Thing #5 again

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Originally uploaded by National Library of New Zealand

I thought I would upload another "photo", this time using Blogger itself, which was a bit more difficult than I thought, and I still haven't got it quite right. When I posted the Christmas image on the 23rd, I had trouble. I had the compose element turned off (wysiwyg or what you see is what you get), so was having to enter html manually, which can be frustrating if you get just one thing wrong.

It is not exactly a photo. I wanted to bring your attention to a 'set' of responses from people who attended the 2007 LIANZA Conference, to the statement 'In 2017 libraries will be...'. I became aware of it through an e-list I'm subscribed to and thought it was a great idea. The responses range from, whatever we want them to be, just exactly as they are today, virtual, digitised, downloadable, run by visionary, well-trained staff, run by avatars, run by robots.

ALIA used the same idea for its Library and Information Technicians Conference. Click here.


For the record, in 2017 I think libraries will be physical spaces, virtual places, community hubs, for recreation and to find varied forms of information. Librarians will be agreggators, facilitators, helpers, advisers. This might be true to some extent already, but I don't think the full picture has been realised yet. In 2017, libraries will still exist, but be bigger (I don't necessarily mean larger spaces, rather in the role they play as information providers) and better.