1. TLH. Hunker in and work.
11/1 - 11/16. (or 11/15, unclear just yet). VALA/CAVAL 30th anniversary; five speaking stops. My itinerary in Australia takes me around what looks to me like the southern belt of the country. I believe I will actually get to meet Kathryn Greenhill and Fiona Bradley face-to-face! I’ve heard from some other folks I know. My co-presenter and I will be sightseeing a bit together too. I’m reading several fat travel books and a little Bill Bryson — if you have one you think is good to travel with, give a holler soon.
In prep for VALA/CAVAL, I’m also reading a slew of books I haven’t quite figured out how to track. Some are in PINEs, some are in WorldCat, some are local… I may try Zotero. I’d like something that would let me present an annotated bibliography online, in the order I choose.
My keynote at Access 2008 was a kind of early version of that talk, btw, sans the research I hope to bring to this. The working title (also used at Access) is “open++.”
I have been on a wild ride for two weeks — and almost didn’t get off, thanks to another Delta error.
Due to a chain of events beginning with a delayed flight out of Albuquerque last Sunday, I never made it home. Delta ultimately rebooked me into Boston, where I was flying the next day, so I never touched down in Tallahassee. (But for this trip, I had lots of clean socks and undies from the trip to Target I made when Delta lost my bag for 36 hours… and let’s be clear: by “Delta,” I mean the baggage handlers in Tallahassee, on what was the quietest afternoon I’ve ever seen at that airport.)
Arriving in Boston a day early, I would have had to shoulder the cost of a hotel room plus one more day on the rental car. But my connecting flight from Cincinnatti was overbooked, so I volunteered to spend the night there. The Airport Marriott turned out to be a lovely new place with flat-screen TVs, fancy computer desks, and beds like angels’ clouds, plus I got 400 “Delta Dollars” and enough food credits to buy a nice salad. I reached my destination a little early, with a nice perk in my pocket.
So, all’s well that ends well, right?
I thought so, until I got suspicious early this morning when I realized I hadn’t received my usual “It’s time to check in” message from Delta.
The creative soul in Albuquerque who booked me straight through to Boston had made an error — notifying Delta that for very good reasons having absolutely nothing to do with User Error, I wouldn’t be on the flight out of Tallahassee. So I was a no-show, which meant that I was on the list of Naughty Passengers Who Don’t Abide By The Rules and Now Have No Reservations, as opposed to Good Passengers Who Get To Fly Home.
Now, I could fume at that person. Surely this isn’t the first time Delta has had to reroute some poor Ancient Mariner directly to a destination, bypassing some place in between. But it was a mistake by a pro handling a long line of confused people, including a guy behind me who paced and snorted, hands on hips.
(In such situations, I turn on the charm. If nothing else, it puts the desk people at ease, and I do understand they don’t break airplanes and in fact, would much prefer not having to rebook anyone, ever.)
But what I really appreciate is the woman who helped me today, despite the crack in my voice and my obvious inability to understand everything she was saying. (I kept saying, “But DELTA broke the airplane! I’m just the passenger!”) She was soothing and calm and efficient, and when I explained my phone connection was poor (or maybe it was the sound of the blood rushing in and out of my veins), she slowed down and spoke even more clearly.
Then, when I logged in to my Delta account, lo! There was Me, with My Reservation! So she wasn’t just pleasant… she was accurate. There’s a combo to remember.
All I need to do now is check in a little early and sign an affidavit. I’m still not entirely understanding the affidavit — which I suspect does not read, I, Karen G. Schneider, Being Of Sound Mind and Sound Body, Do Affirm I Did Not Break The Airplane and It’s Not My Fault — but at this point, I’d sign almost any document to get home and wash my clothes.
(Assuming my bag gets there, too…)
