Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Visual search (Library technology thoughts, pt. 4 of 8)

(I have a list of six predictions about what I expect to see happen in academic library technology over the next 5-10 years. This is prediction #3.)

Visual search will (at a minimum) reach parity with text-based search.

One reason I have this prediction is because of what I believe is going on with mobile devices. More stuff on mobile devices + more mobile devices with touch screens = greater questioning of why we should force people to tap-tap-tap their way through text-based interfaces. "Im in ur txt 2 say luv u 4ever" and its ilk evolved for a reason, and while a lolspeak subject thesaurus would be amusing, I'm not counting on it.

A second reason is the increasing sophistication of infographics. (Digression: in reading this post by Rob Paterson, I was struck by how one cites information from an infographic--by x and y coordinates?) Designs such as Anil Dash describes in "Pixels are the New Pies" lend themselves quite well to the size and shape of mobile device screens, too. It seems like EBSCO's visual search is working off of similar design principles. Good for them.

The third reason is things like bing's image search. This kind of technology is also on my June list to Learn What I Am Talking About. Not only because users will increasingly like these kinds of tools, but because content will more and more be born multimedia. The Journal of Visualized Experiments will have many, many fellow publications in all fields before too very long. Say, 5-10 years.

Monday, May 23, 2011

Going mobile (Library technology thoughts, pt. 3 of 8)

(I have a list of six predictions about what I expect to see happen in academic library technology over the next 5-10 years. This is prediction #2.)

Mobile devices will increase in importance for use of library collections and services.


Libraries know it.

Publishers know it.

Vendors know it.

(And, of course, Google knows it...)

I know that some of the mobile-designed tools, like QR codes, are faulted for introducing a new digital divide between people with smartphones and people with ordinary dumb mobile phones (like me). I think it's good that someone has been working on a smartphone workaround for QR codes. I think it would be even better if the library world in particular stopped conflating "mobile" and "cutting-edge," instead prioritizing tools that work on the least-reasonable-common-denominator devices. (Didn't we go through this with web browser neutrality in HTML code?) Cell phones in general are ubiquitous. iPods are a little less ubiquitous but still widespread. I know people who get along quite well without combining the functionality of the two.

And here is where the predicting-the-future part comes in: I know very little about how this technology really works--something at the top of my list of things to fix in June--and even I can see that all the necessary technological pieces are already in place on the user end. The only question is whether libraries will make working with those pieces a high priority when dealing with vendors or designing our own tools. I'm betting the answer is yes--user satisfaction is simply too dominating a performance measure for us to safely leave mobile content, tools and services on the back burner.

Thursday, May 19, 2011

To the cloud! (Library technology thoughts, pt. 2 of 8)

(I have a list of six predictions about what I expect to see happen in academic library technology over the next 5-10 years. This is prediction #1.)

Libraries, publishers and vendors will continue to push more content, tools and services onto the cloud.

I think the content part of this prediction is reasonably uncontroversial. (But I have been wrong before.) As more content goes digital, more content will go nonlocal, because really, who has the server space or wants to deal with the rights complications? If you're the Ontario Council of University Libraries, you might be able to negotiate for "local load" of monographs (see slide 4)--but for all but one of the member libraries, and maybe just plain all of them, that content is still going to be living on one or more external servers.

As the content goes nonlocal, the tools will follow even more than they already have. If I go to netLibrary through my library or Google Books on the open web, I don't have to download any software. I've given up on using e-books or e-audiobooks from my local public library precisely because there's software to download, and it is a royal pain. Online journal databases might require me to download the latest version of Adobe Reader, but that's such a common tool that I won't even hyperlink it. Meanwhile, my library's catalog is hosted remotely, as was its predecessor. I don't know much about WorldCat Local, but it seems to be trying to move the "get it" function onto the cloud along with the "find it" function. In general, it seems to me that "the thing" and "the way you find and use the thing" are going to increasingly live in the same place.

All that's left is services. Services will follow the tools. Services are part of finding and using "the thing." Technical services folks seem okay with this concept. Public services folks, less so, though I could be listening to the wrong conversations. I'm not even talking about in-person vs. online or SMS (text) reference, or staffed vs. automated circulation. I'm saying that if in-person reference involves two people sitting in front of a computer using networked resources, that's a networked service, and the in-person aspect will increasingly become a boutique experience, as with, say, travel agents. If circulation is fundamentally a series of barcodes or RFID tags interacting with a networked ILS, that's a networked service. Contactless smart cards + robot book fetchers + library RFID tags = probably nothing any time soon, but just the idea of it will inspire various smaller changes in various academic libraries.

I still remember the day I was meeting with our director of distance learning, and we were discussing our electronic reserves system and whether it had any advantages over how they were using the content management system, and I blurted out, "Of course, now that IT has moved all the students to gmail accounts, really we should just do all this with Google Docs and Google Groups." I still think we should try it. It's only a matter of time before patrons Google Chat with reference librarians who then "check out" identified materials to them by sending a "share document" notification. Maybe a "check this item out" link in the local catalog will automatically generate the same kind of notification, and "return this item" will delete their identification from the document sharing list. For all I know, this kind of thing is already happening.

Obviously, there are serious digital divide questions here. For this reason, I don't see this trend as either total or super-fast. But 5-10 years? I really think there will be a lot more of it. (For one look at the same trend in higher ed in general, see the Tenured Radical.)

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Thoughts on (academic) library technology, pt. 1 of 8

Fresh back from an awesome experience at the Acquisitions Institute at Timberline Lodge, and preparing for the last CoALA workshop of the Spring this Friday, I have (academic) library technology on the brain. In the grand tradition of talking about library technology, I have a List Of Trends. Over the next week or so, I will have separate posts for each one. Which I haven't written yet. So if you have strong negative or positive feelings about any of these, let me know! I'd love to be able to incorporate your thoughts into my posts.

What I See Happening in the Next 5-10 Years

1. Libraries, publishers and vendors will continue to push more content, tools and services onto the cloud.

2. Mobile devices will increase in importance for use of library collections and services.

3. Visual search will (at a minimum) reach parity with text-based search.

4. Academic libraries' ability to use technology to mediate satisfying experiences for users will be the single most important factor in maintaining support from their host institutions.

5. Administrators and accreditors will drive technological change in academic libraries more than faculty will.

6. Academic libraries will move to integrate their systems with course management and enterprise systems at their host institutions.

I'm surprising and disappointing myself that I'm not listing open source on here as a trend. I think I will have to do a separate post just about that.