“book is dead”, “libraries are obsolete” and other myths

1. The book is dead.” Wrong: More books are produced in print each year than in the previous year. One million new titles will appear worldwide in 2011 (…) And the book business is booming in developing countries like China and Brazil. However it is measured, the population of books is increasing, not decreasing, and certainly not dying
2. “We have entered the information age.”  No one would deny that the modes of communication are changing rapidly, perhaps as rapidly as in Gutenberg’s day, but it is misleading to construe that change as unprecedented
3. “All information is now available online.” The absurdity of this claim is obvious to anyone who has ever done research in archives. Only a tiny fraction of archival material has ever been read, much less digitized. Google books has digitized only 12% of the existing books.
4. Libraries are obsolete. Everywhere in the country (the US)  librarians report that they have never had so many patrons. (…) Libraries never were warehouses of books. While continuing to provide books in the future, they will function as nerve centers for communicating digitized information at the neighborhood level as well as on college campuses.
5.  The future is digital. True enough, but misleading. In 10, 20, or 50 years, the information environment will be overwhelmingly digital, but the prevalence of electronic communication does not mean that printed material will cease to be important. (…) new modes of communication do not displace old ones, at least not in the short run

Darton, Robert. 5 myths about the “information age”. the Chronicle review.  April 17, 2011. Online at:
http://chronicle.com/article/5-Myths-About-the-Information/127105/

Illustration: Chronicle Review

Conference slides available: NFAIS 2011

The 2011 annual conference of the NFAIS (National Federation of Advanced Information Services), was dedicated to Information obesity, abundance, overload, tsunami, etc.

Some of the slides are freely available, including those of brilliant speakers like Rafael Sidi (Elsevier Sciverse), Victor Camlek (Springer), Dan Pollock (Nature), etc.

http://www.nfais.org/page/292-program-2011-nfais-annual-conference

Is your Library Mobile?

Prospective:

“In the near future, mobile versions of a library’s web site will be as common and as expected as the library’s current desktop site is today“

Laurie Bridges, Hannah Gascho Rempel, and Kimberly Griggs. “Making the case for a fully mobile library web site: from floor maps to the catalog.” Reference Services Review 38.2 (2010): 309-20.
http://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/jspui/handle/1957/16437

Web: this is the end….

… of the Golden Age!

According analysts at Forrester, let’s prepare for the Splinternet.

“We are entering a new world full of mobile computing devices, iphones, social web, television connecting to web and so on. (…)

This means the standardised internet is fraying. The web is cracking. This splinters the web as a unified system – meaning each system, device and application will have its own format and network and technology. Internet’s 15 years of golden age is coming to an end.”

“In the splinternet world the website per se becomes less important, so start understanding and trying out different platforms and devices. Choose those you think is useful in your information management and integrate them in your own unique way“

“The content is important but it is no longer the king“

“Information management means not just managing content but community, customer experience management and archiving and retrieval management. It’s time to move on to web experience management – WEM“

Tim Walters, interviewed by Information World Review, 30/04/10.

http://www.iwr.co.uk/technology-and-solutions-/3010200/Prepare-for-the-Splinternet

Library blogs are not dead (yet)

The author studied more than 600 “liblogs”, what some call the biblioblogosphere.

There were a number of interesting partial trends. In 2009, the silly claim that “blogging is dead” seemed to have increased — and it was hard not to notice that the 500 blogs in his Bloglines account weren’t requiring as much time to scan as they had a year before.

The bottom line: Library people seem to be starting fewer new blogs and walking away more often; people are posting fewer posts — but still they blog

Crawford, Walt. But still they blog. Online, Vol.34, N°2, March/April 2010. pp. 58-61

Good way of blogging

http://www.ourblook.com/

I like this website (devoted to journalism) because it is a good compromise between blogs and books.

It combines the “flexibility and accessibility of the Web with the strengths of traditional book publishing protocols focused on documentation and shelf life“.

Information obesity

Phenomena is well-known but figures are still impressive…

• 40% of those surveyed said they had the information they needed less than 75% of the time
• 60% of respondents rated dealing with too many different types of information a bigger problem than dealing with too much information
• Nearly half of the respondents said they spend more than 25% of their time managing information overload
• Combined, the total paper and digital content in enterprises, governments, schools, and small businesses around the world will grow 67% a year
• etc.

Gantz, J., Boyd, A. & Dowling, S. Cutting the Clutter: Tackling Information Overload At the Source. IDC White paper: March 2009. 12 p. Available online: http://www.xerox.com/downloads/usa/en/n/nr_IDC_White_Paper_on_Information_Overload.pdf

Solutions againt Information overload

• A 2008 report by Basex claimed that American companies lost about $650B/year in worker productivity due to information overload

• One calculation suggests that only 8-9% of the 34GB/day of information intake is actual news.
• n fact, a 2005 article by New Scientist suggests that information overload affects concentration more than marijuana use

“Much of info overload can be managed or even eliminated by using a more efficient means of filtering information channels. Using better search techniques, suitable information discovery tools (e.g., such as YourVersion), filtering tools, web agents, and structured idea management tools (e.g., mind maps) will go a long way towards this goal. Technology has only just started to help us filter out the information we don’t want, in an easy to apply manner.”

Raj. Is Informaton overload destroying our productivity?. Posted on: http://www.yourversion.com/blog/is-information-overload-destroying-our-productivity/. 31st December 2009.

Many companies are in denial about information overload

Here below, an interesting article on this well-known phenomena, with a list of direct impact on organization productivity.

Some extracts:

“Researchers now say that the stress of not being able to process
information as fast as it arrives – combined with the personal and
social expectation that, say, you will answer every email – can deplete
and demoralise you”

“There are even claims that the relentless cascade of information lowers
people’s intelligence”

“Most organisations unknowingly pay a high price as individuals struggle
to manage the information glut. For one thing, productive time is lost
as employees deal with information of limited value”

“Another set of problems involves the constant interruptions we face,
whatever the value of the content”

“Another eerily familiar, if rarely articulated, consequence of
information overload is now receiving attention from researchers: the
delay in decision-making when you don’t know whether or when someone will answer an email”

Read more: Paul Hemp, The Guardian, Online: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/sep/24/information-overload-email-blackberry