September 15-16th is the Northwest Interlibrary Loan and Resource Sharing Conference. The 4th Annual conference will be held in Portland over 2 days. It is conveniently scheduled in a way that allows for low-cost travel. The event will include Keynote Speaker Stephen Abrams.

When I returned to work, there was this e-mail waiting for me. It seems to be related just to library architecture, but ends up talking about the future of libraries. I enjoyed the article, and thought you might, too… Beth Hill, U of I, Moscow

THE OBSERVER
Architect of learning
The reinvention of the college library

By Sam Allis, Globe Columnist | July 31, 2005

Good architects are a treat to talk to because they speak the language of
design — a tongue we rarely hear. Developers and contractors traffic in
their own argot and, as a general rule, pursue the vocabulary of design with
the fluency of a Serbian speaking Sanskrit.

Of course, when I got home, the only things I could find were posts relating to futures. Future technologies, future concepts, the works.

Several things I wanted to share with you all. First, a great big Thank You to Jan, Glen, all the presenters, and the folks at the Idaho State Library for the opportunity to come together and share/bounce ideas about library futures.

Second, I wish I would’ve done a better of job of getting to know all the participants—next time I will make sure I introduce myself, shake your hand, and get to know you well enough to borrow money.

Third, I’m still digesting everything that I heard and read and am percolating the implications involved to truly change my current mindset of “it’s possible” with the preferred future vision of “let’s do it!” I know I have to strengthen my guts (heart? head? being?) to start affecting change.

We as librarians — regardless of our type of library — hold knowledge in trust. Library school (at least mine!) said that we exist to meet the educational, recreational, and informational needs of our users. To do this, we assume a hubris that ranks right up there with the best in Greek tragedy: we confront and attempt to organize for use all human knowledge.
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Information is abundant; wisdom is rare. Should we be attempting to provide keys to wisdom as well as information?
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Video on demand is one of the “coming things.” Do you supposed that a “library on demand” is also possible?
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Below is an article from the July 31st Boston Globe:
The Architect of Learning: The reinvention of the college library

http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2005/07/31/architec...

Below is a quote from Geoffrey Freeman in the article:
‘’There are the different mediums — paper, digital, video. How do I combine these different pieces of information?” he asks. ‘’Today’s library is where people challenge the information they get. It’s a real cultural difference. Students don’t care if it’s a technology or content question, so the new demands on a library are tremendous. The biggest challenge in any of these facilities is how to integrate technology and knowledge. The goal is one-stop shopping.”

Last week ISL hosted Summer Institute. With 3 tracks going on, my week was spent in the C3 track: “Improving Library Services: Cooperation, Collaboration, and Communication.” What an amazing week! Not only did we have the opportunity to learn from the likes of Pat Wagner (Tools for Successful Project Management), Linda Silva (The Brain: A Manager’s Guide), and Susan Swetnam (Fostering Grassroots Support for Public Libraries: the Example of Idaho’s Carnegie Library Applications); but we were also privileged to have an amazing learning group to learn from. Participants shared their ideas, experience, and knowledge with each other and truly made C3 a week to remember.

I read an article in CNET News.com titled “College Library of the Future” which emphasizes Google’s continued efforts to digitize the biggie libraries (Stanford, NYPL, etc.), as well as the efforts of other libraries not on Google’s digitization radar. Nothing new on that scope, but what I found interesting was the ending comment of the article:

“The library that acts as a steward will have to learn what it means to capture and persistently manage new vehicles of information,” said Daniel Greenstein, associate vice provost of libraries at the University of California’s Digital Library project. “It will have to change in order to stay the same.”

Technology is wonderful. Sometimes. But. I had 575 (no, I didn’t add a digit) comments on one of my posts - pornographic links that also showed up in my email inbox. The email names were pretty humorous, actually, but it certainly shows the dark side of technology.

Please let us know if this happens to you! (You can’t miss it, when your adminstrator sends a message: “Your mailbox is over its limit” and you have 600 new messages overnight!)

Jan