Library Web Chic

There are three really interesting articles in the October issue of Wired.
One article is about WiMax (aka the 802.16 wireless standard). So what
makes WiMax better than Wi-Fi (802.11b/g). Well two things. First,
WiMax will go a much greater distance than Wi-Fi, 30 miles according to
the article. Second, it has higher data transfer rates 75 mbps. Analyst
anticipate that the first WiMax products will come out starting next
year and currently several companies are piloting the technology in
both rural (Montana) and urban areas (New York City). WiMax is seen as
a last mile solution in places like African nations and China where
wiring doesn't currently exist. Personally I see it just as viable for
rural portions of the US like Maine, Montanta, Alaska, etc. It also is
another broadband option for those of us with access to DSL or Cable
modem

The
second article is entitled “Point. Shoot. Kiss it Good-Bye”. This
article talks about the trying to build a digital photo archive. What
it discusses that is of the most interest to me is the fact that it be
able to find the photos you want you need some type of metadata. In the
past, these tags have been applied by a media cataloger. However, the
articles talks about new ways to add metadata. It also discusses other
ways to search for and retrieve a picture: two of the most interesting
being scene and facial recognition. All of this points to the fact that
more media is being created that users need to search. Because of this
change, libraries will need to adapt to these types of media being part
of what users what to search for as well.

The third article is called “The Long Tail” and it discusses
the fact that we are moving to a world where the niche content markets
will become dominant. What do I mean by this? Well, in terms of the
entertainment industry this means that to be profitability is not
longer completely dependant of popularity. The articles gives several
examples: Amazon.com, Netflix, and Rhapsody as distributors of niche
content. So how does all this happen? Well, Amazon.com is the best
example. When you buy a book on Amazon you get reccomendations about
other books you might like. The reccomendations can very easily be out
of the mainstream. This is what happened to a book entitled “Touching
the Void”. The Wired
article describes how
this books written in 1988, was a modest success but then virtually
disappered. However, when John Krauker's “Into Thin Air” came out and
was a success “Touching the Void” resurfaced and now is outselling
“Into Thing Air” 2 to 1. Reading this article closely I realized that
is only emphasizes more the fact that for libraries it's not what you
have on your physical shelves. Its what you have access two. If
libraries can make good reccomendations to their users and get those
reccomended materials to users in a timely fashion then we will be
serving our mission in a whole new and more effective and efficient way.