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GROUP: Emerging Technologies Interest Group CHAIR: Eric Ipsen REPORTER: Maurice York EMAIL: eipsen@mac.com CONFERENCE: midwinter MEETING: Interest Group business meeting ATTENDEES: 50-60 CURRENT ACTIVITIES: I. Maurice York, as past chair, welcomed attendees and gave a brief introduction to the nature of the group and it's purpose. 2005 was a very active year for the IG. Recent activites included two very successful programs at ALA Annual in Chicago: a program entitled "Policies and Practices of Institutional Repositories" that had over 200 attendees and included speakers from Cornell, Florida State, the University of Rochester, Georgia Tech and the University of Pennsylvania. The second program was entitled "Google and Libraries: What's Next for Google Print and Google Scholar." The program included Google's lead project manager for Print and Scholar, as well as the project leads for all five Google libraries, and drew between 500 and 600 attendees. ETIG also co-sponsored two programs at Chicago, one on RFID with the RFID Interest Group and one on Project Shibboleth with the Open Source Systems Interest Group. II. Eric Ipsen, the incoming chair, facilitated a discussion about the primary program being sponsored by the IG for the upcoming conference in New Orleans. The program is titled "Ebook 3.0: Look, listen, and play", a program that will bring together a number of vendors who are working with next-generation ebook technology to provide a forum for them to discuss their approaches to ebooks and why make the case for their business model and technology strategy as it relates to the future of ebooks in libraries. The speakers for the program will be drawn from a pool of the companies PlayAway, Sony, Apple, Oreilly Media (a member of the Open Content Alliance), Overdrive, and Audible.com. A lively discussion followed in which the group talked about the implications of new ebook technologies for libraries and possibilities for what questions to target for the program. A representative from the startup PlayAway in attendance introduced their approach to ebooks by distributing durable hardware devices pre-loaded with single audio books. Further discussion touched on the Open Content Alliance model of sharing content for the community to build services on top of, markup and personalization of ebook content, the question of the "all-in-one" device versus the elegant single-purpose device, standards in file formats and compatibility, and the differences between the public and academic library communities. The group felt this was a topic of strong appeal for programming at Annual. Further details of the discussion can be found on the LITA blog. Maurice York also discussed the second program the group is sponsoring for Annual, a program on podcasting in the classroom and the possibilities for libraries to become involved in this emerging boom technology on college and university campuses. III. The group discussed recent efforts to generate group discussion outside of conference meetings, which in the last couple of years have included a listserv and a forum on WebJunction. The group thought a different approach might meet with more success. A proposal to use LITA-L and especially the LITA blog to greater effect met with general approval. III. The interest group is up for renewal this year. The question of renewal was put before the group, and all were in favor of continuing the IG under its current charter. IV. The group selected a new chair elect for the coming year. FUTURE ACTIVITIES: Complete planning for the two programs for Annual New Orleans, and co-sponsor a program on RFID technology with the RFID Interest Group. The chair also plans to expand between-conference communications for the group and establish steering groups for discussion on leading topics of interest to the IG. |
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