A Technology Sampler Platter
| Published date | 01 June 2006 |
| Date | 01 June 2006 |
| Pages | 25-26 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/07419050610689040 |
| Author | David P. Whelan |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science |
A Technology Sampler Platter
David P. Whelan
LIBRARY HITECH NEWS Number 5 2006, pp. 25-26, #Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 0741-9058, DOI 10.1108/07419050610689040 25
Technology changes quickly and it
can be difficult to keep track of what is
coming. When you have thought of
services that your library can provide,
you can then start to identify
technologies that might support the
services. Some technologies will be
easy to try and implement. Others will
be interesting but not applicable to your
environment. If you watch the horizon
to see what new technologies are
coming, you can be better positioned to
adopt or ignore them when you are
ready.
It is important, when considering
technology for a library, to think about
non-library environments. Large
warehousing companies use technology
that can be applied to our physical
collections, like radio frequency
identification (RFID). Coffee shops use
simple wireless local area networks
(LANs) to attract customers and entice
them to stay in the shop's space.
Watching trends in other environments
can help suggest possible services, and
technologies, that libraries can
leverage.
Virtual reference remains a potential
service for many libraries. While it has
been adopted by larger consortia or
libraries, it remains a complex activity
for many non-technical reasons. A
library considering virtual reference
might look at simple chat, or instant
messaging, applications like AOL's
Messenger (www.aim.com), Yahoo!'s
Messenger (www.yahoo.com), or
Google Talk (http://talk.google.com). A
library can register a username and be
available over one of these chat
networks. Unfortunately, they do not all
communicate with each other, so
compatibilitywith your patrons might be
problematic. If you adopt Google Talk
but your patron uses AOL, you would
not be able to communicate. Consider
Trillian (www.ceruleanstudios.com) for
an instant messaging client that can
potentially communicate with AOL and
Yahoo! messagingsoftware.
Many of the free instant messaging
systems offer other features. One of the
potentially more powerful is PC to
mobile phone text messaging. While
your library patrons may not have
universal Internet access and computers
± few libraries can boast that ± the
prevalence of wireless phones with text
messaging ability is high. While it begs
the question why a person with a phone
would not just call a reference librarian,
the ability to send reference answers to
a person with a wireless phone,
anywhere, any time, may be in all of our
futures.
Adopting a free chat system is a
simple step towards more powerful
virtual reference. As your library learns
from its experience with chat, it might
consider shifting to Liveperson (www.
liveperson.com) or Questionpoint
(www.questionpoint.org). These are the
two leaders in a field of companies and
products that has been winnowed over
the past few years. They offer
intermediated searching and other
benefits, but for a price significantly
above free instant messaging.
Wireless LAN are amazingly
common considering that the current
standards were only developed six
years ago. Public and private wireless
access points are common in our
organizations as well as in our public
spaces. Libraries considering adopting
wireless should focus on dual band
access points, which support the
broadest number of types of ``Wi-Fi''
wireless. If your library is in an
organization that has tight control over
the technology in the library, like a
corporation or professional services
firm, you can focus your purchasing
more narrowly.
Wireless USB is an interesting trend
that could potentially replace Bluetooth
for personal area networks. It uses ultra
wideband wireless spectrum to transmit
at 480Mbps, compared to Bluetooth's
3Mbps. It will be available in the next
year or two and increasingly
incorporated into printers, scanners, and
other peripherals. When you are
making purchases of these items,
consider getting wireless USB to reduce
the wiring of your computer labs or to
make your physical arrangements more
flexible.
Another wireless technology that
might impact our wireless LANs is
WiMAX, for worldwide interoperability
of microwave access. Unlike Wi-Fi
wireless, it uses licensed radio spectrum
to transmit longer distances. So far the
claims of high speeds at long distances
(up to 30 miles) have not been borne out
by vendor tests, but major technology
vendors are planning to incorporate
WiMAX into their wireless chips.
Laptops you purchase in the future may
have both Wi-Fi and WiMAX wireless
available.
Open source technology may be a
powerful tool for libraries in coming
year. While each open source
application is distributed under one of a
number of licenses, the software is free
and the license provides access to the
source code. Recent years have seen
promising developments in integrated
library systems and other library-
specific tools. Since libraries are likely
to be the end user of these applications,
rather than a distributor of them, the
licenses are unlikely to pose any
burden. Some common open source
applications include the Firefox web
browser (www.mozilla.com), the Open
Office productivity suite (www.
openoffice.org), and the Apache web
server (httpd.apache.org).
Librarians following open source
developments can keep up to date at
oss4lib.org (www.oss4lib.org). It is a
blog that maintains information about
developments in open source projects.
Many of these projects are quite young,
not having reached version 1 yet.
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