Crawford at Large
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Cites & Insights Crawford at Large Libraries • Policy • Technology • Media Volume 10, Number 2: February 2010 ISSN 1534-0937 Walt Crawford T&QT Perspective of the things to even think about. Note that the material here all comes from 2009; if there’s Trends and Forecasts enough interesting stuff in early 2010, including the LITA Top Tech Trends Midwinter session, I It’s as predictable as the Winter Solstice: the ongo- might do a followup. ing trickle of articles on trends turns into a flood First, let’s look back at some of last year’s around the turn of each year, coupled with a trends, forecasts and predictions—as reviewed in healthy rush of forecasts—and a much smaller fre- PERSPECTIVE: TECH TRENDS, TRENDS AND FORECASTS shet of ‘fessing up, as forecasters let us know how in the February 2009 Cites & Insights (9:3). I’ll in- things worked out. tersperse current notes as needed, and I’m leaving What is a trend—and how does it differ from a out most of the discussion to leave space for this forecast? The dictionary’s not much help here. year’s trends and forecasts. Two senses of “trend” seem relevant: “a prevailing tendency or inclination” and “a current style or Ghosts of Trends Past preference” (with “vogue” as a synonym). My sense Last year’s roundup was divided into three sec- is that most so-called trends these days are claims tions: Tech trends, trends in general and forecasts. of near-future importance—assertions that Trend I began with my own take on tech trends, prepared X is becoming more significant, than, say, Former for the OLA SuperConference in Toronto. I saw Trend Y, and needs to be paid attention to. these trends as vital for thinking about libraries, “Forecast” is comparatively simple: “a prophe- technology and the like: cy, estimate, or prediction of a future happening or condition.” (All definitions from Webster’s Ninth Inside This Issue New Collegiate.) To me—if perhaps not to oth- Perspective: Music, Silence and Metrics ....................... 16 ers—the distinction may be falsifiability. If I say Offtopic Perspective: Mystery Collection, Part 1 .......... 25 “Open source matters in 2009,” that’s a trend. If I Limits: They exist. Your financial resources are say “25% of libraries will switch to open source li- limited; you can’t keep borrowing against tomor- brary systems by 2012,” that’s a forecast. You could row indefinitely. Deny them as we might, limits— argue that I was wrong about open source as a natural resources, time, attention—don’t simply trend, but you couldn’t prove me wrong—but in disappear… 2013, you could prove me wrong about the forecast. Business models: They matter. When you’re That’s too neat, of course—some forecasts are considering how various services for your own work and your library’s work will work, think mostly trend statements. But trend gurus tend to about business models. To what extent are you re- avoid specificity, rarely even saying X is the most lying on free services that don’t appear to have any important trend. source of revenue? What happens to your service Let’s look at a few of the many trend state- if those services disappear? Do you have any ra- ments for 2010. We’ll also look at the flipside of tional basis to believe they’ll continue to exist, trendiness: Deathspotting—assertions that X or Y grow and be developed without clear revenue is (or is about to be) obsolete or defunct. I was sources? Your library has a business model, typi- originally planning to include some of the “top 10 cally that of a community service: People pay in advance in order to fund a common good. for 2009” stories, but enough is enough—and, es- pecially at the end of a decade, there are too many Trusting the cloud: Set aside the jargon—the cloud’s just software and services on someone Cites & Insights February 2010 1 else’s servers. “Trusting the cloud” has three key It’s great to put stuff on these sites to increase your aspects, one particularly important where library media’s visibility or to find a more convenient way functions are concerned: Trusting that the servic- to share documents or something. But what hap- es will remain (see “business models”); trusting pens if your free hosted wiki site suddenly goes that your data will be safe; and trusting that con- bankrupt or your document sharing site’s servers fidentiality will be preserved. I’m not arguing that are accidentally sold for scrap, or the video hosting you shouldn’t use the cloud; I am arguing that you site you use objects to the hot book-on-book action should think several times before relying entirely you have posted?... on the cloud. Libraries and librarians and archivists who care Valuing existing users and services: Yes, you about preserving the world’s cultural output: where need to see how you can serve emerging needs of are we now? Do we have anything to add to an ef- your community (your community)—but times of fort to help keep online culture from going down limits make your existing services more valuable the drain? I fear that most libraries can barely deal than ever. Don’t ignore your existing users in order with the digital content we are directly responsible to court a minority of people living the digital life- for, leaving the wilds of the Internet to people like style; find a balance. And if you find that some of Jason Scott and Brewster Kahle to deal with, but I’d the digerati really do have all the money to satisfy love to hear examples of libraries taking on this their instant-everything demands and have no in- kind of responsibility… tention of using your services—well, in fact, you [To] quote from [Jason Scott’s] “Cloud” post: can’t please everybody, and there’s a limit to how If you want to take advantage of the froth, like hard you should try. with YouTube or Google Video (oh wait! Google Real communities: What technologies and bal- Video is [not accepting new content]) then do ances serve your users in your community? The so, but recognize that these are not Services. answer’s considerably different for a town in These are not dependable enterprises. These are which 99% of residents are wealthy and have parties. And parties are fun and parties are cool high-speed broadband and smart phones (if such and you meet neat people at parties but parties a town exists) than it is for a city where many are not a home… people aren’t online at all (except at the library), So that’s my top tech trend for 2009. There’s a rea- many more have only dialup at home, and $100 a son it’s called “cloud” computing. It looks beauti- month for a smart phone data service is an outra- ful now, but could be gone in a moment. geous expense… Might I suggest that this trend is just as important Taking back the language: That’s a group head- in 2010? ing for a number of language-related issues. It means understanding that “Essentially free” Library Trendsters means somebody somewhere is paying a lot of Eric Lease Morgan’s trends: money. It means thinking to yourself “what you Indexing with Solr/Lucene works well. Linked da- mean we?” when someone pronounces something ta is a new name for the Semantic Web. Blogging that “we” or “we all” do or think… It means flag- is peaking. Word/tag clouds abound. “Next Gen- ging “inevitable” as a typically nonsensical substi- eration” library catalogs seem to be defined. The tute for argument. It means honoring skepticism Digital Dark Age continues—that is, digital pre- while trying to avoid cynicism. servation of internet resources stinks. I’ll stick with those as vitally important underlying I added notes about several of these—e.g., do word trends for librarians to consider. There’s a lot of clouds mean anything, is linked data actually hap- back-and-forth as to whether Americans are will- pening? A year later, I still wonder whether word ing to accept limits, or whether we’ll all start and tag clouds mean much of anything, whether spending beyond our means once again. I hope it’s linked data is showing broad applicability (and the former, even if that slows the recovery, but I’m application) and whether blogging having peaked not making projections. is meaningful. Steve Lawson posted “Social software death- Sarah Houghton-Jan’s trends, with her own watch” at See also… as his own “top tech trend to wording in bold: watch.” It’s along the lines of my thoughts on busi- The art of web presence maintenance:… Man- ness models and trusting the clouds. He cited a aging a library’s extended web presence truly has bunch of social-networking sites that disappeared become an art, and an art that each library needs in 2008; we’ve lost quite a few in 2009 as well. to (and seems to want to) learn about. Cites & Insights February 2010 2 Overgeneralized, since there are many libraries As soon as you say “significant portion” rather than that lack the resources to have extended web pre- “ubiquitous” or “all,” I agree. sences at all, but still an important (general) trend. The one that scares the sh!t out of me: The Plug-ins, widgets and hacks, oh my! Websites waking digital preservation nightmare.