Libraries=Books, or do they?

I've just written a post on the RISG blog that was provoked by this article: Libraries for a Postliterate Society.

It argues that reading longer works of fiction and non-fiction is in decline and that libraries need to legitimise non-print materials, services and programs.

It got me thinking though, about whether a library in which books do not play a fundamental role in the reason for their existence, ceases to be a library? Are books fundamental to a library?

Go over and read If Libraries=Books, Then Where to Now? if you're interested.

Testing Twitterfeed

I've just set up twitterfeed to automatically tweet new blog posts. Nothing to see here. Move on.

Libraries Belong in the Public Sphere!

In a burst of inspiration fueled by the 2nd Public Sphere event, Government 2.0: Policy and Practice, I wrote a lengthy post on the RISG blog exploring the relationship between public libraries and Government 2.0, creatively titled, Libraries and the Public Sphere. You should read it if you're into that stuff.

The Role of Libraries

I was excited to read John Blyberg, Kathryn Greenhill and Cindi Trainor's thoughts about the role of libraries in The Darien Statements on the Library and Librarians. You or I might not agree with everything they say but I think libraries are facing radical changes in the coming decade (or less?) and it's fantastic to see the debate being carried out in public.

If we can get some perspective on the fundamental role of libraries then we can really start focussing our time and resources on the most important aspects of libraries and librarianship.

I wrote a short post about the statements on the RISG blog.

RSS 4 Libraries

Here is the presentation I recently gave at the Reference @ the Metcalfe Seminar about using RSS feeds in Libraries. It covered three areas - professional development, connecting with your community and syndicating content on your web site.

I tried to demystify RSS and show people that it's very easy to get started using this technology. It's a relatively simple, time saving tool non-techies.

RSS At Your Library

View more presentations from Martin.

RSS is only a starting point. As libraries start employing staff with a few more technical skills (programmers, developers, etc.) we can start taking advantage of all the data that's available and growing in the cloud. If you want to see a glimpse of this type of what this might look like have a look at Paul Hagon's slides from his talk at the seminar. He gave a fascinating talk about how he's combining the data from the National Library with the services and APIs available from online services like del.icio.us and Flickr to create exciting new ways for users to discover the NLA collections.