Tomb of the Unknown Librarian

It’s a bit past the peak time for predictions for 2007, but I thought I’d chime in with my picks for some of the top tech trends for libraries to pay attention to this year.

Going Green | Global Warming, energy efficiency, and renewable resources are going to be hot topics, I’m betting even more so than last year. Libraries will have to add more books and resources for the DIYer looking to go green. Workshops on installing solar systems could be popular programs especially as states add more tax incentives and local governments reduce permit costs. Library facilities will also be able to take advantage of LED lighting, reduce energy vampires, and take advantage of new technologies like solar. Before long, I imagine that all government building construction in California will be required to be green. It’s smart policy and it’s political gold right now.

2. The WebOS | Documents, settings, and applications anywhere. The virtual operating system works through a browser through a set of scripts that emulate a computer environment. If library computers have enough oomph, and a little internal know-how, virtual desktops might be a way for libraries to leverage their resources and collections, virtual scripting handling chat, word processing, spreadsheets, integrated catalog searching and even web browsing.

3. Degraded Privacy | Corporate datamines, hackers, spyware and Uncle Sam all collecting even more information. It’s probably time to steel ourselves and our library users to the fact that a lot of what happens online is collected and archived (not by libraries I hope). To lessen the impact we’ll have to educate ourselves about what to do when we find out that our information has been compromised. Preparing Privacy Breech emergency kits just like earthquake emergency kits might be good have on hand.

4. eBooks | With 500 lb gorillas like Sony and Google getting solidly behind ebooks, I’m betting we’ll see some major deals and major initiatives to do for ebooks what the iPod did for music, making it cheap, portable, and easy to use. All it’s going to take is a major publisher with major authors to be bought by the right people. Where are libraries in this? It would be nice to see if libraries could get a seat at the table when it happens.

There are a few more but I’ll post them later.

Linux.com has an article on the Evergreen ILS which is Open Source Linux alternative to the proprietary patron-unfriendly library systems. Evergreen serves Georgia’s statewide library service (GPLS), runs on Linux with Apache, a PostgreSQL database, Jabber messaging (how cool is that?!), and XUL. The catalog looks pretty good and offers awesome functionality especially with spellchecking and suggestions. From a financial standpoint it sounds great too.

[via Slashdot]

AOL’s recent release of search histories on tens of thousands of customers, really made the earth quake, the posion arrows fall from the sky and the pillars of corporate offices shake. An article in the New York Times,
How to Digitally Hide (Somewhat) in Plain Sight by J. D. Biersdorfer (August 12, 2006) [ Link through Google News ] points out that there are resources to help your web searching and surfing be a little more private.

The truth is that most people don’t realize that their searching is easily trackable. Seach engines track searches by IP address, by cookies and by session. The cool thing about libraries is that there is an aggregate anonymizing effect as a result of the volume of searches through a network that may share one IP address. This doesn’t help the poor soul who logs into AOL or MSN and then starts searching using the conveniently located search box. Overall, I think searching at the library is a bit more anonymous than searching from home.

The article points out that Clusty.com (a.k.a. Vivisimo) and IXQuick.com claim to not track user searches. In addition, there are a number of anonymizing web sites that hide your IP Address including BeHidden.com (http://behidden.com) and The Cloak (www.the-cloak.com). Unfortunately, general web surfing using anonymizers can be pretty inconvenient. This only really keeps site owners from seeing where you are coming from not what you’re doing. So, searching for your SSN will show up in their logs and if they ever get released or hacked.

NPR recently ran a story on the Identity Angel / Carnegie Mellon Data Privacy Project that mines the web and online resources for private information on individuals like SSN, Drivers License number, mother’s maiden name, etc…. . If it discovers enough information on you, it sends an email letting you know that a thief could steal your identity and what to do about it.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve seen an increasing number of patrons coming into the library because their home computers aren’t working. Lots more PIN requests for old cards, expired cards, and new registrations. It occured to me when a friend asked about a slow computer that there might be something going around. Is it due to legacy issues, old OS software, lack of updates, viruses, spyware or adware gone unchecked? I can’t be sure, but patrons seem genually very appreciate and willing to put up with a lot when they don’t have the internet or their home computers. The largest stumbling blocks seem to be lack of USB flash drive support (lost files) and problems accessing home email through the web. For example, locally there are a number of SBCglobal.net customers who actually get their dial-up or DSL through Yahoo. Since their email domains are …@sbcglobal.net they assume that’s how they get their webmail. www.sbcglobal.net sends you to prodigy and usernames and passwords don’t work there. Go to Yahoo and your in.

I’m certain I’ll be hosting a program on simple general computer security in this fall, but every library needs to be hosting classes on the basics.

Maybe just a pivot point. I was asked to created internal blogs for two of our core service groups, children’s and teen librarians. The teen librarians have started using theirs for book reviews primarily and while it’s just a few people who make the majority of the posts, it is being read by more than just teen librarians. The children’s librarians really haven’t started using theirs, they are being very thoughtful about how they want to use it, the structure, categories, etc. but from what I can tell many of them are excited, some are scared, but most are open to improved communication. The best part is that all librarians will soon have accounts and those who really enjoy it and see the benefit will be communicating better not just about books they’ve read but what is going on at their libraries, program ideas, meeting minutes, and more.

This has been a long time coming. I think the trick is not to push it, but to demonstrate its ease, its benefits, and its power. Hopefully next year at this time the internal communication framework will move away from email to an open web-based dialogue that crosses over to our communication with our patrons and our communities.