Info Today’s Paula Hane’s Year in Review Article: Wrapping Up 2006; Looking Ahead
Info Today News Editor and ResourceShelf pal Paula Hane has published her year-in-review article: Wrapping Up 2006; Looking Ahead.
It’s more than worthy of your attention.
Paula’s article focuses on the following topics.
+ The Year of 2.0
+ Trends of 2006
+ Trends to Watch in 2007
+ Through Other Lenses
+ Hoping for Protective Legislation
A few thoughts.
While Web 2.0 is often difficult to describe and in some cases more hype than substance, it still has tossed out several interesting tools for search geeks and info pros.
Nevertheless, I wonder how many Web 2.0 companies will be around at the end of 2007? Can many/all Web 2.0 players make it on their own without being bought out by a major web player? How many of these start-up players would be of interest to the big guys? Is it cheaper to develop their own technology or buy it (and the eyeballs that use it)?
One Web 2.0 player that we love and is never slowing down with the release of both cool (one thing) and useful (even more important) tools is Zoho. Most assuredly worth a look. From web-based spreadsheets to new web-based and free wiki software, Zoho is a wonder.
BTW, I mention cool vs. useful since those of us who live with this stuff and often find this stuff to be cool often forget that most people don’t either know about these tools or are just not interested or don’t have the time. In other words, we think it’s cool but do the masses?
In fact, I regularly hear (as recently as yesterday) that although ResourceShelf and DocuTicker both have RSS feeds updated as we post items, many people rely on our weekly newsletter to REMIND them to read the feeds. It’s still not time to put e-mail to bed. In fact, subscriptions to the newsletter have not slowed down over the past few years despite the rise of RSS. We also hear that some RSS users (again, maybe not those of you who are reading this) are beginning to become overwhelmed with feeds. So many feeds, so little time. Of course, personalization from a service like Findory might help.
When it comes to Library 2.0, there is some very interesting stuff indeed. We think it’s important for librarians to be up-to-date on the latest tech and trends. However, we hope that marketing and promoting what libraries and librarians already offer would also get just a bit more emphasis. Buying, developing, offering web tools — this is NOT the proverbial field of dreams. In other words, just because it’s available (and even “cool”) does not guarantee that people will use it.
In all of the articles I read last year about Yahoo Answers, the end of Google Answers, Live QnA, Cha Cha, and other commercial services, we saw and read very little about the virtual reference services and the expert powered Q&A databases that many libraries (globally) provide or are involved with. Why not? How can people even attempt to use what they don’t know about?
The same is true — and if you’re a ResourceShelf regular, this is not a revelation to you — of the remotely accessible databases most libraries offer. In this day and age, with so many competing sources of information, it’s not enough to say a library offers these resources. It is incumbent upon us to explain why they are useful and what they can do for the end user — save time, effort, aggravation…offer authoritative content…and, quite possibly, save someone some money. Although this post about a recently released survey from Accenture is primarily aimed at enterprise search, we think it says a lot about all types of search/access to all types of info. If the information is useless, then it is just noise.
Paula’s article also contains some trends to watch in 2007.
One that we believe will continue to grow — likely obvious to those of you who read our site regularly — is mobile access to information. Mobile is becoming more than text and, as we pointed out a few weeks ago, the age of the cellcast or mobilcast will soon replace the podcast. Of course, one thing to ponder is whether personal podcasting will continue at its current frenzy into the foreseeable future. Something to consider: A recent Pew Internet study said only 1% of the U.S. population downloads a podcast on a daily basis. Regardless, we think that this type of service will continue to become an alternative delivery vehicle for traditional broadcasters.
Oh, want a cool mobile tool? Take a look at Soonr. This service (works with most phones) allows you to select certain folders from your desktop or laptop computer and be able to access and use them on your mobile phone or smartphone. With some phones, you can also use it to access and make calls with Skype.
We also agree 100% with Paula that video (and audio) will continue to be a Big Deal. The question is, will user-contributed video (the jump-off the roof type of stuff) continue the run it’s currently on or — if it’s just a fad — when will the fad begin to slow down?
Regardless, searchable video and audio from major networks, local stations, universities, think tanks, etc., will continue to grow. As some of you have noticed, we are regularly linking to interesting webcasts on ResourceShelf.
Actually, you probably know that multimedia search has been part of the information professionals’ toolbelt for years. Fee-based services like TVEyes.com, Critical Mention, ShadowTV and FedNet.net are four examples. Recent years have given us Podscope and Podzinger. And, BTW, in 2006 TVEyes.com launched a limited version of their service for free.
We’ve also written about another company, Nexidia, that is doing some very interesting work in this area. We wrote about them here with a link to a demo from a TV station in Atlanta.
Finally, we think federated search (from one of many providers) will continue to grow in usage (if done correctly). It has the potential to get quality resources from a variety of sources to end users quickly and efficiently. Info pro skills are needed to select sources, sort them into identifiable categories, and then alert users to the technology. BTW, if federated search is not done correctly, watch out for problems galore.
UPDATE: ResourceShelf Contributing Editor, Law Librarian, and Web Research Teacher, Dan Giancaterino, has shared a few thoughts about some of these year-end topics from the perspective of a law librarian and a father. 
Dan writes:
I’m not optimistic about [a Web 2.0 class I'm giving this spring] based on previous attempts to talk to lawyers about sites such as the Wikipedia or YouTube. Believe it or not, most attorneys I speak to have never visited those sites. They may have heard of them, but they haven’t actually seen them. It’s not worth their time.
Using Web-based tools to create documents opens a whole can of privacy/security worms for attorneys. The Rules of Professional
Conduct state that they have a duty to act competently to safeguard their clients’ information. Can that be assured when that information
is stored in, say, Google Docs & Spreadsheets? Nope. No need for a search warrant — a simple subpoena will do if the info is on Google’s
servers.
My favorite library database story: one night, my daughter’s boyfriend spent two hours on my PC, Googling away. Finally I asked him
what was up. He said he needed to find a schematic of his car’s electrical system so he could find out where his heater blower resister
was located. He had to replace it. I told him to take a break; I sat down and accessed the Free Library of Philadelphia’s Web site. (I could have
connected to the Delaware County Library System, but I left my card at work. All PA public libraries provide access to EBSCO’s Auto Repair
Reference Center.) In five minutes I printed out the schematic he needed. I’m a god. He wanted to know how I got it so fast. I didn’t tell him.
–
And now some comments from Shirl, military librarian, mother, and frequent skeptic:
OK, so I’m one of those folks who is sometimes late to the party when it comes to cutting-edge technology. But when I decide to latch onto something, I milk it for all it’s worth and quickly become an evangelist. Often, however, my attempts to enlighten people are met with resistance.
Sometimes, it’s not their fault. Try to access things like YouTube from the .mil network — or from many corporate networks, for that matter. Even weblogs are blocked, more often than not. One military librarian told me that DocuTicker is blocked where he works because it has been (mis)indentified as a “chat room.”
If you can’t even get to it, you can’t use it. And that is just one of the things we are up against.
Another…well… as Dan mentioned above, I also work with people who would never, ever consider using Web 2.0 tools like Zoho and storing their information online.
But the big elephant in the technology living room is human nature. People are resistant to change. People do not want to learn new ways of working. This creates stress. I have customers who would greatly benefit from RSS, but do not want to learn to use it because it is “new” and they don’t have the time to deal with any sort of a learning curve.
My older son — he’s 24 — introduced me to the joys of podcasts late last year, when I was laid up after knee surgery…after I’d been ignoring them ever since they bubbled up from the tech fountain. Now I’m hooked — and I’ve been force-feeding them to a few friends. For example, we all like American Public Media’s Marketplace, but we never get to listen when it’s on the radio. Now we download the podcasts and catch up while we do mindless chores around the house, etc. And I’m preparing for the upcoming baseball season by listening to the team preview podcasts offered by Big League Baseball Report. For those of you who missed it, I waxed enthusiatic about podcasts in last week’s Resource of the Week feature.
So it goes. One day, someone you know and trust will introduce you to something new, and you will make it your own. And maybe one of the guys I keep hounding to death will finally decide he wants to learn to use RSS.
“When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”
Mobile data — we tout it here on RS all the time — has issues of its own. There is usually a co$t involved that may or may not be worth the value derived from it for most people. Also — and OK, I am showing my age here — reading the screens on mobile devices is an ordeal. My 15-year-old son has one of those Sprint “Power Vision” Fusion phones that incorporates an MP3 player, an FM transmitter, a camera…and he was comfortable with it from Day One. My low-end Sony Ericsson is much more primitive, and I am still baffled by probably 80% of its features. I’m not embarassed to tell you this because I think I am definitely part of “the masses” — e.g., your customers — when it comes to things of this nature.
As I wrote to Gary, earlier this evening, “‘Library’ is a word that still has value to a lot of people. They know what it is and what it can offer. I hate this pervasive ‘fear of the L word’…and fretting about whether or not we are ‘relevant.’ If your customers are happy, then you are relevant. If your customers are avoiding you, a MySpace page or Flickr account is not going to bring them around.”
Like Dan, I had a magic moment when I showed a customer how he could access Chilton’s Online via InfoTrac — and made his day when I told him how he could use it from home, too. Remote access to databases isn’t high-tech glitzy, but it is something that…well, you show it to people and they readily understand the value. Let’s face it; InfoTrac is really no more difficult to use than Google — but you need to let people know it’s available and why it can be a better alternative. This ain’t Web 2.0, folks, but I think we need to cover the basics first.
See Also: Webcast: Oxford Media Convention 2006: Consumer behaviour and media platforms. The technology is there, but will they use it?
Recorded on January 19, 2006 at Oxford University.
Video Network Prophets of convergence have traditionally looked at technological trends, and less at the habits of the user. We know a great deal about what the technology can now do, but less about whether consumers want to exploit it. The future of public service broadcasting depends partly on whether the public remain interested in watching it. The panel will attempt to identify what types of interactive media may actually become a significant force in broadcasting, and which ones won’t, and whether consumer behaviour is changing as a result of convergence in media platforms.