Author Archive

The Open Library: Realizing the Promise and Mitigating the Peril

July 4th, 2008 by JGrallo

Cindy Gibbon, Access Services Coordinator of Multnomah County Library (MCL), Oregon, opened the discussion about privacy and intellectual freedom in a web 2.0 world by sharing the results of a study of MCL’s users. Some things MCL users said they want:
Notification when requested items are added to the catalog
Public comments and recommendations of books read
Blogs, [...]

In Your Face(book): Social Networking Sites for Engaged Library Services

October 7th, 2007 by JGrallo

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it,” said Alan Kay, father of the laptop computer, the apple/mac graphical user interface, and object oriented programming. Ruminations upon this quote kicked off Gerry McKiernan’s presentation on the social networking site Facebook, during which McKiernan used the Swiss Army knife as metaphor for online [...]

Library 2023: A Provoked Discussion on the Future of Libraries

October 6th, 2007 by JGrallo

Why 2023, you ask? Because that’s when Gregg A. Silvis will probably retire.
The first question Silvis posed to the participants was, What if there were 100,000,000 books available for free in full text?
First the group critiqued NetLibrary’s business model, then brainstormed about a “killer app” that would make ebooks enjoyable to read. Some folks seemed [...]