Information and the Future

This is the blog of the Information and the Future task force of the Rolfing Library at Trinity International University. The IF task force exists to explore the role of libraries in the future of Christian higher education.

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

The Library Thing

The Wall Street Journal published a good overview of the web site TheLibraryThing.com.

I've briefly looked at this web site in the past. It is a good example of "tagging" or folksonomies and how they work for organizing books (although I just read today that The Library Thing now also includes LC subject headings). I also think that the data TLT mines is interesting. I'm intrigued by the ability of the web site to reccomend books based on what you have in your library (much as Amazon does based on books you purchased). Could our ILSs ever do that? Would we want them too?

Anybody out there have a TLT account?

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

The Future is Now

Welcome the Information and the Future blog.

The Rolfing Library is forming a task force to educate ourselves on new technology and trends that impact our library, to think through how as Christians we ought to appropriate that technology, and to explore ways to deliver better library service to our campus. We hope that this conversation will eventually go beyond the walls of our library to include other members of the Trinity community and perhaps even our colleagues at other universities.

My purpose in creating this blog is to give members of our task force a chance to share their thoughts and questions on this topic. It is also a place where we can share links with each other to helpful resources or interesting discussions we find elsewhere on the web. It is also a chance for all of us to explore "blogging" as a form of communication.

So, IF task force members, please feel free to post anything you consider relevant. Also if you have suggestions for other ways this blog may be useful share those as well.