But even better than watching the video, listening to the song, or reading an essay is this – please participate by commenting! Let us know what YOU think is a “Library 101″ for your library – what do you think librarians need to know to succeed? Tell us in the comments attached to each essay!
landline phones (ok, my family still has this – check back with me in another year or so)
floppy disks (my kids once asked me “what’s a floppy disk, dad”? I stared at them a sec, then realized they had never seen one. Time flies!)
wristwatches (don’t wear one – that’s what my iPhone’s for! and the computers I stare at all day)
VHS Tape and VCRs (yep – still have these, too)
Beepers (iphone again – the beeper is no longer needed)
Film Cameras (haven’t had one for years)
typewriters (interestingly, my 9-year old has one … ONLY because Molly [the American Girl Molly who lived in the 1940's] had one, and my mother-in-law still had an old one in a closet. Yes, a typewriter was an odd present for a 9-year old, but she loves it!)
walkmans & discmans (haven’t had one in years)
dialup (My library serves a whole county – Topeka has broadband, the county is pretty spotty)
DVDs (I still use these, and we still watch DVDs. But that’s now. They’ll be gone in 10 years time, I’ll bet).
What would you add to this list? Or how about this question – what in this list does your library still support, and why?
Her paradigm – social networks will be like air. They will be where/when we need them – not site-dependant
Shopping as an example
- walk into a store, you see people.
- “walk into amazon” – who do you see?
- Showed a mockup of filtering reviews to people you know
Even TV is getting social
- newscasters have been inserting twitter hashtags into the news ticker feed
- Charlene really wanted to just see what her friends thought
- some set top boxes have this functionality
Enterprise networks are starting to be social, too.
Three things are needed to make social networks like air
1. Identity – who you are
2. contacts – who you know
3. Activities – what you do
Two sets of standards/rules that exist right now
- Facebook
- Open Stack
Many, myriad identities:
- she’s an author/writer person
- she’s a mom
- doesn’t want to blend necessarily
Friend management is tough
- facebook now lets you sort friends into groups
- she friended her co-author … at least 20 different times in a variety of places – why isn’t is just once?
Have to put our trust in someone
- with identity, with contacts, with activity stream
Talking about social algorithms
- ex. gmail showing your top 20 contacts without you asking for it
What gets everyone to be open?
- the money
- ex – Facebook Connect taps into offsite – this gave them more awareness, more people, more views
- ex – earthwatch trip
Talking about ads that can appear on many different networks
The Rise of the personal CPM
What should you be doing to prepare?
1. evaluate where social makes sense
2. think about your back end
3. prepare to integrate social networks into your organization
The idea of a flipped org chart with customer on top, ceo on bottom
I sent a twitter hashtag comment/question – her whole point is that social networks are like air. But then she’s basically suggesting that we should control where the “air” is and is not. So my comment – But if it’s like air, you can’t choose where SNs makes sense and where they don’t – it would be everywhere no matter what, right?
Two posts caught my eye over the past couple of days, and they’re still rumbling around inside my head … let’s see if I can pull a couple thoughts out of the cacophony.
Both posts discuss how lots of industries are at the beginnings of huge restructuring/remaking themselves or are disappearing entirely, and how much of our lives will seem like upheaval until the “new normal” is reached. No one’s exactly sure what “normal” will look like (after the recession and remaking is over) – but everyone’s sure it will be completely different from now.
Here’s the first article, and the main one setting off thoughts for me:The Great Restructuring, by Jeff Jarvis. Jeff talks about our recession – first quoting Umair Haque calling it a great “compression … as an economy built on perceived value reconciles with actual value.”
Jeff also mentions this article from the New York Times and ends up calling our current recession a “great restructuring.” Then, he lists thoughts about quite a few industries and their future. Here’s a partial list of them:
America may well not be in the auto industry soon.
Financial services will have to be completely remade
Newspapers will vanish
Magazines are in worse shape than I would have guessed and many will go
Books’ channels of manufacturing, distribution, and sales will go through upheaval
Broadcast media will become meaningless, replaced by digital delivery
Large-scale retail will shrink and consolidate and then be transformed by a search-and-buy economy
The blockbuster economy in entertainment will become harder to support as more attention and money shifts to the tail.
We should be so lucky that elementary and secondary education will also face such pressure.
And that’s just a few (go read the article for the whole list and some great thoughts).
Here’s the second article raising a ruckus in my head:Big Music Will Surrender, But Not Until At Least 2011 from TechCrunch. This article mainly gives a music executive’s perspective of coming changes for his industry, and how they currently plan to figure it out. So it’s one industry’s perspective on how change will ultimately play out for them. Interesting take.
My question to you – are you ready?
Look at that list from the first article: books, magazines, newspapers, media. All going through huge changes, all going to be remade. And all stuff that’s near and dear to our librarian hearts!
Some of these changes are already starting, you know:
Newspapers and Magazines have already started going digital. It’s just a matter of time before more/most decide to stop printing that paper thing and go completely digital.
Books… {David quickly ducks} DON’T freak out! Of course I think people will still read books. That’s a given. But have you looked around lately and seen the Amazon Kindle? Or the iPhone ebook reader that millions of people are now carrying around? I have a book on mine to read right now. Those 300-page paper things will eventually turn digital – because it’s simply a container for the content – not the content itself.
Music and movies – think LPs/8-Tracks, Cassettes, CDs or super 8, 16 ml, vcr, DVD … and compare that to iTunes or Netflix emerging subscription models. Also going digital!
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg for libraries – most of our huge buildings exist to primarily hold physical stuff. What will we do when there’s no physical stuff to hold? Will you still be able to justify that large building? That staff? (My answer to that is yes, you can … if you are planning for change now).
How are you starting to re-think your services and libraries?My library is in the middle of strategic planning, and we’re going to tackle that whole “re-think everything” approach. Looks like Darien Library has been doing that, too. How about you?
Closing thought – I live in lucky times – I get to see … basically … my whole life change before my eyes. And I get to help it change.
Remember my library’s 
