Sunday, February 11, 2007

Forget everything I said last time...

Remember this from Bumptop in a previous post? Was a sweeeeeet desktop. Well, the problem with being at Talis is I'm surrounded by people far more resourceful/intelligent than myself (though not as handsome/funny - you win some, you lose some ;-).

The day after, Rob wanders over and tell me he pointed to that 6 months ago on one of the internal wiki's (Rob sparked my interest in this "interaction space" malarky - which I would readily admit to having a puppy-like enthusiasm for rather than any ability to demonstrate genuine knowledge). Already feeling slightly dented, Simon mails out this on "multi-touch driven computer screens". Go on, click it...(and ignore the first 20 seconds advert).

First thing I thought was "wow" - that eclipses my bumptop/Wii remote vision.
Second thing was that the same metaphor as was being used for Bumptop (lasso'ing icons, icons having weight, etc) was beign used in this method - which I found interesting. As was some of the facet-driven looking stuff (LivePlasma-like).
Thirdly, I thought "big screen - I want one" (I'm in the market for one - PS3 is soon!). Which reminded me about OLEDs (organic TV's) which looks like the next wave - you'll literally "paste these to your wall" - imagine all those interactive promotions or dynamic shelving info scattered through the library, constantly changing, constantly prompting users to engage with stock, explore this, etc...

Anyhow, the point - I did a talk at LJMU a year ago to post-grads, talking about professional development. One point I made was concerning building a network to share professional reading, and the social dynamics of this network (too much to describe here). At Talis, it can be an avalanche at times but my professional development/knowledge has grown massively, especially the last 24 months. And not only is it important to passively read this stuff, but to comment - to exercise those old braincells, either with physical (e.g. at coffee machine, at desk, at pub) or electronic interaction.

I was wondering how much of this interaction occurs in uk libraries? Would I be as professionally aware working in a library today as I am working at Talis? I don't know - I'd anticipate getting anything from 15-30 articles/posts/blogs/websites/podcasts passed to me in a typical day, + being on the periphary of many challanging conversations (see earlier point re: resourceful/intelligent people). What sort of volume occurs in a public library? How does your professional development network work and support you - or do you have to motivate yourself, and hunt this stuff down? I take this level of interaction as granted now - is that right, or should I be counting my blessings...?

PS: The link to the funky interaction screen video came with the subject "Imagine this applied to catalogue searching...". I think that says everything about why my job is, at times, just great!

PPS: There's a good article supporting the Han video here.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Good post - and a good (and for me well-timed) question - "how much of this interaction occurs in uk libraries?"

In MY library (UK academic) the impression I get is that very little professional development interaction is going on. We are a multi-site institution and there's very little professional interaction across sites. So there may be local discussions going on but nothing is being shared. We have some social networking tools in place (blogs and wikis) but very little take-up. I suspect I'm interested in the social dynamics of the information sharing network that you described as "too much to describe here"