Last Friday I attended a day-long workshop by Jane Dysart and Stephen Abram at the Broome County Public Library. (It was called a workshop, but it was actually more like riding down Lincoln Drive in a car going 100 mph.)
Dysart provided tips for reviewing library services and planning for new technologies. She recommended developing a mindset that includes technology as an enabler rather than as the central focus of our energies, and she discussed the importance of looking around us–not just at other libraries, but at gaming, sports, and bookstores, among others. She diagrammed a “service design process” that starts with a consideration of why we exist and what our clients want.
Abrams reviewed a wide variety of current and emerging technologies. These include visualization tools and other non-text search engines, the expansion of P2P, converging devices (e.g. phone/mp3 player/text messaging/photo display/web access), Google initiatives, and web-based collaborative tools.
More resources from both speakers are available at Dysart & Jones Associates and Stephen Abram’s page at Sirsi.