Tag: real-time_library

Sudden Thoughts And Second Thoughts

More on Dan Ariely

I’ve been to more than a few ACRL President’s Programs. These programs take place at the ALA Annual Conference. Many of them I really do not remember. But one that I remember well is the 2008 program at which Dan Ariely was the speaker. Ariely is the James B. Duke Professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University, and the presentation was based on his book Predictably Irrational. I enjoyed the presentation so much that I wrote a post about it. Since then I’ve taken note of Ariely who seems to be showing up all over the place these days. Since the ACRL program I’ve found myself enjoying most of what Ariely has to say, and it’s a good reminder about how irrational we humans can be when it comes to decision making. So I was pleased to come across his blog and promptly subscribed. You may want to as well.

Does Access To Social Networks Lead To Greater Narcissism – Not Us

So Generation Me – that’s our current crop of traditional 18-22 year olds – finally admits that it is most narcissistic generation of all times. Maybe this news doesn’t surprise you. This news comes from a survey of 1,068 students concerning their use of social networks by the organization YPulse. The study reports that 92% of the respondents said they used MySpace or Facebook regularly. Two-thirds said their generation was more self-promoting, narcissistic, overconfident and attention-seeking than others.

So if using social networks leads to more self-promoting, and narcissistic and attention-seeking behavior, how come I haven’t seen any evidence of that among our profession. After all, we are pretty heavy users of all of these social netwwork technologies. I guess we just must be immune to that sort of thing, being humble librarian types and all that sort of thing. Nope, no evidence of greater narcissism here.

More On The Real-Time Web

If you enjoyed my post on Real-Time Libraries and would like to explore the Real-Time Web concept in more detail, take a look at series of articles on the Real-Time Web published at ReadWriteWeb. At the time of this writing only parts one and two are available, but you can keep an eye open for part three to come soon. Interesting that the author says there is no one definition for the Real-Time Web and that there is even still some question of what to call the trend, but he identifies five characteristics of the Real-Time Web:

1. is a new form of communication,
2. creates a new body of content,
3. is real time,
4. is public and has an explicit social graph associated with it,
5. carries an implicit model of federation.

This is worthwhile reading, and offers more insight into how the academic library should be re-imagining itself for the Real-Time Web.

The Real-Time Library

Librarians across all sectors of the profession have spent considerable time discussing and analyzing the impact of Web 2.0 and what it means to have a Web 2.0 influenced library. Here at ACRLog we first acknowledged Web 2.0 in December 2005. Since then we’ve offered a number of posts about academic libraries using 2.0 technologies to enable more user participation, to reach out to users in the spaces they prefer to be, and even to stress the need for a more user-engaged instruction session. But as with all technology trends this one is evolving too.

A few weeks ago my Temple University colleagues and I traveled to Princeton University for a joint staff development program on digital reference. Stephen Francouer did a fine job of leading us through the evolution of digital reference, and shared his thoughts on where the technology and service is headed. Francouer summarized the key points of his talk in a post at his blog if you want to read what he had to say. There was no lack of excited conversation about the different appoaches our libraries were taking with chat and text reference. The discussion focused on using these technologies to connect with users and extend our traditional services in ways that better serve the user community.

What if the program theme had been tagging or podcasting or blogging or facebook profiles or any of the other 2.0 technologies academic libraries have adopted? I think the character of the conversations would have been far less dynamic with much less enthusiasm for where we are headed. It was as if we were talking about the next frontier – even though digital reference is hardly new. But digital reference is emerging as the library service – and technology – that best moves us into the next Web revolution.

According to BusinessWeek, that revolution is the “real-time web” which it describes as:

the exploding number of live social activities online, from tweets to status updates on Facebook to the sharing of news, Web links and videos on myriad other sites. It’s a whole new layer of innovation that’s opening up on the Web.

Academic libraries always had elements of Web 2.0 to them, but without the 2.0 technology. Much the same, the exchange of information in real-time (think phone and F2F reference) is not new to libraries, but now we have the convenience, immediacy and community presence of the real-time web world. We are poised to move there.

What are some characteristics of the real-time library?

* The real-time library is socially networked but it’s about more than just owning social network accounts; the real-time library has an active presence and shares information in real time.

* The real-time library updates its status regularly.

* The real-time library offers targeted services to the networked community.

* The real-time library is accessible on real-time communication devices.

* The real-time library is ready and waiting – all the time – to deliver information services.

* The real-time library monitors the multitude of emerging real-time web services and experiments to find those with the potential to enhance service in real-time mode.

* The real-time library designs information services specifically for delivery and use on the real-time web.

* Real-time librarians are adept at creating relationships with real-time library users.

At our program we explored the opportunities opening up to academic librarians connected to the real-time web – although “real-time web” was not a part of our terminology. But much of the conversation was about providing services in real time, and how to do that successfully. There was some talk of the Google’s Wave product. It will be a few months before we fully grasp the details, but the early announcements suggest it may offer a platform for real-time libraries that want to move even further into new communication and information exchange environments with their users. In real-time environments we may be able to work more collaboratively with each other and our users – even to the point of seeing the words of the other person’s messages as they are typed.

For now, don’t expect a set of principles for real-time librarians, the Real-Time Librarian blog or real-time library manifestos. This is all part of the user-generated/user-participation web evolution. As our users – our next generation of students – develop new behaviors and expectations for how they acquire and use information it is important that we pay attention to it, understand it and design it into the services we deliver.