Week One Notes

OCLC report: Information Format Trends: Content, Not Containers

-there are new patterns in content distribution and use
-“format agnostic”- to not care what sort of container, ie book, journal, blog or a Web page,
content comes from.
-Since content is no longer format dependant, libraries and content sellers must change accommodate the expectations of our communities through the processes of acquisition, organization and delivery
-As foreshadowed in the 2003 report, print publishing is slowing down and e-books are in an “adoptive” phase
-Due to this increase, libraries must now also manage content that is unbound from any sort of identifiable container
- librarians need to pay attention to how content is created, found, and used by the self-sufficient information consumer/producer.(example smartphone or iphone)
- 2002, the research group IDC estimated that 31 billion e-mails traveled the
Internet daily. By 2006, IDC predicts 60 billion e-mails will be sent daily
- “payload” – email message is part of a high level knowledge exchange, often carrying
attachments or URLs to content. (estimated 75% of U.S. enterprise email)
- 2000, the U.S. Dept of Education reported that U.S. ILL traffic for both books and
journal articles loaned in public and academic libraries, per day, was about 51,000
items(considerably less that that of emails, or payload)
-Statistics on camera phones and texts seem humorous and dated since its seems so prolific in my daily life, even though these statistics are only about five years old(proving the fast and incalculable development of technology)
- “Micropayment for microcontent is increasingly common” examples being ringtones, libraries must learn to cater to this trend
-Blogs and Wikis are a part of “social publishing,” allowing any person to publish and disseminate their writing and opinions on a mass scale. (since 1992, over 4 million blogs have been created)
- a decrease in the published wordà”In the U.S., 23 million fewer new print books were sold in 2003 than in 2002; Magazine sales dropped from about 2.2 billion copies in 1992 to 1.5 billion in 2002” (p9)
-Funding is a major issue facing libraries when trying to conform to modern trends
-increase in elearning, as can be testified through current personal experience in a ischool where classes are recorded for online students


Information Literacy and Information Technology Literacy: New
Components in the Curriculum for a Digital Culture

-Information technology literacy deals with technology infrastructures whereas information literacy handles content and communication in its various forms
-two perspectives of information technology literacy; skills in the use of tools and understanding how technologies work
-to be fully competent, one should not only have the skills to use technology, but have a knowledge and understanding of those skills and the technology they encompass
-scholaràSherry Turkle, handles the construction, analysis and use of
simulations and quantitative information
-one should have a knowledge of the technological world, ie “computing, telecommunications, broadcasting, publishing, electrical power distribution, transportation and financial
infrastructure and related areas,” with an appreciation of their history, uses and users
-as technology increases and becomes more mundane, these skills will be of use to even those whose primary job may not require such knowledge
-in terms of information literacy, people need a “conceptual map of information space”
-there is a wide range of areas into which information literacy, policy, and practice are involved

Lied Library @ four years: technology never stands still

-Lied Library opened in January 2001, remains on the cutting edge of technology
-since its beginning, the library has been developing, advancing, and adding to their systems with the progress of technology
-another major change in the library was the replacement of every desktop, over 600 units, in 2003.
-as always funding is an issue, purchasing and maintenance, costs, as can be seem form the original budget of the library, though luckily support fund can be gained from vendors
- computer issue of student verse general use, as the academic work is more generally done by students than the general public, who tend to use the computers for personal and entertainment reasons, “the library’s primary user group and main focus rests with UNLV students, the library has introduced new restrictions for community users”
-issue of space managementà space planning worked out well, though challenges include growth of staff, larger central server room, and issues of air conditioning circulation in certain areas
-issue of security, like thefts of computers equipment, as well as security to the computers itself, guarding them from harmful software
-What they future holds-àcontinual issues of funding, maintaining, and expanding, enhancement of infrastructure, question of future leadership