Why E-Books Failed In 2000, And What It Means For 2010

An article by Michael Mace from Business Insider, Why E-Books Failed In 2000, And What It Means For 2010, looks at the current state of e-books and e-book devices in light of earlier failures. It's a very useful listing of the economic and behavior barriers that have kept e-books from taking off thus far, along with Mace's suggestions on what has changed and what issues still remain. Great for getting to the heart of this enduring issues for authors, publishers, the reading public, and, of course, libraries.

Taking it to them

Here's a recent post from the 21st Century Library blog that touches on both library staff competencies and how library services are impacted by generational technology competencies. In particular, I think it makes a good case that one of the technology skills we all need is the ability to keep learning about technologies (despite barriers and limits we all face) in order to prepare ourselves and our libraries for generational changes already here and growing in dimension.

TechTrends Midwinter 2010

Here's an archived, hour-long ALA TechSource webinar entitled "TechTrends Midwinter 2010." It presents four speakers discussing technologies and larger trends from the exhibit floor and elsewhere at MidWinter.

I also meant to post a link to the LITA Top Technology Trends discussion from Midwinter - this is the twice annual update from the Top Technology Trends Committee. Here's a link to the LITA blog that has a summary of the conversation as well as a link to video of the event - http://litablog.org/2010/01/alamwttt/ It also offers a link to all the links in the conversation.

Enjoy your trend discovery!

Listen to Library Tech Experts!

There's a new series of library tech books, The Tech Set series, coming out from Neal-Schuman in March 2010. Whether you decide to buy the books or not, have a listen to a collection of podcasts from authors in the series at Tech Set Author Podcasts - The Tech Set. You can use the scrolling menu on the left to see which author goes with which book, and also find more information on the whole set. The podcasts are set as conversations between the author and series editor Ellyssa Kroski. I think they are great introductions to the topics covered in the series, and I hope you'll find them useful