Having for several years been a member of the Library & Information Technology Association section of the American Library Association and seeing that they were going to be having their National Forum not incredibly far away in St. Louis, I decided to investigate the possibility of attending, and now I'm here for three days of some discussion of technology in libraries.
Today's keynote was titled Gathering the Sparks – Rebuilding
With the Same Old Brand New Technology and was presented by John Blyberg from Darien Library.
His keynote was a broad overview of the change that has been occurring over the past few centuries, trying to play off of the National Forum theme of "Rivers of Data, Currents of Change."
He began with some observations on the change that has occurred just in the lifetimes of kids now entering college. Then he backed way up to look at some of the sources of that change and settled on the beginning of patent law with the
Statute of Monopolies in 1624 and how it changed the way people owned ideas and
provided a motivation to invent, as before that inventions were owned
by royalty who were benefactors of the inventors. Many of the
innovations that have since transpired have been disruptive.
Disruptive effects can be positive (life enhancement) or negative
(spreading of extremist ideas). We actually have less leisure time
due to the spread of technology than we did 50 years ago.
Using Google as an example he made a point of taking a long view of things.
If you look at where Google is looking you have a vision of the
future (investment in self-driving cars, wave & solar power).
To elaborate on the issue of change he then looked at a lot of technology prompted changes and events that have happened in the 94 years since his grandfather's birth putting them in the context of his own family. Technology keeps
changing and is involved in important moments that change the way we
look at the world.
His point was that this is a world for which we are in many ways
unprepared. What, he asked, is the role of the library in a world where print
publishing is marginalized into a niche by 2019? John is optimistic
about the future of libraries considering the brain power and the
problem solving capabilities of librarians that will be able to
reinvent the field.
Not much here that I hadn't heard before, but it got me thinking a bit and I guess that's the point of keynotes. I'm more interested in the main sessions where I'll get to see what people are actually doing.
