Connection, concentration and diffusion: mobilizing library services 2 nd M-Libraries Conference,...

Connection, concentration and diffusion: mobilizing library services

2nd M-Libraries Conference, Opening Keynote, UBC, Vancouver, 23 June 2009Lorcan Dempsey, VP OCLC

Dave225 4:00am thought about conference keynotes - if you get more than a few nuggets of wisdom from a keynote, you need to read more.7:13 AM May 27th from web    

Dave225 @lorcanD … My 4am point was that a keynote can only speak broadly & can rarely connect to your needs11:38 AM May 27th from TwitterFox

Prelude:

normal

if unevenly distributed

http://www.annelyjudafineart.co.uk/

Presidential election 08/09

Brownpau. http://www.flickr.com/photos/brownpau/2788253333/

American IdolVoting participation

Acquired by Amazon“We are an image recognition based mobile marketing company. Our Snap.Send.Get™ solution converts any image into a 100% opt-in interactive mobile ad”

http://www.freshlymobile.com/uw-mobile-usage-statistics/UW%20Mobile%20Stats-Details/David Morton, U Washington

Three related thoughts

1. Expectations

2. Consumer switchGreater investment and innovation in

consumer/retail space than in education/work space.

Gmail?PLE?

3. Workflow switchYou need to fit into my workflow. I won’t

fit into yours.

Mobile communications is more about communications than

about mobility

Diffusion of communications andcomputational capacity into a growing part of our research, learning and social lives.

Mobile communications more widely adopted more quickly than any other technology.Manuel Castells

Generations …

Youth culture that finds in mobile communications an adequate form of expression and reinforcement …

There is a clear correspondence between the emergence of a global youth culture, the networking of social relationships, and the connectivity potential provided by wireless communications …Manuel Castells et al

Safe autonomy: management of autonomy and security

Changed pattern of sociability: selective construction of peer groupssupported by accessibility and micro-coordination

Collective and individual identityHigh value associated with consumption, fashion, …

Games and entertainmentBased on Castells et al

Networks 1

Clouds and crowds

Concentration and diffusion

Mesh

Multiple connection points

Offer different grades of experience (the desktop, cell phone, xBox or Wii, GPS system,

smartphone, netbook, …).

Optimized for different purposes.

Cloud

Move to the cloud a natural accompaniment of a mesh of connection points.

Available on the network across multiple devices and environments.

Concentration – network level

Diffusion - workflow

This means that an exclusive focus on the institutional Web site as the

primary delivery mechanism and the browser as the primary consumption environment is increasingly partial.

BBC

From a conceptual point of view, the widgetization adopted by Facebook, iGoogle and netvibes weighed strongly on our initial thinking. We wanted to build the foundation and DNA of the new site in line with the ongoing trend and evolution of the Internet towards dynamically generated and syndicable content through technologies like RSS, atom and xml. This trend essentially abstracts the content from its presentation and distribution, atomizing content into a feed-based universe. Browsers, devices, etc therefore become lenses through which this content can be collected, tailored and consumed by the audience. [BBC Internet Blog]

American Idol

‘Consumable’ siteDownloadsGamesVideos

Voting participation

Community

Links to youtube, iTunes etc

Features

Atomization• Snippets, ringtones, tags,

ratings, feeds, abstracts, …

Action-oriented • Find out• Get - Pay• Vote – rank, relate,

recommend• Share - with selective social

networkAttention• Rank, relate, recommend• Specialized (course)• Get to relevance quickly• At point of need• Location aware

Aggregate

• Use other platforms as appropriate

Networks 2

Change how we coordinate ourresources to achieve goals.

Incremental social synchronization: micro-coordination

But they’re really nice! OK .. See you there at 3 …

On demand space: the example of Starbucks Ad hoc rendezvous

Timeshifting

Bristol University survey:More video on networkhttp://ancientgeeks.wordpress.com/2007/03/30/what-do-students-use-the-internet-for/#more-8

Space

The fact that people are no longer tied to specific places for functions such as studying or learning, says Mr. Mitchell, means there is a ‘huge drop in demand for traditional, private, enclosed spaces’ such as offices or classrooms, and simultaneously ‘a huge rise in demand for semi-public spaces that can be informally appropriated to ad hoc workspaces’.

In the 20th Century architecture was about specialized structures – offices for working, cafeterias for eating, and so forth.

William Mitchell, Economist, Apr 10th 2008

http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10950463 (pay wall)

zipcarZipcar’s available vehicles report their positions to a control centre so that members of the scheme can find nearby vehicles through a web or phone interface. Cars are unlocked by holding a card, containing a wireless chip, up against the windscreen. Integrating cars and back-office systems via wireless links allows Zipcar to repackage cars as a flexible transport service. Each vehicle operated by Zipcar is equivalent to taking 20 cars off the road, says Mr Griffith, and an average Zipcar member saves more than $5,000 dollars a year compared with owning a car.

“Connected cars”, which sport links to navigation satellites and communications networks—and, before long, directly to other vehicles—could transform driving, preventing motorists from getting lost, stuck in traffic or involved in accidents. And connectivity can improve entertainment and productivity for both driver and passengers… There is also scope for new business models built around connected cars, from dynamic insurance and road pricing to car pooling and location-based advertising. “We can stop looking ata car as one system,” says Rahul Mangharam, an engineer at the University of Pennsylvania, “and look at it as a node in a network.”

Connected cars

Economist June 6-12 2009

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13725743

Fragmentation

• Behaviors– Residents and visitors

• Grades of experience– Phone, Desktop, …

• Preferred communication channels– FB, Twitter, Texting, email, ….

For residents and visitors see Dave White http://tallblog.conted.ox.ac.uk/index.php/2008/07/23/not-natives-immigrants-but-visitors-residents/

Libraries

• Then: vertically integrated around collection

• Now: moving apart in network environment

Space Expertise

CollectionsSystems and services

SpaceInfrastructure <> customer relations

• Opportunity cost • Changes in social and academic aspects of learning require space.

Connaway et al: data from an ongoing study of Virtual Reference Servicesindicate that even where people are physically in the library they mayprefer to use chat reference than seek out a f2f encounter. Personal communication from Lynn Silipigni Connaway (29 July 2008) based on unpublished analysis of telephone interviews in the Seeking synchronicity: Evaluating virtual reference services from user, non–user, and librarian perspectives project, athttp://www.oclc.org/research/projects/synchronicity/default.htm.

Value

• Higher value activity– Access to scarce resources –

people, equipment, specialist advice, exhibition, …

– Cognate activities – GIS, reading, ..

• Open?• Ad hoc rendezvous• Manage academic and

social aspects of learning

Gleason Lib, U Rochester, S Gibbons

People: a signed network presence

The challenge for libraries is to make themselves invisible, by delivering services into user workflows in network environments.

Libraries must also demonstrate value in the context of growing competition for resources. This suggests that it is important for the library itself, its people, to become more visible .

• Marketing and assessment• Physical presence and engagement• Interact with research and learning practices• Available when the work is happening– 2 am?

• A ‘signed’ network presence

Case Western Reserve U

Indiana UU Washington

Collections, systems and services

Mobilize into workflow

Add community

What is the record?

Collections

Licensed• Commoditization of journal

literature – get what you want from 3 or 4 suppliers?

Books• Increasing digital availability

– Amazon, Google, …

Institutional outputs• Video, podcast, …• Digitized materials, …• Location: institution,

network level

Personal• Photos, presentations,

coursework, …• Institutional responsibility?

…

Books in 20 years?Mike Shatzkin

• Publishers: connect databases to networks

• Publishers: understand communities of content consumers

• Publishing skills applied to aggregations – niche or nugget

• All in the cloud. Tethered.• Subscription models common;

per-item sales relatively rare• Crowd-sourced content;

crowd-sourced editing and curation; tagging organizing

• Multiple reading devices• POD

http://www.idealog.com/stay-ahead-of-the-shift-what-publishers-can-do-to-flourish-in-a-community-centric-web-world

Services and systems

Reconfigure

Enhance

Mobilize existing services

• Reference/enquiry• Collections to go

(on a drive etc)• Presentations/visibility

(videos and podcasts about library activity)

• Alerting/current awareness

• Mobile sites• Communications and

referral• Booking

(rooms, equipment, …)• Syndication

(FB, Twitter, RSS, widgets, toolbars, …)

Some systemic service issues

• Socializing• Personalizing• Specialising • Atomizing

• Licenses• Management• Scale

Reading avoidance: Carole PalmerPpt: http://www.oclc.org/programsandresearch/dss/ppt/dss_palmer.ppt

Attention

Scale

Specialist

Consumer environment

Library Network services

ProcessingStoragePreservationReplication

DiscoverySocial networkingAnalysisVisualization

Prefabricated: LMS, …Composition environments: FB, igoogle, FireFox, ..Bricolage: RSS, …

Cf Tile. http://www.sero.co.uk/jisc-tile.html

Social sitesReading sitesCommunityDigital assets

Aggregations

Thank you

http://orweblog.oclc.org

http://www.twitter.com/lorcand