Wikimania: Librarianesque Birds of a Feather
Now I’m leading the Librarianesque Birds of a Feather session. Grab your lunch and come to Pound Hall 200 or the wikimania channel on freenode.net to join in.
Here are some of things we’re discussing:
- how to remove dead birds from the library
- how can libraries use wikis
- libraries and open source software: how can we adopt some, how can we convince vendors to open source their products
- how can we convince vendors to expand their products to include components like wikis and blogs
- how can we keep systems open and full of bells and whistles and still have them easy to use
- librarians need to work closer with software people to develop the products we need
- what about business models and libraries: are we competing against each other, working with each other, competing against … whom?, competing against Google?
- how is technology changing librarianship? Are we going to have jobs in thirty years?
- A woman here who’s a techie is giving us some really good perspective on technology and libraries.
- One librarian finds systems too archaic. She wants something zippier and more Web 2.0 and Ajax and compatible across multiple browsers.
- No matter the technology, a librarian or some kind of intermediary is still needed to judge and evaluate the information.
- Libraries are still and will still be vital as a place. People want somewhere to go to gather together, students want a common place to study, people want collections of reading materials, parents want some place to go with their children, many people without computer access need some place to go to use the machines, etc.
- What’s going to happen to the book Pat the Bunny or scratch-n-sniff books in the digital world?
One of the participants started a Google group called librarian discussion for those of us who want to continue this chatter.
About thirty people are in the room, including some non-library folks. (Yay!)
