This week’s 4cast:
1. ‘Tis the Season for Looking Back
December brings the usual assortment of year-end reviews, including many that are either technology or library-related.
- 2006 Web Technology Trends (Read/WriteWeb)
- Ten Stories that Shaped 2006 (LISNews)
- 2006 Year-End Google Zeitgeist (Google)
- Geek to Live: The best apps of 2006 (Lifehacker)
2. ‘Tis Also the Season for Looking Forward
December also brings the usual assortment of predictions of what we’ll be talking about in 2007 and beyond.
- Gartners Top 10 Predictions (Stephen’s Lighthouse)
- 7 Search Evolutions for ’07 (Business Wire)
- 10 Hot Trends (It’s All Good)
- The Six Biggest New Ideas in Chat (TechCrunch)
3. A Cat That Barks is Not a Cat
Stephen Abram has written an illuminating three-part series of articles about libraries and their attempts to compete with the likes of Google. Part 1 explores the strengths and weaknesses of Google; part 2 examines the strengths and weaknesses of libraries; and part 3 lays out some strategies that libraries can pursue in order to “get our cat to roar.”
- Waiting for Your Cat to Bark – Competing with Google and its Ilk (Part 1) (SirsiDynix Webinar)
- Waiting for Your Cat to Bark – Competing with Google and its Ilk (Part 2) (SirsiDynix Webinar)
- Waiting for Your Cat to Bark – Competing with Google and its Ilk (Part 3) (SirsiDynix Webinar)
4. The Revolution Will Be Freely Distributed
Casey Bisson, a library technology manager at Plymouth State University, recently won a Mellon Fellowship for his open source, WordPress-based OPAC called WPopac. The part that’s causing a big stir in the library community is that he plans to use some of the money to purchase Library of Congress MARC records and distribute them to libraries for free.
- Bisson and open data – let the revolution begin! (LibraryThing)
- The really great thing about WPopac (librarian.net)
- Open data is not the point (One Big Library.)
- The Mellon rewards WPOpac… and opens an Open Data door? (Talking with Talis podcast)
