CIL Day Three
CIL2006 - The Journey Conludes - Almost
10:02 This morning's keynote was presented by by Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project, and former managing editor of US News and World Report. While he may look older than some expected, and appears to be just another Foundation suit, he's a very intelligent man, and worth paying attention to. His presentation was prompted in part by this week's Time cover story on the overconnected teen. So his focus was on the younger Internet users, the Millenials, those people born between 1982 and 2000. In other words, my kids. Uff da.
He presented Eight Realities of Millenials.
I think I'm just going to try and absorb all this, and not comment on it right away. There's just too many implications in what he's said to risk being hasty.
With all this, what can be done to get these over-connected individuals to be involved in family history research? How are we going to deliver content to them when they do get involved? The way this group will want to approach research may likely be completely different than the way we've been teaching people to do it.
11:20 Gary Price's Best of Resource Shelf demo'ed a whole bunch of amazing things that are available on the Internet. We didn't even come close to seeing all the things he listed, but of the ones he did, here's my faves:
12:20 Roy Tennant and Andrew Pace made a presentation of their new OPAC. It's a flat file created from ten fields downloaded from their catalog system. The search results are returned using the Endeca search engine. I've been doing some work with database downloads from our catalog, and think think this would be pretty easy to replicate. I'd like to give it a try.
14:35 I attended a presentation on Open Source Software for Libraries, This was pretty interesting, as I think (along with a lot of other librarians) that in a day of decreasing budgets, Open Source solutions make a lot of sense. Glen Horton made a short presentation on some selected applications, then showed how they were being implemented. I was really intrigued by the Greenstone application. It's being used by the Greater Cincinnati Memory Project to deliver digital collections.
OSS4lib has a list of Open Source applications targeted for library use. There's a pretty comprehensive list of applications there. If you're looking for an Open Source solution for some of your library's needs, you shouldn't miss this.
16:10 The Technology Project Management presentation was a case study in transferring from a legacy system to an application (Aleph 500) offered by a different vendor (Ex Libris). In an interesting twist, after describing the environment in which this transition took place, the presenter had the audience identify potential points of difficulty in the process. We did a pretty good job of ascertaining the areas where problems arose. I wonder why? Maybe because we've lived in that world.
17:05 "Is Google, or is Google not the Next Dialog?" Google is free, others are not. Google's strengths are in cost of technology and infrastructure (it's free); cost of use and access (it's free); and usability (we're all used to it). Classification and archivability are areas where Google doesn't do well. The commercial companies provide a structure that provides for these needs, and meets them very well. An article that was on the commercial database twelve months ago, very likely is still there in the database. On the Internet, the page may have been taken down a long time ago, or the archived page may not be the same page that you wanted. So, is Google the next Dialog? No, and I don't think that it ever will be. Will it compete with commercial databases? Certainly. But I don't think that's where they intend to take their business model.
In his Q&A, Mr. Dames stated that he felt content costs will decrease, and that content providers will shift to getting their revenue from the services they provide.
I'm going to make a possibly unwelcome observation at this point. It certainly seems that a lot of time has been spent in the this conference (and the two previous ones I've attended) worrying about Google and it's impact on libraries.
Get over it, already. I don't think Google wants to replace libraries. There's no money in that. Google wants to make money. If anyone needs to worry about Google, it's Microsoft.
Tomorrow - the Postconference!
10:02 This morning's keynote was presented by by Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project, and former managing editor of US News and World Report. While he may look older than some expected, and appears to be just another Foundation suit, he's a very intelligent man, and worth paying attention to. His presentation was prompted in part by this week's Time cover story on the overconnected teen. So his focus was on the younger Internet users, the Millenials, those people born between 1982 and 2000. In other words, my kids. Uff da.
He presented Eight Realities of Millenials.
- This group is formed by a distinct age cohort, 5-23 years old
- They are immersed in a world of media and gadgets
- Their technology is mobile
- The Internet plays a special part in their world
- They are multitaskers
- They are unaware of, or indifferent to, he consequences of technology
- The technology they use will change radically in the next decade
- They way they approach learning and research tasks will be shaped by their new techno-world
I think I'm just going to try and absorb all this, and not comment on it right away. There's just too many implications in what he's said to risk being hasty.
With all this, what can be done to get these over-connected individuals to be involved in family history research? How are we going to deliver content to them when they do get involved? The way this group will want to approach research may likely be completely different than the way we've been teaching people to do it.
11:20 Gary Price's Best of Resource Shelf demo'ed a whole bunch of amazing things that are available on the Internet. We didn't even come close to seeing all the things he listed, but of the ones he did, here's my faves:
- NewspaperArchive.com
- Rollyo
- Topix.net
- Two Firefox plugins
- Search Engine Ordering
- Customize Google
- Search Engine Ordering
12:20 Roy Tennant and Andrew Pace made a presentation of their new OPAC. It's a flat file created from ten fields downloaded from their catalog system. The search results are returned using the Endeca search engine. I've been doing some work with database downloads from our catalog, and think think this would be pretty easy to replicate. I'd like to give it a try.
14:35 I attended a presentation on Open Source Software for Libraries, This was pretty interesting, as I think (along with a lot of other librarians) that in a day of decreasing budgets, Open Source solutions make a lot of sense. Glen Horton made a short presentation on some selected applications, then showed how they were being implemented. I was really intrigued by the Greenstone application. It's being used by the Greater Cincinnati Memory Project to deliver digital collections.
OSS4lib has a list of Open Source applications targeted for library use. There's a pretty comprehensive list of applications there. If you're looking for an Open Source solution for some of your library's needs, you shouldn't miss this.
16:10 The Technology Project Management presentation was a case study in transferring from a legacy system to an application (Aleph 500) offered by a different vendor (Ex Libris). In an interesting twist, after describing the environment in which this transition took place, the presenter had the audience identify potential points of difficulty in the process. We did a pretty good job of ascertaining the areas where problems arose. I wonder why? Maybe because we've lived in that world.
17:05 "Is Google, or is Google not the Next Dialog?" Google is free, others are not. Google's strengths are in cost of technology and infrastructure (it's free); cost of use and access (it's free); and usability (we're all used to it). Classification and archivability are areas where Google doesn't do well. The commercial companies provide a structure that provides for these needs, and meets them very well. An article that was on the commercial database twelve months ago, very likely is still there in the database. On the Internet, the page may have been taken down a long time ago, or the archived page may not be the same page that you wanted. So, is Google the next Dialog? No, and I don't think that it ever will be. Will it compete with commercial databases? Certainly. But I don't think that's where they intend to take their business model.
In his Q&A, Mr. Dames stated that he felt content costs will decrease, and that content providers will shift to getting their revenue from the services they provide.
I'm going to make a possibly unwelcome observation at this point. It certainly seems that a lot of time has been spent in the this conference (and the two previous ones I've attended) worrying about Google and it's impact on libraries.
Get over it, already. I don't think Google wants to replace libraries. There's no money in that. Google wants to make money. If anyone needs to worry about Google, it's Microsoft.
Tomorrow - the Postconference!
Comments