Program Outline

Trends, Fads or Folly: Spotting the Library Trends That Really Matter

Soaring to Excellence

Friday, April 11, 2008

Program Description

This program will investigate new trends in libraries such as Second Life and other virtual environments, patron-created folksonomies, and “New Ways of Reading” Are these trends? Just fads? Plain old Folly? We’ll deal with a central question in this teleconference: To what extent do Libraries need to quickly adopt new technologies into their programs? Or, “just because you can do it, does that mean that you should?”

Program Outline

1. Librarianship in Virtual Environments

Second Life
Future of work in virtual worlds
Virtual Worlds – definition and descriptions
- Basic Characteristics
- Terminology
Virtual Environment vs. virtual world
- Changing nature of the community
- Morphing libraries, museums, education and theme parks
- Virtual Worlds are fun!
Librarians as early adopters of this technology
Second Life Tutorial – how to access, navigate and use Second Life
Basic Demographics and various Virtual Worlds
Four traditional library types- virtual libraries are the forth type
Summary
- Need for collaboration
- Knowledge of community

2. Folksonomies

Definition
Tag Clouds
Participants in folksonomies
- Advantages and disadvantages of so many groups having control and influence
- Tags, ratings, and comments
- User supplied metadata
- End of the romantic library?
Future of tagging
Pew Survey results
The future of tagging
Should your library be doing this now?
How important is this to you right now?
Online catalogs using folksonomies