Transcript Connection, concentration and diffusion: mobilizing library services 2nd M-Libraries Conference, Opening Keynote, UBC, Vancouver, 23 June 2009 Lorcan Dempsey, VP OCLC.

Connection, concentration and diffusion:
mobilizing library services
2nd M-Libraries Conference, Opening Keynote, UBC, Vancouver, 23 June 2009
Lorcan Dempsey, VP OCLC
Dave225 4:00am thought about
conference keynotes - if you
get more than a few nuggets
of wisdom from a keynote,
you need to read more.7:13
AM May 27th from web
Dave225 @lorcanD … My 4am
point was that a keynote can
only speak broadly & can
rarely connect to your
needs11:38 AM May
27th from TwitterFox
Prelude:
normal
if unevenly
distributed
Presidential election
08/09
Brownpau. http://www.flickr.com/photos/brownpau/2788253333/
American Idol
Voting participation
Acquired by Amazon
“We are an image recognition based
mobile marketing company. Our
Snap.Send.Get™ solution converts any
image into a 100% opt-in interactive
mobile ad”
http://www.freshlymobile.com/uw-mobile-usage-statistics/UW%20Mobile%20Stats-Details/
David Morton, U Washington
Three related thoughts
1. Expectations
2. Consumer switch
Greater investment and innovation in
consumer/retail space than in
education/work space.
Gmail?
PLE?
3. Workflow switch
You need to fit into my workflow. I won’t fit
into yours.
Mobile communications is more
about communications than
about mobility
Diffusion of communications and
computational capacity into a
growing part of our research, learning
and social lives.
Mobile communications more widely
adopted more quickly than any other
technology.
Manuel Castells
Generations …
Youth culture that finds in mobile
communications an adequate form of
expression and reinforcement …
There is a clear correspondence between
the emergence of a global youth culture,
the networking of social relationships, and
the connectivity potential provided by
wireless communications …
Manuel Castells et al
Safe autonomy:
management of autonomy and
security
Changed pattern of sociability:
selective construction of peer groups
supported by accessibility and microcoordination
Collective and individual identity
High value associated with
consumption, fashion, …
Based on Castells et al
Games and entertainment
Networks 1
Clouds and crowds
Concentration and diffusion
Mesh
Multiple connection points
Offer different grades of experience (the
desktop, cell phone, xBox or Wii, GPS system,
smartphone, netbook, …).
Optimized for different purposes.
Cloud
Move to the cloud a natural accompaniment
of a mesh of connection points.
Available on the network across multiple
devices and environments.
Concentration – network level
Diffusion - workflow
This means that an exclusive focus on
the institutional Web site as the
primary delivery mechanism and the
browser as the primary consumption
environment is increasingly partial.
BBC
From a conceptual point of view, the widgetization
adopted by Facebook, iGoogle and netvibes
weighed strongly on our initial thinking. We wanted
to build the foundation and DNA of the new site in
line with the ongoing trend and evolution of the
Internet towards dynamically generated and
syndicable content through technologies like RSS,
atom and xml. This trend essentially abstracts the
content from its presentation and distribution,
atomizing content into a feed-based universe.
Browsers, devices, etc therefore become lenses
through which this content can be collected,
tailored and consumed by the audience. [BBC
Internet Blog]
Community
American Idol
Voting participation
‘Consumable’ site
Downloads
Games
Videos
Links to youtube, iTunes etc
Features
Atomization
• Snippets, ringtones, tags,
ratings, feeds, abstracts, …
Attention
• Rank, relate, recommend
• Specialized (course)
• Get to relevance quickly
• At point of need
• Location aware
Action-oriented
• Find out
• Get - Pay
• Vote – rank, relate,
recommend
• Share - with selective social
network
Aggregate
• Use other platforms as
appropriate
Networks 2
Change how we coordinate our
resources to achieve goals.
Incremental social
synchronization:
micro-coordination
But they’re really nice!
On demand space: the example of Starbucks
OK .. See you there at 3 …
Ad hoc rendezvous
Timeshifting
Bristol University survey:
More video on network
http://ancientgeeks.wordpress.com/2007/03/30/
what-do-students-use-the-internet-for/#more-8
Space
In the 20th Century architecture was about specialized
structures – offices for working, cafeterias for eating,
and so forth.
The fact that people are no longer tied to specific
places for functions such as studying or learning, says
Mr. Mitchell, means there is a ‘huge drop in demand
for traditional, private, enclosed spaces’ such as offices
or classrooms, and simultaneously ‘a huge rise in
demand for semi-public spaces that can be informally
appropriated to ad hoc workspaces’.
William Mitchell, Economist, Apr 10th 2008
http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10950463 (pay wall)
zipcar
Zipcar’s available vehicles report
their positions to a control centre so
that members of the scheme can
find nearby vehicles through a web
or phone interface. Cars are
unlocked by holding a card,
containing a wireless chip, up
against the windscreen. Integrating
cars and back-office systems via
wireless links allows Zipcar to
repackage cars as a flexible
transport service. Each vehicle
operated by Zipcar is equivalent to
taking 20 cars off the road, says Mr
Griffith, and an average Zipcar
member saves more than $5,000
dollars a year compared with
owning a car.
Economist June 6-12 2009
Connected cars
“Connected cars”, which sport links to navigation
satellites and communications networks—and, before
long, directly to other vehicles—could transform
driving, preventing motorists from getting lost, stuck
in traffic or involved in accidents. And connectivity can
improve entertainment and productivity for both
driver and passengers… There is also scope for new
business models built around connected cars, from
dynamic insurance and road pricing to car pooling
and location-based advertising. “We can stop looking at
a car as one system,” says Rahul Mangharam, an
engineer at the University of Pennsylvania, “and look at
it as a node in a network.”
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13725743
Fragmentation
• Behaviors
– Residents and visitors
• Grades of experience
– Phone, Desktop, …
• Preferred communication channels
– FB, Twitter, Texting, email, ….
For residents and visitors see Dave White
http://tallblog.conted.ox.ac.uk/index.php/2008/07/23/not-natives-immigrants-but-visitors-residents/
Libraries
Space
Expertise
Collections
• Then: vertically integrated around
collection
• Now: moving apart in network
environment
Systems and
services
Space
Infrastructure <> customer relations
• Opportunity cost
• Changes in social and
academic aspects of
learning require space.
Value
Connaway et al: data from an ongoing study of Virtual Reference Services
indicate that even where people are physically in the library they may
prefer to use chat reference than seek out a f2f encounter.
Personal communication from Lynn Silipigni Connaway (29 July 2008) based on unpublished analysis of telephone interviews in
the Seeking synchronicity: Evaluating virtual reference services from user, non–user, and librarian perspectives project,
athttp://www.oclc.org/research/projects/synchronicity/default.htm.
• Open?
• Ad hoc rendezvous
• Manage academic and
social aspects of learning
• Higher value activity
– Access to scarce resources –
people, equipment, specialist
advice, exhibition, …
– Cognate activities – GIS, reading,
..
Gleason Lib, U Rochester, S Gibbons
People:
a signed network presence
The challenge for libraries is to make
themselves invisible, by delivering services into
user workflows in network environments.
Libraries must also demonstrate value in the
context of growing competition for resources.
This suggests that it is important for the library
itself, its people, to become more visible .
•
•
•
•
Marketing and assessment
Physical presence and engagement
Interact with research and learning practices
Available when the work is happening
– 2 am?
• A ‘signed’ network presence
U Washington
Indiana U
Case Western Reserve U
Collections, systems and services
Mobilize into workflow
Add community
What is the record?
Collections
Licensed
• Commoditization of journal
literature – get what you
want from 3 or 4 suppliers?
Institutional outputs
• Video, podcast, …
• Digitized materials, …
• Location: institution,
network level
Books
• Increasing digital availability
– Amazon, Google, …
Personal
• Photos, presentations,
coursework, …
• Institutional responsibility?
…
Books in 20 years?
Mike Shatzkin
• Publishers: connect
databases to networks
• Publishers: understand
communities of content
consumers
• Publishing skills applied to
aggregations – niche or
nugget
• All in the cloud. Tethered.
• Subscription models common;
per-item sales relatively rare
• Crowd-sourced content;
crowd-sourced editing and
curation; tagging organizing
• Multiple reading devices
• POD
http://www.idealog.com/stay-ahead-of-the-shift-what-publishers-can-do-to-flourish-in-a-community-centric-web-world
Services and systems
Reconfigure
Enhance
Mobilize existing services
• Reference/enquiry
• Collections to go
(on a drive etc)
• Presentations/visibility
(videos and podcasts
about library activity)
• Alerting/current
awareness
• Mobile sites
• Communications and
referral
• Booking
(rooms, equipment, …)
• Syndication
(FB, Twitter, RSS,
widgets, toolbars, …)
Some systemic service issues
•
•
•
•
Socializing
Personalizing
Specialising
Atomizing
• Licenses
• Management
• Scale
Reading avoidance: Carole Palmer
Ppt: http://www.oclc.org/programsandresearch/dss/ppt/dss_palmer.ppt
Processing
Storage
Preservation
Replication
Library
Scale
Discovery
Social networking
Analysis
Visualization
Network services
Specialist
Attention
Social sites
Reading sites
Community
Digital assets
Aggregations
Consumer environment
Prefabricated: LMS, …
Composition environments: FB, igoogle, FireFox, ..
Bricolage: RSS, …
Cf Tile. http://www.sero.co.uk/jisc-tile.html
Thank you
http://orweblog.oclc.org
http://www.twitter.com/lorcand