Stephen Abrams is so funny!

Stephen Abrams is so funny. He has such a great sense of humor. It is nice to have someone doing a presentation on a serious topic like the impact of Gartner's prediction on libraries, have a sense of humor and make jokes. The session could have been an instance sleeping pill, but Abrams kept it light, fun and imformative all at the same time. He covered a ton of technology trends that are effecting libraries currently.

Gartner predicts that by 2006/2007 the following will be true:

• Secure Broadband Wireless


• Low Power Consumption Mobile Display Devices


• Real-Time Infrastructure


• Transition to Service-oriented Architecture

In terms of human computer interaction the following technologies will be important: biometrics, speech recognition, handwriting recognition, Natural Language Search, Taxonomies/Browsing, Personalization, and Machine Translation. Many of these technologies are already in place. For example, several colleagues of mine have tablets which allow them to write notes by hand and have those notes translated into typed text. I find this fascinating. One librarian I know has a tablet which includes a biometric fingerprint reader for authentication and during his talk Abrams mentioned a library using people's fingerprints as their library card. This idea is intensely interesting to me, particularly since I am always losing things.

Abrams also emphasized the growth in e-learning and the library's place in the e-learning environment. This is of particular interest to me because my institution has decided to finally make a push in the area of distance education. Within the next two years several programs on campus will be moving online. This will have a serious impact on the library. Particularly since we still haven't managed to get chat reference off the ground. Many other e-services, such as e-reserves and document delivery for distance learning students, have been implemented rather recently. In order to support these e-learner the library will need to change the nature of its collections, and services including instruction. This will be a major challenge for us in the next year and a half.

Abrams' Gartner session had so much information packed into it that I am sure my summary here doesn't truly do it justice. If you ever get a chance to hear Stephen Abrams speak do so. He is engaging, thoughtful, and lively. I can't wait until the slides from his presentation are posted on the conference website so that I can revisit the plethora of material I'm sure I missed during the session.

Web Services Presentation

I attended a really good session on Web Services today in the Web Design and Development Track. The only problem with the session was that it was two presenters (Frank Cervone and Larry Mzarek) and not enough time. Frank provided an overview of Web Services while Larry talked more about the possible practical applications including how library's could use Amazon's Web Services. Both presenters did a good job. However, the session really should have been split into two sessions. Probably with the "here's the cools stuff you can do" session first and the more technical and acronym heavy session second. I really wanted to hear Frank talk more during his tehnical overview of web services. His slides were fantastic and I just couldn't type fast enough to keep up with the pace and level of detail. I hope he puts his slides up on the web, soon please, because his overview was excellent.

The second presenter Larry Mzarek did a good job of demonstrating the possibilities for web services in libraries using the Amazon web sevices API. Ironically, Aamzon exposes more of their search indexes via the web services API than they do on their site. So libraries have lots of options for finding Amazon information. Some information that is available via Amazon web services includes: book covers, reviews from the publisher, customer reviews, and "customers who bought this also bought". Mzarek has a good page on his website that provides resources about Amazon web services. Also if you want to know more about this check out the book Amazon Hacks". Incidentally, web services is also applicable to many things with Google. Check out the "Google Hacks" book if you want information on this.

This afternoon I'm going to Stephens Abrams session "What Do Gartner Preditions Really Mean to Libraries" which should be extremely interesting. If only I could make some of the people I work with come hear such a talk. I think that it might be just the wake up call they need to hear.

CIL Opening Keynote

The opening keynote for CIL was Clifford Lynch who provided an interesting retrospective of computer in libraries and a brief look at trends for the future. Some trends in discussed included:

• Move from Scarcity to Abundance


• Moving from a world of surrogates for physical things to digital representations that stand on by themselves


• Move from capabilities in the hands of large institutions to capabilities in the hands of individuals


• Moving at last into an age of broader authorship?


• Move Towards more structured data


• Much great interest in questions about preservation and digital obsolence


• Issues of personal history and personal trails and their persistence

Of all of these the last interests me the most. I find it fascinating what some of the students who work for us are willing to put on the web about themselves and others. I ask them if they realize that they are creating a digital history of themselves that may not be eraseable. They don't seem to be too concerned with this now. However, I often wonder how they will feel when they go looking for a job. Certainly, having a blog this issue is one of concern for me. I'm pretty careful about what I post to my blog. I also know that when I go job hunting I should Google my name and see what comes up. If I can find it so can my prospective employers. Telling the students that work for us to "Google" themselves and see what comes up has made an impression on a couple. At least one discovered something that made her confortable that it was out there for all to see. The bottom line is this is an issue that society has not truly considered all the ramification of and we will be seeing the backlash sometime down the road sooner rather than later.

End of day one

Just a short post to catch up on some things from this afternoon.

• My Data Visualization cybertour went well. Fifteen minutes is not long enough for any topic. Period. The slides will be posted on my presentations page as soon as I have connectivity again. (see below)


• The "Keeping Current" presentation was wonderful. Thanks to Gary Price I now need to check out FeedBeep which allows you to receive your RSS via SMS.


• The WiFi is currently out in the Hilton bar. (I've posted this at the next available opportunity but set the date/time accordingly.) Since I've got the speaker's receiption and the dead technologies session this evening, I'm leaving my laptop in my room. So, no more posts 'till tomorrow morning.


• For those of you wondering about why I suddenly rushed out of Stephen Abram's presentation earlier this afternoon well, I suddenly found myself with an unexplained nosebleed and felt that the men's room was the best place to retreat to. My haste was an attempt not to bleen upon anyone, or the carpet. (My shirt wasn't so lucky however.)

(Pre)Cybertour

I'm standing here before more than a dozen people who are all waiting for me to talk in 15 minutes. I wonder if they're reading what I'm typing as it's being projected in front of them...

Guess how many blogs are created every day.

Of interest to CIL attendees: According to this episode of Future Tense, Technorati is reporting that 40,000 new blogs are created every day.

Lunch

For those looking for recommendations, The Indian Polo club, two blocks down the hill from the Hilton has a great lunch buffet for $6.95. It's popular though so try to get there as quickly as you can before the noon rush.

Web Services: Enabling a New Generation of Library Technology

The joint presentation by Frank Cervone and Larry Marazek was very informative. Frank covered the basics (XML geek stuff) of Web services, then Larry covered practical examples using Amazon.com's Web services. Note to the organizers: Though both were interesting and informative, each deserved a full 45 minutes. There was just too much information to covered in the 1/2-sessions allowed. (Photos of this session have been posted.)

Other CIL blogs

• The Official CIL blog


• Aaron Schmidt


• Michael Stephens


• Steven M. Cohen


• Andrea Mercado

Photos

I've started posting my photos in an ofoto album. I'll continue to add to the throughout the conference.

Clifford Lynch keynote

Clifford's review of the changes of the past 20 years (this is CIL's 20th anniversary) was very interesting although I must admit I was too tired to bother to take notes. Watch many of the other blogs for more specific comments.

Day one: Morning has broken

I'm sitting in the back row of the center ballroom waiting for this morning's keynote by Clifford Lynch. I'm in the back row to avail myself of one of the only two power outlets in this immense room. (I've already had one person disconnect me from the wall by not watching where they're walking.) Of, course, there's no WiFi in the room but there is in the hotel bar upstairs and in the lobby area of the conference floor (out at the tables by registration.) It's a clear, crisp morning in Washington as I discovered walking down Conn. Avenue to find some batteries for my camera (which it turns out I didn't need since I had spares in the camera's case that I'd forgotten about) and a DC postcard.

My first Cybertour, Data Visualization, is at 3pm and I just realized that I've not bookmarked any of the sites that I'm planning on showing. (At least this time I have my handouts with me and don't need to make a Kinko's run.) I guess I'll be heading out to the WiFi area to set those up after the keynote.

A reminder for conference first-timers: Do not miss the evening session "Looking at Dead and Emerging Technologies". Not only is this the most fun and most popular session at the conference every year, there's also rumor's of a "Dead Technologies drinking game" this year. (Actually, I've seen the game and may have actually contributed a rule or two. As to whether or not the rules will be distributed at the door.)