{"id":3372,"date":"2015-03-06T22:22:13","date_gmt":"2015-03-07T06:22:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ischoolgroups.sjsu.edu\/asistsc\/?p=3372"},"modified":"2018-03-21T18:51:25","modified_gmt":"2018-03-22T01:51:25","slug":"recap-techtrends-alamidwin15","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ischoolgroups.sjsu.edu\/asistsc\/recap-techtrends-alamidwin15\/","title":{"rendered":"Recap of Top Library Technology Trends from 2015 ALA Midwinter Conference"},"content":{"rendered":"

Written by: Monica St. Dennis, Vice Chair<\/em><\/p>\n

Every winter, the American Library Association (ALA) summons information professionals (and aspiring information professionals) from all over the country to discuss current issues facing the profession. \u00a0This year, I decided to go, so I trekked to Chicago \u2013 they always schedule the conferences for somewhere really<\/i> cold \u2013 and spent a week learning and networking and, hopefully, better preparing myself to become a librarian.<\/p>\n

One of the subgroups of the ALA is called LITA, or the Library Information Technology Association, and is concerned with \u201c\u2026technologies within the library and information environment, with the impact of emerging technologies on library service, and with the effect of automated technologies on people,\u201d according to their website<\/a>. I\u2019m really interested in the way libraries are adapting to serve people who accept technology as a ubiquitous part of everyday life (that\u2019s why I joined ASIS&T) and so I made a point of going to some LITA events. One in particular \u2013 a panel session called \u201cLITA: Top Technology Trends\u201d \u2013 covered several topics that I thought would be of interest to our ASIS&T members.<\/p>\n

The first and most pervasive issue was the simple fact that technology is very<\/i> unevenly distributed, and the libraries with all the money tend to be the ones who are discussed in the literature: after all, they are the ones doing new and innovative things. If the library industry is going to continue to set the standard for technological literacy, we need to find some way to distribute our resources more evenly. The threshold for technological competence is lower than it has ever been before, and there should be some way to allow emerging technologies to be used by as many people as possible, even in less affluent areas. I don\u2019t know how to solve this problem, and as far as I know neither does anyone else, but it is imperative that we bear it in mind when considering large-scale tech concerns.<\/p>\n

The second trend I wanted to mention is gamification<\/i> \u2013 that is, the use of game design thinking in non-game contexts. \u00a0There are many, many libraries now using gaming elements for, say, summer reading programs, and some are expanding even more through programs like Librarygame<\/a>. As a gamer myself, I am so excited to see this catching on \u2013 it seems to me that it will help bring more diversity into the gaming community, which is always a good thing, and to motivate people to use their libraries more. I\u2019m also really interested to see how the gamification trend develops in academic and special libraries, since it mostly seems like public libraries are adopting it now.<\/p>\n

Finally, the panelists spent some time talking about beacons.<\/p>\n

According to Business Insider<\/a>, \u201cBeacons are a low-cost piece of hardware \u2014 small enough to attach to a wall or countertop \u2014 that use battery-friendly, low-energy Bluetooth connections to transmit messages or prompts directly to a smartphone or tablet.\u201d Assuming that library customers opt-in, these could be used for all sorts of things: they could be linked to your library account to remind you when your books are due, they could be placed outside the library to notify users of upcoming events when they pass by, and, through partnerships with other community organizations, they could be used to notify library non-users about opportunities the library provides. Probably the most interesting part of this particular discussion was the audience participation through twitter: while the panel was going on, there was a raging discussion about the responsible use of beacons while still protecting patron privacy. There\u2019s a lot of potential here for libraries, but it is imperative that users fully understand exactly what they\u2019re getting themselves into, and that they have the option to abstain if they wish.<\/p>\n

The panel discussed several more topics, and there are excellent summaries of the discussion as a whole elsewhere on the internet \u2013 LibraryJournal, for example, provided a wonderfully succinct summary \u2013 and in the near future the recording of the entire discussion should be available directly from LITA. We\u2019d love to hear what you think about these or any of the other issues discussed in the panel; feel free to reach out to us on twitter or by email if you have comments you want to share!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by: Monica St. Dennis, Vice Chair Every winter, the American Library Association (ALA) summons information professionals (and aspiring information professionals) from all over the country to discuss current issues facing the profession. \u00a0This year, I decided to go, so I trekked to Chicago \u2013 they always schedule the conferences […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,164],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-blog-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ischoolgroups.sjsu.edu\/asistsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ischoolgroups.sjsu.edu\/asistsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ischoolgroups.sjsu.edu\/asistsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ischoolgroups.sjsu.edu\/asistsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ischoolgroups.sjsu.edu\/asistsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3372"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/ischoolgroups.sjsu.edu\/asistsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3373,"href":"http:\/\/ischoolgroups.sjsu.edu\/asistsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3372\/revisions\/3373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ischoolgroups.sjsu.edu\/asistsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ischoolgroups.sjsu.edu\/asistsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ischoolgroups.sjsu.edu\/asistsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}