Tales from the Techie side

I recently attended the Internet Librarian convention in Monterey California. This gathering of about 1200 librarians, webmasters, and library technology people meets every year to share the latest electronic tools, gadgets and search strategies. I love to attend to pick up ideas for the library websites and for Internet searching.

This year, the “hot topics” were “mash-ups” and social networking. For the non-geeks among us, a “mash-up” is a webpage that takes information from two or more other sites and combines it together. For example, this site http://www.housingmaps.com/ takes the apartment listings from Craig’s List and maps the entries using Google maps. There were other examples that used library circulation data (like most popular books, or new books) and combined it with Amazon.com pictures or reviews.

Libraries are also getting involved in social network programs. They are setting up shop in MySpace and Facebook and other networks. They’re using Flickr to collect and share photographs. They’re podcasting (check out “The Book of Life” http://www.jewishbooks.blogspot.com/ ), videocasting, and integrating instant messaging into their reference services.

There were also a couple of sessions on hand-held/mobile issues. I’m curious how many of our students or faculty would be interested in searching the catalog from their hand-held units. If there is a demand, I can look into setting that up.

New ways for searching the Internet was another major topic. I’ll post some tips that I learned in another post.