Change and Technology: Morphing the Information Professions

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Change and TechnologyMorphing the Information
Professions

• Hope N. Tillman, Babson College
• NELINET Great Expectations for IT
• College of the Holy Cross
• Worcester MA
• September 12, 2003

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Technology is a tool

• Technology has shaped our field throughout its
  history

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Full text on cartridge
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Paul Saffo

• Every 30 years a new scientific or technological
  development emerges to transform the economy and
  society.
  
• The twentieth century moved from
• chemistry (medicines, plastics)
• physics (atom bomb and integrated circuit)
• information technology
• In the twenty-first century the next revolution
  will be in
  
• biology.

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Technology is a tool

• Technology has shaped our field throughout its
  history
  
• Shift from local to global influences

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from the Long Now web site

• Computer scientist Danny Hillis
• We have good raw data from previous ages written
  on clay, on stone, on parchment and paper, but
  from the 1950s to the present, recorded
  information increasingly disappears into a
  digital gap. Historians will consider this a dark
  age. http//www.longnow.org/10klibrary/librar
  y.htm

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Long Now Projects

• Long Server Project
• All Species Project
• Long Bets Foundation
• Digital Dark Age Project
• Rosetta Disk Project

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Long Now Guidelines

• Serve the long view (and the long viewer)
• Foster responsibility
• Reward patience
• Mind mythic depth
• Ally with competition
• Take no sides
• Leverage longevity

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Technology is a tool

• Technology has shaped our field throughout its
  history
  
• Shift from local to global influences
• Focus technology on your customer
• What will make their life better, easier?

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Peter Druckers questions for us as librarians

• What information do I owe to the people with whom
  I work and on whom I depend?
  
• In what form?
• And In what time frame?
• Peter Drucker. Management Challenges for the 21st
  Century. 1999.

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Technology is our friend
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Beloit Mindset Class of 2007

• Stores have always had scanners at the checkout.
• They have always had a pin number.
• Computers have always fit in their backpacks.
• Ctrl Alt Del is as basic as ABC.

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Where Were We 18 years ago?

• Libraries had been using AACR2 for cataloging
  since 1981.
  
• OCLC online shared catalog goes back to 1971
  and OCLC ILL since 1979
  
• Nelinet was 10 years old in 1985
• The Five Colleges began using LS/2000 online
  catalog and circulation system in 1985.

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Early Email/Internet

• BITNET was being used for email (since 1981) in a
  few places.
  
• CompuServe and the Source for early adopters
  (since the late 1970s)
  
• In 1986, the National Science Foundation funded
  NSFNet as a cross country 56 Kbps backbone for
  the Internet

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Today
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Looking at the Future

• Todays barriers will go away or change, replaced
  by new barriers
  
• Look at trends in electronic gaming and global
  cultures for clues
  
• Expect not to be asking the right questions

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Expect technology to morph

• For a good picture of the morphing of technology
  see Avatars of the Word, by James ODonnell.

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Expect Convergence

• Bandwidth
• Wireless
• Appliances/devices
• Telephony
• Entertainment
• Things we dont expect

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Expect automatic features

• Automatic software updates (without asking)
• Automatic maintenance
• Cleaning out temporary Internet files
• Defragging
• Spelling
• Voice recognition
• Automatic maintenance of authority control, of
  meta information

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Expect expansion of connectivity, collaboration,
integration

• How do you make library services add value in
  such a setting.
  
• Todays example of incorporating electronic
  reserves into Blackboard course sites
  
• Office 2003

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Broader Definition of Content

• Everything is becoming electronically connected
  to everything else products, people, companies,
  countries, everything. (Davis and Meyer, p. 5)
  
• Dont limit yourselves to providing content
  through books, multimedia, or electronic
  resources. Think in terms of people as content

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Connecting People

• Coordinators or connectors
• Boundary-spanners
• Mavens
• Evangelists
• Gatekeepers
• Cohen and Prusak, In Good Company (2001)

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Look at Content as a continuum

• Books, articles, or CDs inside books are static
  artifacts.
  
• When the product comes with a dedicated web site
  or even email for feedback, then you are moving
  toward content that keeps changing.
  

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Tension between standards and progress

• Continuing battle between proprietary and
  standardsdriven solutions.
  

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Tension between standards and progress

• Continuing battle between proprietary and
  standardsdriven solutions.
  
• Pros and cons of being standards-driven

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Change is the norm

• Information professionals need to "become the
  change they wish to see in the world."
  
• (with apologies to Mahatma Gandhi)

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How are our competencies changing?

• Broaden our world view

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How are our competencies changing?

• Broaden our world view
• Expand our knowledge base
• Content
• Multicultural

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How are our competencies changing?

• Broaden our world view
• Expand our knowledge base
• Interpret, analyze, evaluate retrieved
  information no matter what the source
  

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How are our competencies changing?

• Broaden our world view
• Expand our knowledge base
• Interpret, analyze, evaluate retrieved
  information no matter what the source
  
• Provide answers that are appropriate for the
  setting, where the setting may a changing one
  

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How are our competencies changing?

• Customer focus

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How are our competencies changing?

• Customer focus
• Less tied to location

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How are our competencies changing?

• Customer focus
• Less tied to location
• Keep a positive attitude

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How are our competencies changing?

• Customer focus
• Less tied to location
• Keep a positive attitude
• Embrace change with resiliency

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How are our competencies changing?

• Customer focus
• Less tied to location
• Keep a positive attitude
• Embrace change with resiliency
• Comfort with technology

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Technology Drivers

• 1. applied nature of our field
• 2. convergence
• 3. collaboration
• 4. connectivity
• 5. content as continuum
• 6. natural tension between progress/standards
• 7. change as norm

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Reading List

• Brand, Stewart. (1999). Clock of the Long Now
  Time and Responsibility. Basic Books.
  
• Buchen, Irving H. (2003). Education in America
  The Next 25 Years. Futurist 37(Issue 1) 44.
  
• Cohen, Don and Laurence Prusak. (2001). In Good
  Company How Social Capital Makes Organizations
  Work. Harvard University Press.
  
• Davis, Stan and Christopher Meyer. (1998). Blur
  The Speed of Change in the Connected Economy.
  Addison-Wesley.
  
• Drucker, Peter. (1999). Management Challenges for
  the 21st Century. HarperBusiness.

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Reading List (2)

• Hage, C. and L. Neal. (Summer 2003) Customer
  Service, One Technology at a Time. Library
  Journal p. 18-19
  
• Howe, Walt. Internet Glossary. (2 April 2003).
  http//www.walthowe.com/glossary/
  
• Kartoo Technologies. http//www.kartoo.com
• Kenney, A. R., et al. (2003). Google Meets eBay
  What Academic Librarians Can Learn from
  Alternative Information Providers. D-Lib Magazine
  9(6) 1-15. http//www.dlib.org/dlib/june03/kenney
  /06kenney.html
• Lancaster, F. Wilfrid, A. J. Warner, et al.
  (2001). Intelligent technologies in library and
  information service applications. Medford, N.J.,
  Published for the American Society for
  Information Science and Technology by Information
  Today.

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Reading List (3)

• Library of Congress. Preserving Our Digital
  Heritage. http//www.digitalpreservation.gov
  
• Long Now Foundation. http//www.longnow.org
• Meyer, Christopher and Stanley M. Davis (2003).
  It's alive the coming convergence of
  information, biology, and business. New York,
  Crown Business.
• ODonnell, James. (1998). Avatars of the Word
  From Papyrus to Cyberspace. Harvard University
  Press. http//ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/avatars/

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Reading List (4)

• Saffo, Paul. (1997). InfoWorld Futures Project
  Interview. InfoWorld.
  
• http//www.saffo.com/infoworld_interview.html
• Saffo, Paul. (April 15, 2002). Smart Sensors
  Focus on the Future. CIO Insight.
  
• http//www.saffo.org/smartsensors.html
• Semantic Web Community Portal. http//www.semantic
  web.org
  
• Staley, David J. (2003). The Future of the Book
  in a Digital Age. Futurist 37(5) 18.
  
• Stephenson, Neal. (2000) The Diamond Age. Bantam
  Spectra Books.
  

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Contact Info

• Hope Tillman
• Babson College
• Horn Library
• Babson Park MA 02457
• tillman_at_babson.edu
• 781-239-4259
• http//www.hopetillman.com

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You will find this presentation at

• http//www.hopetillman.com/nelinet03/index.html
• Reading List
• http//www.hopetillman.com/nelinet03/readinglist.
  html