PO’IPU – How readers will use the library to access information in the future was a hot topic for the 160 librarians attending the Hawaii Library Association’s 2000 Annual Conference last weekend. The librarians staying at the Sheraton Kaua’i gathered
PO’IPU – How readers will use the library to access information in the future
was a hot topic for the 160 librarians attending the Hawaii Library
Association’s 2000 Annual Conference last weekend.
The librarians staying
at the Sheraton Kaua’i gathered from across the Hawaiian Islands, with visitors
and speakers from the Pacific Islands, Japan and the mainland also
attending
In addition to a wide variety of classes for training of local
librarians, speakers offered an eclectic range of talks on the use of
information. They ranged from Lama Kaohelaulii of the Ni’ihau School of Kekaha,
who told the history of the school where lessons are taught in the ancient
Hawaiian language, to Gerald Bohnet and Jean Langi of Brigham Young
University-Hawai’i (topic: Genealogy in the Information Age”), to a look at the
status quo of digital “electronic books” replacing their paper-based
siblings.
David Brier, a systems librarian from the University of
Hawai’i-Manoa’s Hamilton Library, is the lead organizer of the event and the
president of the Hawai’i Library Association.
Brier said the annual event
has steadily grown in size and scope over the past decade, with librarians from
Australia and New Zealand expected at next year’s conference. He is also
leading an effort to bring the American Library Association’s annual convention
to Hawaii.
As part of this effort, Brier invited Gerald Hodges, director
of membership at the American Library Association’s (ALA) headquarters in
Chicago, to Kauai.
Hodges said the theme of the conference, “Information
for a Lifetime,” focused on readers using the library through all stages of
life.
To get his point across, Hodges handed out flashy pens from the ALA with “@your
library” stamped on them. Clicking the pen brings up words to place before the
Internet-sounding suffixes, including “Plug into the future.”
Plugging into
the future of libraries was the main topic of conversation for keynote speaker
Michael Keller of Stanford University on Friday.
Keller described the
expanding role of librarians in the 21st century. He knows the subject well,
for Keller is the de facto CEO of a $55 million information-based consortium at
Stanford that includes serving as the university librarian, as the university’s
director of academic information resources, and as the publisher of HighWire
Press on the Internet and the Stanford University Press.
The renowned
educational institution sits squarely in the middle of Silicon Valley and was
the launching pad for the student-created Yahoo.com, the multi-billion dollar
Internet search engine.
Keller said the world is in a time of information
explosion, with the use of the Internet and other new digital technologies
inside libraries growing along with the traditional use of books, newspapers
and paper-based reference materials.
“There’s an odd thing happening”
amidst the rapid growth of the Internet, Keller said, commenting on the growing
amount of information available on paper thanks to the computer-based desktop
publishing revolution that began in the mid-1980s.
This information
escalation is expanding the role of the librarian, and the advent of the
digital age has made “the lives of readers better overall,” he added.
However, “the big challenge with so many resources is to avoid redundancy,
while producing more and better services to readers,” Keller said.
For
example, Keller said, Internet statistics show that there’s 1.2 billion Web
pages listed within the Google.com search engine database alone. Just indexing
20 percent of this information would provide an amazing amount of accessible
knowledge, he said, though the task is essentially way beyond the time and
budget of librarians.
The answer to the quandary may roll out at libraries
in the near future. Look for information-searching friendly laptops,
Internet-based e-books, less costly Internet connection services, and other
near-term advances that will help fuse the traditional use of books in the
library with the Internet, he said.
Over the next 25 years, more
sophisticated technology will allow advanced and more personal ways to plug
into information. Readers may be wearing computers like clothing, have tiny
computer screens hooked on the frames of their glasses, be carrying around
lightweight and small Internet “appliances,” and even have embedded microchips
inside their bodies as information hookups, Keller said.
New media manager Chris Cook can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 222) and [
HREF=”mailto:ccook@pulitzer.net”>ccook@pulitzer.net]
