10:30am – Beyond Virtual Libraries (Dr. Laverna Saunders)
All about tech changes in academic libraries.
Good quote that really sums up the whole conference so far (she quoted someone else): “our world is about to change in a big, big way.”
She mentioned some useful trend trackers – OCLC (Environmental scan), Gartner, Pew Research Center, CIL, etc.
Millenials:Good stuff here – some points she mentioned:
- Tools of millenials – IM, email, cell phones, mp3s, ipods, broadband, multitasking
- Students learn by trial and error – more like Nintendo than logic. They file share, keyboard, cut & paste. 73% more likely to use the internet than go to the library (me – not really a bad thing, if you put your stuff online and make it easily accessible – I need to post about this)
- Students expect: 24/7, everything digital, mobility, group spaces, promptness. So libraries need: portals, IM, chat ref, electronic resources, CMS + resource links, and group study areas.
- Question asked of students: “Do you read books outside of class?” Students pretty much said “no.” Me – So what? They still read. (another future post for me?)
The library is slowly becoming more of an extension of the classroom or lab. Librarians are teaching more. Active learning zones. More support of elearning and course management systems.
Supporting multimedia is becoming more of a trend (classroom lecture supported by sound, video, etc.).
11:30am – Academic Libraries & Technology: Future Directions (Marshall Breeding)
Current concerns:
- Rampant computing – concern to contain management costs
- Enterprise resource planning is essential
- Departmental computing is moving to consolidated enterprise systems
- Strong interest in integrating all business systems on campus
- Enterprise content management – courseware and Institutional Repositories
Organization Context:
- Academic libraries are part of a whole – not a separate, independent entity
- Library automation should not be an independent endeavor
- Integration with larger business and content systems essential for libraries to be relevant
- Example: Distributing course content through a library portal
Other Nice Tidbits:
- There’s a need to focus technical talent on activities that have more of an impact on the mission of the library
- Libraries need technologies to help them maximize the value of their collections
- Automation systems need to integrate well with other campus systems (institutional portals, etc.)
- Libraries must develop strategies for integration – deliver library-provides services to users even when they start with Google
- Lots of stuff yesterday and today complaining about current library catalogs.
- Look to XML based standards for integration with other systems. Library specific standards don’t do much to help integrate with non-library standards – need to use industry standards
- Service Oriented Architecture – (SOA). Emerging as the preferred framework for system-to-system communications for diverse systems.
- Wants to see a different federated search model – have everything dump into a centralized federated product on the back-end, and allow users to pull from that. Google has been able to do this – harvesting other organizations data, and representing it.