More from Information Online 2009

I'll be posting more of my thoughts from Information Online 2009 over the next week, but some people have already done such a good job summarising and commenting on some of the keynotes that I encourage you to read their posts as well.

Anticipating the Future of Libraries (and many other things!): Andy Hines, futurist, adjunct professor of Future Studies at University of Houston
Andy gave a fantastic presentation on the following trends/challenges:
1. Values
2. Demography
3. Lifestyle
4. Technology
5. Work
6. Education
Strawberries of Integrity posted an excellent summary here, please read it!

Libraries as Happiness Engines - Liz Lawley, director of the Lab for Social Computing at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
Liz had some very interesting thoughts on how taking a gaming/fun approach to libraries, work and more can increase happiness AND productivity (shock!). She identified the elements of happiness as:

• satisfying work to do
• the experience of being good at something
• time spent with people we like
• the chance to be part of something bigger than yourself

And points out that many of these are more accessible in the online gaming world than real life - no wonder people like games! More on how this applies to libraries etc here.

Liz also pointed out Ravelry as an example of an object-oriented network - where the network is not based just around people but a particular object (in this case yarn and knitting patterns etc). She suggests that the next step for libraries is to turn catalogues into this kind of social network. I think we (publishers) should turn our online research collections into them too! More on that from my previous post.

Anna Pearson has also been writing up some of her thoughts on Information Online...have a look at those too!

io2009
#io2009