Cornish: "The systematic exploration of what might happen, so people can decide what they want to make happen"

wild cards: unexpected events that carry major consequences, whether catastrophic or benestrophic

scenario building is journalism in reverse

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
George Needham, OCLC
Joan Frye Williams, Consultant

George started and listed the 10 things Google has found to be true

Joan noted it's really easy to be a library futurist because libraries lag so far behind "real world" trends
there are lots of right answers and lots of possible futures

George: Five Landscapes, Three Dominant Patterns
1. self-service (which is not the same as no service)
- self-sufficiency
- satisfaction
- seamlessness
2. disaggregation
3. collaboration

Joan: civilians want us to set up the candy store, using all of our expertise, and then get out of the way so that they can do what they want and play with what they want to play with
they want us to set them up for success, not failure
meanwhile, we're all locking things up, keeping control, insisting that we be needed
users are voting with their feet, though
we need to cultivate a sense of "enoughness" - enough of us to help them how they need it
ready reference questions, which we positively count as statistics, are a failure on our part that allows users to be successful on their own

convenience AND quality
- my time
- my place
- easy to use
- no barriers

civilians are looking for opportunities to intuitively find answers
they want using us to be part of an active lifestyle; it's not ignorance that they choose things that are easier and more convenient
education of the "true" thing will not solve the problem
easy is not the same as dumb; making something accessible doesn't mean dumbing it down
we have to let go of perfectionism

simplified wayfinding:
- reduced clutter
- consolidated desks
- "situational" directions ("get answers for your homework" instead of "EBSCOHost")
- natural language catalog
- prepackaged tips, shortcuts, FAQs
- all staff capable of assisting with basic navigation and end-user tools

"bookends" service
- offer tools to get me started
- check my work when I'm done

options to consider:
- self-check as primary checkout
- OPAC toolbar
- touch screens
- roving support staff with wireless
- online fundraising (online is not a problem, even though it is in the physical world)

George:
the average wait time for getting your boarding pass at the airport is 70 seconds; lets the employees concentrate on those tasks and problems that need attention
think about that in the library context

disaggregation
many of the intermediary steps between the idea and publishing the idea have been removed (blogging, IM, RSS, etc.)

big publishing is still using the "least publishable unit"
iTunes/iPod is the future

Joan: services for hunter-gatherers
we're not the beginning of these folks' search and we're not at the end - we're one point on the spectrum
we're not the only game in town anymore

options to consider:
- metatagging
- podcast programs
- USB flash drives and personal servers
- searchable desktop
- "life caching" ("trickle up technology")

need to let users "carry something away with them"
your next tech trend is what people are asking for for Christmas

george: collaboration

it's simply easier:
- for people to connect
- for technologies to connect
- for economies to connect

collaboration creates new patterns
"it's time to disintegrate the aggregated library system"

OCLC has been experimenting with social software

Joan: mass collaboration
change in the "politics of identity" - it's now easier to find other nuts just like them
so there are communities of identity on the web that cannot be enabled in the physical world in the same way

thinks libraries are good at cooperating with people like them, but not with others
mass collaboration is inherently anti-institutional
it's going to be difficult for those of us brought up on authoritative sources to be okay with non-authoritative sources
the locus of trust has changed, the sources have changed

suggested every library put an entry about themselves in Wikipedia because that's where people are looking for information

continuous partial attention
was "multitasking"
in the library world, we don't deal well with CPA; our policies force users to dial out everything else and concentrate on library stuff
but that's not how people work anymore
(think cell phones)

told a great story about a young person who answered his cell phone in a job interview; didn't stay on the phone, but all of the older people interviewing him were shocked; his response was "I didn't take the call"

what they saw as rudeness in the interview is what google is cultivating as productivity
all of the research shows these kids are doing just fine - they can do this
people coming to us will feel oppressed if we don't let them use their full abilities
if you must limit them to one thing at a time, you're asking them to give up a style of work that is very effective for them
you are the one that can't focus in a disaggregated world

options to consider:
- other people's blogs, vlogs, wikis (move your library stuff out to where people's stuff already is)
- collaborative filtering
- participatory websites
- mashups (wonderful examples of how we shouldn't try to control information so tightly)
- less reliance on content resellers

don't start a new blog on campus - put your posts where the users already are (the campus blog for users)

George: The Perceptions Report

Joan: the biggest implication of the Perceptions report is the end of adult reference as we know it
stand-up question-answering is dead
there is no other profession that puts its best people behind a desk
people associate quality with a style other than the one we use
we're deploying librarians like secretaries
and now we know people don't start with us anyway

options to consider:
- proactive reference
- virtual reference
- social network reference
- extreme googling
- reference by appointment
- "on call" instead of "on the desk"

George ended by talking about how libraries have never been the number one source people turn to for information (showed data from a 1947 survey), but how we've made great strides since then
we don't have 5 decades to get it right this time

fundraising online - http://midhudson.org/funding/fundraising/online.htm
movielens - http://movielens.umn.edu/
Platial - http://platial.com/
OPAL - http://www.opal-online.org/
podcast information page - http://www.lansing.lib.il.us/podcast.html

Technorati Tags: ala06, ala2006

Searching & the Online Journey - John Horrigan, Pew Internet Life Project

showed various Pew statistics for broadband subscriptions, internet use, and online searching

41% of *all* online users conduct a search on the average day (September 2005)
54% of high-speed internet users search on an average day
for "high-powered" internet users, 91% do an internet search on an average day

50% of searchers could go back to their old way of finding information
...but 32% say they can't live without search

searching is part of an online environment that:
- reduces uncertainty for users (particularly in regards to medical information)
- empowers them with more information
- serves as an outlet and source for creativity (50% of users have posted some kind of content to the internet)
- helps them make every day decisions
- helps them maintain and cultivate social networks

internet is a "Swiss Army knife" information tool
- particularly for young users
- the long tail
- does the long tail thicken the leading edge?

internet will increasingly be embedded in things (RFID, ubiquitous broadband internet)
attention will become a scarce commodity in the digital world
- trusted helpers to connect people to what they want

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Who's Out There and What Are They Doing? - Roy Tennant

Generations:
millennials & gen Xers are:
- not you
- not homogeneous
- they share a lot of your core values (not sure who "your" refers to)
- communication power users, very connected
- big collectors (tunes, videos, links, photos)
- big sharers (tunes, videos, links, photos)
- content creators
- serious multitaskers

typical 18-year old:
- has never known a time without the internet
- never purchased a record
- thinks the president must be named clinton or bush
- can't understand why anyone would want a landline phone

typical 12-year old
- was born after the web
- has never known a time when the U.S. was at peace with Iraq
- believes a cell phone to be a God-given right
- has never purchased a cassette tape
- doesn't understand why we say "dial" a phone number

what are they doing?
- instant messaging (in a year or two, it will be all of us); the channel matters... if someone wants to connect with us this way, we need to be there
- MySpace; really like sharing about themselves; showed his Flickr account; his own unalog; showed his last.fm account
- reviews
- tagging
- YouTube

they're doing all of this on cell phones
we have to get really good at delivering content to cell phones

showed his Google Analytics account, which tells him what terms people are searching in Google to get to his sites
libraries need to monitor this for their sites and use this information more efficiently

showed various statistics from the OCLC Perceptions report

how can we attract and support these users?
they shouldn't have to darken your door to use your services

- use what they use, e.g. MySpace
- benefits: know more about where they're coming from, figure out new opportunities, get new ideas for positioning your services and collections; let them choose the channel that floats their boat

- be where they are
- online (web, IM, etc.)
- available by phone
- mall outlets
- bookmobiles
- community events
- physical as well as electronic; wherever our nonusers are

- be discoverable
- make sure you are crawled by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Live, etc.
- pay attention to the titles of your documents and use descriptive words
- make it easy for people to link directly to what they want
- make sure sites that should link to your site do

- be usable
- only 15% of respondents said libraries are easy to use; 85% said online searching is easy to use
- do a needs assessment
- build collections and services that align with your customer base
- do usability testing

what to do: summary
- start and end with your clientele
- learn the technologies available to you that are appropriate to your mission
- imaginatively apply those technologies to serve the unique needs of your users
- provide easy access to what they want, how and when they want it
- market those services well
- rinse and repeat (forever, for the rest of our professional lives)

in the end...
- it's always been about the user, but we seem to have forgotten how to focus on their needs
- it doesn't matter what you think they should do, they will do what they want
- work to give them what they should have in a way they want to have it
- never stop learning, thinking, striving to do better
- if you're not having fun, you're not doing it right

Technorati Tags: ala06, ala2006