4 technology trends every librarian needs to know
TRANSCRIPT
4 technology trends
every librarian needs to know
Where is library technology heading in
the next few years?
What are the emerging tools and technologies that
we should be paying attention to, in order to be
ready when the time is right to adopt them?
1. Augmented reality
Augmented Reality, or AR, is technology that provides digital overlays to reality
that add information
Google’s Glass eyewear is perhaps the most commonly known example of this technology
But AR applications exist for smart phones as well
There are a number of inexpensive tools that
libraries can provide their patrons to help them in
their research and use of the library’s physical
resources
They might help guide a user to the right
section of the stacks
Or provide additional information to the
individual as they conduct their
research
At the simplest end of the spectrum, public libraries could place QR Codes –
graphical symbols that, when photographed with an
appropriate application on smart phone, open a specified link in a web
browser -
to provide additional information about physical
spaces in the library
Smart phone applications like Layar (available for
iPhone and Android) take a photograph of a physical
object and return “layers” of information about it
Other AR tools can aid research in libraries. An
example of this is the SCARLET Project, a JISC-
funded initiative developed at the University of
Manchester
When users of this tool read digitized materials, the SCARLET tool provides additional information
about the document (text, images, audio, etc) to enrich
the experience
Augmented Reality has additional uses for libraries with local history or other
special collections
Using applications like Layar, a history buff could take a picture of a building
and see, superimposed over it, links to documents about historical events or people
connected with the building
Or see photographs of that same location (using GPS information) as it looked
decades before
2. Discovery
One of the most essential tools libraries offers to
researchers is the research database -- the many
products created to amass all the publications a researcher
might want to look at, with search interfaces for each
Discovery, or research, has evolved from being primarily
independent “ponds” of data -- separate databases, each
individually maintained and with its own unique interface -- to being collected in oceans of bibliographic records and full-
text articles
We started the “ocean” phase with federated search, in which
multiple independent databases were searched at the same time,
and then a set of results returned
We have recently seen the emergence of web-scale discovery systems, vast
single indexes of the content from myriad
smaller database tools
The trend we are seeing now is the move to streams of
information,tailored
dynamically,
in a context-aware way, to the information need of the researcher
For example, tools like Summon offer RSS feeds
A “null search” –click the search button without
typing anything – brings up everything the library is
entitled to
From there, you can use facets to create a subject
and date search (say, everything from 3 months ago to present) for peer-
reviewed materials
You can then use the RSS feed to find new materials, or simply
bookmark the page
More advanced searches might use ISSNs of journals to focus in
on very specific subject areas and keywords, making searches exceptionally precise, while still
fostering a bit of serendipity through the catchall approach
discovery engines take
3. Large scale text
A handful of projects over the past decade
have involved the mass digitization of
books
Google’s project is perhaps the best known
but others have been undertaken by Microsoft, the Internet Archive,
and at smaller scales by library consortia or individual libraries
The recent availability of large collections of
scanned, digitized, and OCR processed books
has led to several interesting and
groundbreaking changes
The first is the largest collection of digitized books, the HathiTrust,
which now holds almost 12.5 million volumes
total, 4.5 million of them in the public domain
Now that a significant number of open-access and public domain books exists, libraries can begin to assess
the ongoing needs for immediate access to their
physical collections
In most cases, a digital copy serves researchers’ needs
This means that libraries can coordinate storage for single
copies of many titles, for long-term preservation and access to the original, but
provide digital access to the text from the HathiTrust
Farther down the road, improved search engines can find books
that match abstract criteria
(as search engines become more adept at discerning
characteristics of text, and not just identifying words on
the page)
In parallel with the rise of large-scale corpuses of
digitized text is the development of tools to
analyze, sift, and sort them
These new, open-source text-mining tools are opening up new avenues for scholarly inquiry, particularly in the humanities
When a scholar can search across large numbers of works by
contemporary authors, analyze dozens, hundreds, or thousands of books for similar phrasings, word selections, or any other
characteristic, what can be learned?
4. Open hardware
The theme of “open” runs
through these technologies
Perhaps the most intriguing is the rise of open hardware – that is, commodity-priced
computer chips that can be easily programmed and
networked together to bring low-cost computing power into
the library
Parallel to open-source software (software that is
available freely, for modification and adaptation), open-source hardware is on
the verge of changing computing in general
Rather than purchasing expensive, vendor-provided hardware for counting traffic
through the library’s front door, for less than $100 a library could build a small
sensor that did the same thing
A network of such sensors, using cheap hardware and software
downloaded from sharing sites, could provide detailed
information about what parts of the library are used during what
time of the day, without using library staff to patrol and count
heads
For more about these and other technologies see Ken
Varnum’s book The Top Technologies Every
Librarian Needs to Know available from Facet
Publishing
http://www.booksonix.co.uk/facetpublishing/9781783300334.pdfBrowse a free
sample here
About the author Kenneth J. Varnum is the Web Systems Manager at the University of Michigan Library, where he manages the library web site and development of new features and functionality.
An active member of the library technology world for 18 years, Ken's research and professional interests range from Drupal and site redesign to user-generated content.
Ken is the author of the Facet Publishing books The Top Technologies Every Librarian Needs to Know and Drupal in Libraries and is the editor of The Network Reshapes the Library.
1. “Augmented Reality” by turkletom used under CC BY 2.02. “Detail of Google Glass” by Antonio Zugaldia used under CC BY 2.03. “Mediated Reality running on Apple iPhone” by Glogger used under CC BY-SA
3.04. “Untitled” by Thomas Leuthard used under CC BY 2.05. “SPEECH Tchoban & Kuznetsov – towninbox” by János Balázs used under CC
BY-SA 2.06. “MSU Libraries Special Collections” by Michigan State University used under CC
BY 2.57. “London Old Bond Street” by Ben Brookbank used under CC BY-SA 2.08. “Pacific Ocean waves crash in like a giant clock, blue forever, San Gregorio State
Beach, California, USA” by Wonderlane used under CC BY 2.09. “Mountain Stream” by Marc Nozell used under CC BY 2.0
10. “RSS Robot Illustration ~ Shout it out!” by Rob McDonald used under CC BY 2.011. “RSS” by Fabricio Zuardi used under CC BY 2.012. “Interlock MCLS Digitization Tour” by Brian Boucheron used under CC BY 2.013. “Google book search notification at Art & Architecture library, Duderstadt
Center2” by Timothy Vollmer used under CC BY 2.014. “ebook” by Daniel Sancho used under CC BY 2.015. “Road” by Moyan Brenn used under CC BY 2.016. “Open” by velkr0 used under CC BY 2.0
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