4 technology trends

every librarian needs to know

Where is library technology heading in

the next few years?

What are the emerging tools and technologies that

we should be paying attention to, in order to be

ready when the time is right to adopt them?

1. Augmented reality

Augmented Reality, or AR, is technology that provides digital overlays to reality

that add information

Google’s Glass eyewear is perhaps the most commonly known example of this technology

But AR applications exist for smart phones as well

There are a number of inexpensive tools that

libraries can provide their patrons to help them in

their research and use of the library’s physical

resources

They might help guide a user to the right

section of the stacks

Or provide additional information to the

individual as they conduct their

research

At the simplest end of the spectrum, public libraries could place QR Codes –

graphical symbols that, when photographed with an

appropriate application on smart phone, open a specified link in a web

browser -

to provide additional information about physical

spaces in the library

Smart phone applications like Layar (available for

iPhone and Android) take a photograph of a physical

object and return “layers” of information about it

Other AR tools can aid research in libraries. An

example of this is the SCARLET Project, a JISC-

funded initiative developed at the University of

Manchester

When users of this tool read digitized materials, the SCARLET tool provides additional information

about the document (text, images, audio, etc) to enrich

the experience

Augmented Reality has additional uses for libraries with local history or other

special collections

Using applications like Layar, a history buff could take a picture of a building

and see, superimposed over it, links to documents about historical events or people

connected with the building

Or see photographs of that same location (using GPS information) as it looked

decades before

2. Discovery

One of the most essential tools libraries offers to

researchers is the research database -- the many

products created to amass all the publications a researcher

might want to look at, with search interfaces for each

Discovery, or research, has evolved from being primarily

independent “ponds” of data -- separate databases, each

individually maintained and with its own unique interface -- to being collected in oceans of bibliographic records and full-

text articles

We started the “ocean” phase with federated search, in which

multiple independent databases were searched at the same time,

and then a set of results returned

We have recently seen the emergence of web-scale discovery systems, vast

single indexes of the content from myriad

smaller database tools

The trend we are seeing now is the move to streams of

information,tailored

dynamically,

in a context-aware way, to the information need of the researcher

For example, tools like Summon offer RSS feeds

A “null search” –click the search button without

typing anything – brings up everything the library is

entitled to

From there, you can use facets to create a subject

and date search (say, everything from 3 months ago to present) for peer-

reviewed materials

You can then use the RSS feed to find new materials, or simply

bookmark the page

More advanced searches might use ISSNs of journals to focus in

on very specific subject areas and keywords, making searches exceptionally precise, while still

fostering a bit of serendipity through the catchall approach

discovery engines take

3. Large scale text

A handful of projects over the past decade

have involved the mass digitization of

books

Google’s project is perhaps the best known

but others have been undertaken by Microsoft, the Internet Archive,

and at smaller scales by library consortia or individual libraries

The recent availability of large collections of

scanned, digitized, and OCR processed books

has led to several interesting and

groundbreaking changes

The first is the largest collection of digitized books, the HathiTrust,

which now holds almost 12.5 million volumes

total, 4.5 million of them in the public domain

Now that a significant number of open-access and public domain books exists, libraries can begin to assess

the ongoing needs for immediate access to their

physical collections

In most cases, a digital copy serves researchers’ needs

This means that libraries can coordinate storage for single

copies of many titles, for long-term preservation and access to the original, but

provide digital access to the text from the HathiTrust

Farther down the road, improved search engines can find books

that match abstract criteria

(as search engines become more adept at discerning

characteristics of text, and not just identifying words on

the page)

In parallel with the rise of large-scale corpuses of

digitized text is the development of tools to

analyze, sift, and sort them

These new, open-source text-mining tools are opening up new avenues for scholarly inquiry, particularly in the humanities

When a scholar can search across large numbers of works by

contemporary authors, analyze dozens, hundreds, or thousands of books for similar phrasings, word selections, or any other

characteristic, what can be learned?

4. Open hardware

The theme of “open” runs

through these technologies

Perhaps the most intriguing is the rise of open hardware – that is, commodity-priced

computer chips that can be easily programmed and

networked together to bring low-cost computing power into

the library

Parallel to open-source software (software that is

available freely, for modification and adaptation), open-source hardware is on

the verge of changing computing in general

Rather than purchasing expensive, vendor-provided hardware for counting traffic

through the library’s front door, for less than $100 a library could build a small

sensor that did the same thing

A network of such sensors, using cheap hardware and software

downloaded from sharing sites, could provide detailed

information about what parts of the library are used during what

time of the day, without using library staff to patrol and count

heads

For more about these and other technologies see Ken

Varnum’s book The Top Technologies Every

Librarian Needs to Know available from Facet

Publishing

http://www.booksonix.co.uk/facetpublishing/9781783300334.pdfBrowse a free

sample here

About the author Kenneth J. Varnum is the Web Systems Manager at the University of Michigan Library, where he manages the library web site and development of new features and functionality.

An active member of the library technology world for 18 years, Ken's research and professional interests range from Drupal and site redesign to user-generated content.

Ken is the author of the Facet Publishing books The Top Technologies Every Librarian Needs to Know and Drupal in Libraries and is the editor of The Network Reshapes the Library.

1. “Augmented Reality” by turkletom used under CC BY 2.02. “Detail of Google Glass” by Antonio Zugaldia used under CC BY 2.03. “Mediated Reality running on Apple iPhone” by Glogger used under CC BY-SA

3.04. “Untitled” by Thomas Leuthard used under CC BY 2.05. “SPEECH Tchoban & Kuznetsov – towninbox” by János Balázs used under CC

BY-SA 2.06. “MSU Libraries Special Collections” by Michigan State University used under CC

BY 2.57. “London Old Bond Street” by Ben Brookbank used under CC BY-SA 2.08. “Pacific Ocean waves crash in like a giant clock, blue forever, San Gregorio State

Beach, California, USA” by Wonderlane used under CC BY 2.09. “Mountain Stream” by Marc Nozell used under CC BY 2.0

10. “RSS Robot Illustration ~ Shout it out!” by Rob McDonald used under CC BY 2.011. “RSS” by Fabricio Zuardi used under CC BY 2.012. “Interlock MCLS Digitization Tour” by Brian Boucheron used under CC BY 2.013. “Google book search notification at Art & Architecture library, Duderstadt

Center2” by Timothy Vollmer used under CC BY 2.014. “ebook” by Daniel Sancho used under CC BY 2.015. “Road” by Moyan Brenn used under CC BY 2.016. “Open” by velkr0 used under CC BY 2.0

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