Nice Wrap Ups for 2005 & Some Predictions

Such great blog reading this last few days as 2005 rolled into 2006. 2005 was an incredible year professionally, acdemically and personally. Thanks to all I worked with, presented with and just plain got to sit and talk with! I am looking forward to 2006: the end of my PhD coursework, starting my dissertation, more blogging here and for ALA Techsource, publishing the Library Technology Report I’m working on and a few presentations here and there.

Here are some nice wrap ups I came across in my aggregator:

David Warlick on year end reflections.

Steve Lawson on 2005 and technologies, libraries and LIFE! (Congrats on the new addition to the Lawson clan!)

Finally, don’t miss this 2006 predictions for Web 2.0 from Dion Hinchcliffe: http://web2.wsj2.com/web_20_predictions_for_2006.htm I really like #7:

Web 2.0 Will Enter the Public Consciousness – Many people are already just using Web 2.0 software and not talking about it with labels. They do sense something different has happened but they don’t understand how their Web software got so good so suddenly. The advent of Ajax last year and really excellent back end support like Ruby on Rails has changed the nature of Web software forever. The mainstream press is now onto this and like John Battelle predicted, Web 2.0 will probably make the cover of a mainstream news magazine this year. The faucet flow of new Web 2.0 software will turn into a torrent as the lightweight programming models and languages that support Web 2.0’s less-is-more-and-higher-quality ideas make it incredibly easy to create new online software. And everyone, and I mean everyone, will start to notice this and learn the name.

This is important for us as librarians because we need to make sure our web services reflect what’s happening with web 2.0 AND we need to make sure we are fulfilling our roles as gudes and instructors with all of this new software. Please put this on your 2006 Library to do list as well:

Evaluate staff and public training to incorporate web 2.0 technologies. Your users may already be using some tools but others may benefit from instruction. For example, no digital camera class should be without a flickr module!