Trendspotting for Libraries

HOW CAN WE BE SURE WE’LL REMEMBER OUR DIGITAL PAST?
[SOURCE: The Christian Science Monitor, AUTHOR: Chris Gaylord]
Losing personal files can be upsetting. But failing to protect academic, government, or corporate data could erase irreplaceable pieces of history, says Francine Berman. She co-chairs a newly formed panel of experts tasked to ask how the world can protect its digital past, and answer a more nagging question: Who’s going to pay for it? Unfortunately, she says, the same culture that makes creating our digital lives so easy, makes protecting that data very difficult. Consumers expect faster computers, smarter software, and new gadgets every few years.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0214/p13s02-stct.html
(Via Benton’s…2-14-08. Use link to get the full Christian Science Monitor Story–it discusses both machine obsolescence and the cost of maintaining the files.)

From tompeters.com today: (DNK = Do Not Know and connects to a recent prior statement about CIA revelations re Iran)

Reward “DNK” When You DNK

Of course you don’t want to reward “I didn’t bother to …” laziness, but you do want to reward—Big Time—truth-telling. Hence, cheer publicly the person who admits, in front of a boss, that he or she “does not know” the facts here, or the answer to this or that. In fact, …, make a game (serious game!) out of identifying the “DNKs” regarding any analysis or proposed action. Frankly, good inventories of DNKs may be far more important to success than inventories of DKs.(bolding added)

I thought this seemed an interesting angle to pursue, when examining a possible project or activity. It likely has an opposing corollary–of more imminent danger to librarians– trying to list too much before the first action is taken? [Peters has an oft-repeated slogan--"Ready, Fire, Aim!"]

I came across this sidebar in the November 2007 issue of PC World (here’s where they talk about an earlier version on their blog) about a site/service that HP set up.  CloudPrint is an internet-based service that you can use to store print jobs for later printing.  The idea is that you may be at home or a coffee shop (or in your hotel room) — somewhere you don’t have access to a ‘free’ printer (or USB drive, etc).  It works like this:  upload your document from your laptop while sipping your favorite coffee drink at the lcoal cafe, they assign you a code, and later when you reach a place with a printer (I’m thinking library here in case you aren’t so good at guessing games), you can access and print your document from the CloudPrint site using the code they gave you earlier.  In the process of uploading and downloading-to-print it gets converted to a PDF so you don’t need to worry about the computer you’re using to print from having the right software.

There are drawbacks certainly (you can’t edit a pdf so when you access it from the library and suddenly notice you have misspelled your own name on that copy of your resume; you’re out of luck, and computers on both ends must have Internet access) and I’m not sure how many people need this service, but it’s such a simple thing for libraries to do that could potentially increase their visibility.

Oh, yeah.  The visibility part (i.e. the punchline):  you can enter a zip code at the CloudPrint website and see a list of free printers in your area.  When I tried this there were none within a 50 mile radius of Olympia, or changing locations, within 50 miles of Seattle either.  Sad, so very sad.