Future Trends in Libraries

by Curt Hopkins:

"Libraries are changing, despite their facades. And they're changing to high-tech service companies with embedded librarians, according to some library professionals."

"This transition time is one of great opportunity for those involved in libraries, but all transitions, all borders and verges, are places of great vulnerability as well. Grand changes are possible here, but so are operatic failures. The future seems promising. It’s the present that worries some librarians.

“The myth that the information scholars need for research and teaching is, or soon will be available for free online is a dangerous one,” said Bourg, “especially when it is used as an excuse to cut funding to libraries. Right now libraries face enormous but exciting challenges in maintaining print collections and services where they are still necessary, while simultaneously developing strategies for collecting, preserving, organizing, and providing access to digital objects. I fear that if libraries across the nation don’t get the resources we collectively need to meet these challenges that we may be at risk of losing big chunks of our cultural record because of a lack of funding for digital collecting and preservation."

Interviewers:

"Kai Eckert is computer scientist and vice head of the IT departement of the Mannheim University Library. He coordinates the linked open data activities and developed the linked data service of the library. He held various presentations, both national and international, about linked data and open data.

Adrian Pohl has been working at the Cologne-based North Rhine-Westphalian Library Service Center (hbz) since 2008. His main focuses are Open Data, Linked Data and its conceptual, theoretical and legal implications. Since June 2010 Adrian has been coordinating the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Working Group on Open Bibliographic Data."

"At OKCon 2011, we had the opportunity to interview Brewster Kahle who is a computer engineer, internet entrepreneur, activist, and digital librarian. He is the founder and director of the Internet Archive, a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of “universal access to all knowledge”. Besides the widely known “Wayback Machine“, where archived copies of most webpages can be accessed, the Internet Archive is very active in the digitization of books, as well, and provides with the “Open Library” a free catalog that aims to describe “every book ever published”. Kahle and his wife, Mary Austin, created the Kahle/Austin Foundation that supports the Internet Archive and other non-profit organizations.

As open data enthusiasts from the library world, we were especially interested in how the activities of the Internet Archive relate to libraries. We wanted to know how its general approach and service could be useful for libraries in Europe.

Brewster Kahle, what is the Internet Archive and what is your vision for its future?..."

Interview here: http://blog.okfn.org/2012/03/23/building-the-ecology-of-libraries-an-interview-with-brewster-kahle/