Criminal Law Library Blog
Library Technology Reports 43:6 2007 By Brad Eden
Excerpts from ALA TechSource publication announcment:
“As library technologists and librarians are well aware, since the advent of the Internet, the relationship between the user and his/her library has changed”.
“In a world of quick-and-easy search engines and of online social networks-in which information gets shared at an astonishingly rapid rate-information retrieval and aggregation are no longer the purview of the library institution alone.”
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“Eden, who early in his library career worked as a cataloger, is now the Associate University Librarian for Technical Services and Scholarly Communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara. ”
“‘Also in his ‘Introduction,’ Eden chronicles, through his own career, how the library institution and its role have changed and continue to change in the Information Age. In addition, he asserts, ‘So, going beyond the arguments about whether the library catalog is important or of value (it is), and going beyond the arguments about whether structured metadata, in MARC or something else, is important and of value (it definitely is), the reality is that libraries have limited resources to compete and position ourselves in the new information universe. We have gone from a monopoly, which could impose whatever rules and software and search strategies that we wanted on our users, to a bit player in market overflowing with technological gadgets, tools, and algorithms that capture the attention of the public and leave libraries with but a slim slice of the information pie, all in the space of approximately 15 years.’ ”
“Thus, Eden tackles the important topic of “Information Organization Future for Libraries” in this final issue of Library Technology Reports in volume 43″
I”n this issue, Eden focuses ‘not only on current initiatives around ‘reinventing’ the OPAC and all of its attendant possibilities (provided in the context of economic realities),’ but, in the report, Eden also looks at ‘opportunities to get away from the OPAC and focus resources on new areas, such as 3D information visualization, mass digitization, Library 2.0, and metadata related to digital resources.’ ”
FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: See ALA Techsource at http://www.techsource.ala.org