Thing 10: Future Trends

First, thoughts on the reading:

I was reading this:

Seth Godin: Future of the Library  which led me to this:

The Mesh.  Now, here's the definition of a Mesh company:

"Mesh companies create, share and use social media, wireless networks, and data crunched from every available source to provide people with goods and services at the exact moment they need them, without the burden and expense of owning them outright."

Okay, so, libraries seem to be right on the cutting edge of this one - in fact, this sounds like it belongs in our long range plans, if not in our mission statements, with some nice verbiage about materials and programs for education, recreation, and information popped in there, maybe instead of  "goods and services."  Everything we've been doing for the past 10 weeks with CDLC, Polly, and each other, was about the first part of the statement and we've always been all about the second part.

• What do you think your library will be like in the year 2020?  Fewer staff and fewer physical books, with staff running programs and librarians acting as facilitators, educators, and social directors. As more and more people work and study from home, the library will become a gathering place for collaborating, a public place for learning together.
• What technologies will most affect how libraries operate in the future?  E-readers and their kin (smart phones, I-Pads, etc., etc) aren't just about e-books - they provide access to the whole world. The latest upgrade on my Nook Color lets me read and now respond to emails, browse the web, access my files, watch videos, listen to music, and play games. They're also getting cheaper all the time and as more and more people get them the divide between the haves and the have nots will widen. And guess what? The ones who can actually afford to pay for libraries are the same ones who will have their own access.  I'm already hearing "Why should I pay all this money so my neighbor won't have to buy his own copy of the latest Iris Johansen?"
• What opportunities are there that we’re not yet taking full advantage of? Thomas Frey said "Libraries need to begin offering access to these “tools of production,” and I think he makes some very good points about how and why people will still come to libraries. We will still be seen as safe free gathering places where people can work, learn, and play together.
• What services might we need to give up in order to move forward? I think our book collection will continue to shrink and that space will be taken over by areas for individuals and groups, segregated by purpose - play groups and story times for the littlest ones (no, I don't think story time is going anywhere, and it's a vital service, and children need to have places to interact and learn to share and caregivers need to be able to talk to, and learn from, each other), study areas, gaming areas, computer labs, and programming space.
• What new services do you think we can offer that will be valued by our communities? Free technology training is going to be in ever higher demand, especially if we offer those tools of technology Thomas Frey was talking about - podcasting, audio, video, and graphic editing, etc. We will need people who can maintain them and people who can teach others to use them.  We're also going to have to let the coffee into the libraries and let them use their cell phones while they're here if we want them to stay. All staff will also have to be seen as friendly, knowledgeable, and welcoming. There are people who come to the library because we provide a service they can't get anywhere else.- we listen to them, we try very hard to find them the answers (books, programs, movies, information) that they're looking for, and we are really good at reader's advisory.

 Here are some articles about libraries that have already been making some of these changes:
New Library
Cupertino
and finally, an essay contest that asked kids to describe the "Library of the Future."

Thing Nine: e-books

I have a Nook Color. I held out for a long time (long after my parents and sister had succumbed to the siren call of the Kindle) because I wanted a lot from my reader
1. It had to read .pdf's
2. It had to be compatible with Overdrive
3. Color would be nice

Confession: I'm not using it all that much for reading books. I'm using it as a web browser, a knitting pattern library, a photo album and sometimes to read books. I anticipate using it more when there are more books available through Overdrive and on vacations, but most of the books I've read on it were either free or things I thought I wanted to be able to go back and re-read or consult as reference material. Since I'm not a huge nonfiction reader I'm not doing a whole lot of that.

I do see the potential for using it to store even more knitting patterns and recipes once I get myself one of those portable scanners so I can scan the things I like in my knitting magazines and either get rid of them, give them away, or at the very least store them somewhere besides my bedroom.  On an aside, one of the things I love about Ravelry (like the way I got Ravelry into the conversation?) is that you can add all the magazines and books you own to your Ravelry Library and search them for that pattern you know you saw somewhere but can't remember where.

Thing 8: Video

I confess, this is a place holder so I can go talk about my Nook Color in Thing 9.

Okay,  now, as exciting as a video of me knitting would be (see Polly's comment), I thought perhaps I'd try to put up one of the oral histories the VolunTeens did at "A Celebration of Ballston Lake," in 2009. One of the potential problems with doing these is that of permissions, so I'd like to state up front that we made every single person fill out a form allowing us to put these on the web.

It took a very long time just to give me an error message. Trying again with a shorter clip.

Collage

Thing 7

Yeah, I didn't just pick two. That's like having two pieces of popcorn or 2 M&M's.

I already know I love Google Calendar because I can use more than one calendar (mine, community room, and home one) and they sync automatically with my Droid.

This makes Evernote attractive because it has an Android app.  Right now I use Facebook Notes in a similar but much more limited way - I put recipes and patterns there because I'm always misplacing the paper copies. My Nook Color is also very useful for this purpose.

Zotero looks very useful for research. If I ever decide to go for that Ph.D....

I signed up for Drop Box but I admit I was motivated more by the chance to give Polly more storage space than a burning need right now.

I use Astrid Tasks on my Droid for my to do list, but I'm not great about checking it. Now if it had a sticky notes option like my desktop at home, that might work.

I've used Google Docs with friends before and it did make it easy to share addresses but that's all we really used it for.

I want to play with only2clicks and see if it would be good for making weblists for patrons.
I need to take another look at the one that lets you mark up screen shots of websites and see if it would work for making instructions for using the catalog but I couldn't figure out the whole sharing part.

Todaysmeet.com was easy to use and did make me wonder if it would work for staff meetings since I have a predominantly part time staff, but I would have some who would have trouble with it.

■Thing 6: Online Meetings & Webinars

I have attended a few Webinars and they are certainly time and money saving (and I can knit while I attend, imagine that).
I still need to learn to run them myself and I'm wondering if that would help with my staff meeting issues since the vast majority of my staff is part time and has trouble getting here for staff meetings.

I also find myself wondering if this would be a way to include those who don't come out for evening programs, although that sounds like it could include a whole lot of learning curve at both ends.

I do need to invest in a computer microphone for my library laptop and learn to use it (it's on my list along with learning to Skype).

Running on to Thing 7 as it will take lots of exploring and I'm running behind on my Things!