With the end of the old year and the start of the new, it is the time for predictions.  There have been many personal ones, along the lines of new year’s resolutions in a sense, but also many from consultants and experts in the field.

A few of the more noteworthy ones I have come across recently, which are worth checking out (after all, they could be right and be telling us what we will be doing in future) are:

Ross Dawson - Six important forces that will shape 2009

• Constant partial attention
• Half of us sharing online, the other half watching
• Gen Y deals with Gen Z in the workforce
• Outsourcing for everyman
• Companies get social
• Media industry collapse

Pew/Internet - The Future of the Internet III

• Mobile device will be the primary connection tool by 2020
• Personal transparency will increase
• Talk and touch user interfaces will become more prevalent
• Copyright will continue to be an issue
• Divide between work and home will continue to erode

Horizon Report 2008 - Australia/New Zealand edition

The technologies to watch in the next 2-3 years:

• Virtual worlds
• Cloud-based applications
• Geo-location
• Alternative input devices
• Deep tagging
• Next generation mobile

This is just a snapshot of the interesting things I’ve come across, all of which I found well worth reading.  Check them out for yourselves and let us know which other predictions you have come across that have made for interesting reading.

Satisfied with the cost, the vendor’s service and how your users  perceive it when they compare it with the rapidly changing social web? Yes? No?

Add your voice to the confidential 2008 International Library Automation Survey being conducted by Marshall Breeding on behalf of Library Technology Guides .  He is interested in tracking how perceptions have changed since last year’s Perceptions 2007: an international survey of Library Automation .

Long time readers of our blog will remember that we started the Virtual Libraries Interact blog back in late 2006 as a sister site to our blog.

Unfortunately due to a number of reasons the Virtual Libraries Interact blog has been languishing for a while and no new posts have been added.

It with some regret, and a tinge of sadness, that we have decided to merge the Virtual Libraries Interact blog into the main blog. Do not worry, all of the content has been imported into the Libraries Interact blog.

The posts are still available and they have been aggregated into a new Virtual Libraries Interact category. Also preserved are Australian Libraries in SL and SL Avatar list pages.

In the new year we look forward to posting more information here about libraries and second life. Also, don’t forget that those of us using second life and other virtual worlds may be writing about their experiences on their own personal blogs.

In early 2008, Flickr launched the Commons to showcase the public photo collections of libraries, museums and archives from around the world. The Library of Congress was the first to start adding their collections and New York Public Library (probably) the most recent.

The two main objectives of the Commons are to increase access to publicly-held collections and to enable the general public to contribute information and knowledge about the images.

Christmas on HMAS Benalla, 1944 by Clifford Bottomley

So far there are 17 institutions contributing photographs including from Australia, the Australian War Memorial (photostream), Powerhouse Museum (photostream) and the State Library of New South Wales (photostream).  Other contributing institutions are from Portugal, New Zealand, France, Canada, United Kingdom, and the Netherlands.

The image included here is from the Australian War Memorial’s collection. In the Commons, all contributing institutions declare that the images they contribute have “no known copyright restrictions“.  The link through to the AWM’s site showed that for this particular image the copyright had expired. Having a blanket statement for images may be simpler for the institutions involved and Flickr too I suppose, but for the user it would a great help to have more specific information about rights if it is available.

There are some beautiful images from George Eastman House’s collection in the Commons, including colourful fashion magazine cover images and layouts and postcards.

You could spend hours browsing through these collections. While you are there, don’t forget to add tags and comments.

NLS4 is well and truly over, bar the papers, which should be available soon. As usual, I have been busy since it was done. otherwise this post would have been done earlier.

At the NLS4 Cocktail Party, the committee organised a couple of icebreaker events, one of which I just had to share here. We were each given a library based pickup line and had to make up groups of people which gave us the complete set of 12. It definitely got us talking, with the pickup lines just being the means of starting the discussion.

Anyway, here for all to share, grin, smirk and groan at are those pickup lines. Enjoy!

• Pardon me, could you please tell me what kind of card I need to check you out?
• You must have been burning books, because youre looking hot.
• Libraries should allow food in the buildings, because right now I could just eat you up.
• I know what I need to access the Internet, but what do I need to access your heart?
• What book would you recommend to help me sweep you off your feet?
• Can you tell me how to spell love? Im writing a letter to you.
• You must work at a busy library, because baby you just increased my circulation.
• Are you a librarian? Well I really need to be shushed.
• Id catalogue you under Desirable.
• Youre a librarian? If my library lady looked like you growing up, I wold have been an avid reader.
• Can you tell me where I can find books on overcoming a deeply passionate love I have for a librarian?
• Can you settle a bet? My friend says librarians have no life, but I say theyre wild beasts. Can I take you out for to dinner and prove my friend wrong?

You can discover more perspectives from the following bloggers who attended this event:

ALIA Board Blog

Connecting Librarian

Librarian Idol

Quilterjo Learns New Things…

Virtually a librarian

If there are others, please leave details in the comments, otherwise you can also check out the NLS 4 set on Flickr.

The Dept. of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy has launched a blog to gather Australians’ thoughts and ideas about the digital economy.  The blog will apparently only be ‘open’ for two weeks, so get over there now if you want to share your ideas in this type of forum, and subscribe. There should be a new post every couple of days covering topics such as:

• what does the digital economy encompass
• what benefit is there from open access to public sector information
• what should Australia do to ensure that business and citizens have the necessary skills to participate in the digital economy
• how do we maintain the same ‘civil society’ we enjoy offline in an online world?

That last one is flagged on the site as being related to the internet filtering issue and feedback is welcomed.  No doubt librarians will be keen to weigh in on many of these topics.

Using a blog to  gather this type of feedback is part of a plan to “trial consultation blogs.” according to Linday Tanner’s welcome post.  And this digital economy one is  the first.

My observations on this first one:

• it doesn’t really look like a blog
• there does not appear to be view that will show all posts, or several recent posts
• navigating to posts could be a bit of an issue, but when there are a few more it might be more obvious
• There is no autodiscovery link in the header so my browser didn’t detect the feed immediately and the first RSS icon i clicked on to subscribe was only the comments to the first post
• The URL contains “future directions blog”, but that does not appear on the page itself

I guess I have some feedback to provide on the trial/blog itself. Nevertheless, I think this is a move in the right direction.

Digital Economy blog | Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy

Need a jump start to your day? Then watch this 9minute clip of Mr Bean visiting a library and all the disasters that take place subsequently .. you will laugh and quite possibly cry as well!

WARNING: Librarians who deal with rare books may find some scenes disturbing (seriously)

This funky story looks like it’s going to have a happy ending after all. Four of these folk were elected to their local council on the weekend (see the credits at the end of Georg’s updated copy of this video.)

Kathryn Greenhill. Image by Cindiann. Reproduced under a Creative Commons license.

We have a very happy and excited author here at Libraries Interact. Kathryn Greenhill has shared her very exciting news on her personal blog, but we want to make a fuss about her too.

Kathryn has been awarded the VALA Travel Scholarship and will be heading off to the United States and Canada next year to look at alternative discovery layers and open source library management systems.

Read more about it at Librarians Matter » Blog Archive » VALA Travel Scholarship

Congratulations Kathryn.

If you have been living under a rock, maybe you haven’t heard that the Shanachie Tour Down Under is on right now.

Erik Boekesteijn and Jaap van de Geer from the DOK, Delft Public Library are touring Australia, interviewing librarians and videoing some of the wonderful libraries in our country.  The videos are posted at their blog and provide a great slice of library goodness. If you need some inspiration, you really must watch these. It’s often difficult to know what libraries are doing outside of your region - Shananchie’s to the rescue.

So far they have been to Perth, Brisbane and Clarence Regional Library and are just arrived in Sydney. Their tour finishes up in Melbourne at the New Librarians Symposium on the 6th of December. Visit their blog to follow along.