Technology: Servant or master?
Last week I attended a fascinating event, Interlend 2006 hosted by FIL. There’s so much I want to talk about that I‘ve had to break it down into parts, I expect it will be like a particularly gripping thriller!?
Let’s start with the key note speaker David Ball, University Librarian at Bournemouth University. He presented a wonderful and thought provoking talk “Terminally ILL”. First, of all David described the history of ICT revolutions: writing, printing and the revolution that we are currently exploring, electronic. Although it sounds like I followed the wrong delegates into an IT history lecture, I didn’t - promise!
Then he told the story about Johann Faust, the chap who went to Paris in the 15th century to make his fortune by selling Bibles produced by the first printing machine. He sold a Bible to the Archbishop of Paris who was startled how cheap it was and the brilliant quality amazed him. Soon the King heard about Johann’s Bibles and decided to buy one himself. Now everyone was happy, the Archbishop and the King saved a few bob, Johann was amazed how easy it was to make a quick buck and all was well. That was true until the King and the Archbishop compared the Bibles where they noticed that they were exactly the same. Unfortunately for Johann they didn’t say “well done old chap that printer of yours is great we now have an easy method to make multiple copies of scientific results, dramatically increasing the rate of scientific development” instead they imprisoned him accusing him of witch craft.
Now it’s all well and good to criticise them for their lack of foresight. But aren’t we all a bit sceptical of change when it introduces an element of the unknown, no matter how much we are told that it is a good thing? Sound’s a bit like an Aesop’s Fable doesn’t it?
David then talked about the electronic revolution; although on his own admittance he can’t predict exactly how it will help us he does observe how it has helped us so far. Benefits like the option to listen to different commentary of the football on digital TV simply by selecting the red button or the creation of online bookshops like Amazon. If Amazon has added huge value to the consumer by dramatically lowering the price, does that make libraries redundant? David’s answer is no and so is mine. David suggested that libraries need to infiltrate the electronic environment, in other words libraries should make their resources visible to users at their point of need. David hypothesised that it would be great if a user was searching for a book on Amazon that they would also be given the option to view what libraries have that book. (Incidentally, David’s wish is answered by simply downloading the Amazon plug-in for Firefox plug-in from Talis Developer Network, why not try it for yourself?).
What’s my conclusion? I agree with David that libraries need to expose their resources to the general public at their point of need. I think a first step is for your library to contribute it’s holdings to as many union catalogues as possible, therefore increasing the number of users that can see your holdings.
One of the easiest ways to get to the largest audience of Public Libraries, College Libraries and University Libraries is to contribute to the Talis Platform for FREE. Your holdings then can be viewed in a variety of applications like Talis Whisper, Talis Source, Amazon and LibraryThing.com i.e. in front of users that are searching for books.
Perhaps the moral of this blog is get involved, after all what’s the worst that could happen?
I’ll say bye, but if you have any questions please let me know at source@talis.com .
Technorati Tags: Resource Discovery, Talis, Union catalogue, Forum of Interlending and Information delivery, FIL, Talis Source, Talis Platform, libraries,
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