Usually I rely on industry reports to put me to sleep, even those that generate lots of buzz and get described as “essential reading.” But today I’ve seen pointers to a couple reports that look really interesting and – bonus! – they each clock in at under 50 pages.
The first is the 2009 Horizon Report, the only annual report I read beginning to end every year. A collaboration between the New Media Consortium and EDUCAUSE, it reports on technologies to watch in education. I always learn something new and interesting from this report, and this year promises to be no exception. If you are looking for concise, fairly non-technical overviews of hot topics such as cloud computing, with specific examples, implications, and sites you can follow up with, the Horizon Report really is “essential reading.”
The second is a new OCLC Research report (found via Lorcan Dempsey’s blog) called “Scholarly Information Practices in the Online Environment,” which discusses core scholarly activities and implications for library services. With its primary focus on activities such as reading and writing and not on the media or technologies through which they are conducted, I expect this report will bring a fresh perspective to thinking about service development.