Kochtanek, Matthews and Hirshon: Technology and Library Information Systems

Of the two readings, Kochtanek and Matthews (K & M) serves as a succinct survey of the development of Library Information Systems (LIS), principally over the past 50 years. It also gives a background on the accompanying technologies and other platforms that have developed along the way. Where K & M leave off, Hirshon’s well-written article, "Environmental Scan", takes us from where we stand now and shows us where the various technologies will lead us, and what the impact on the field and our society will be.

K & M traces the origins of the first library systems and follows that thread as it leads to the development of integrated library systems, online databases, web-based resources, digital library collections and e-books and e-journals. As they explain this rather detailed and complicated history, they offer broader backdrops to give context to these evolutions by naming the three stages of library automation and also the four eras of development of integrated library systems. One cannot discuss these without mentioning the technologies that sprang up along with them, and the article deals with hardware, software, and telecom developments, and goes into detail how the rise of the World Wide Web has brought many, if not all, of these disparate applications together. As the authors state, “Each of these application areas has had a different gestation and development period, the web as an access and distribution medium has served to weld these back together at the seams” (Kochtanek and Matthews, p.9).

The most gripping portion of Hirshon’s essay “Environmental Scan” is in the introduction where he cites the work of two futurists, Paul Saffo and Raymond Kurzweil. Saffo explains the pitfalls of trying to forecast the future, and, as Hirshon summarizes, “it is not the pace, but the simultaneity and cross-impact of curves that will make a forecast inaccurate,” (Hirshon, p. 3). Indeed, envisioning the future would seem like a fool’s errand, but that is exactly what Kurzweil attempts to do. He posits that the discovery rate of new technologies is on a dramatic uphill curve, and that the curve will only grow steeper over time. This leads him to make such claims as, “in another 15 years your life expectancy will keep rising every year faster than you’re aging,” (Hirshon, p.4). This is the age we are in, and Hirshon uses the futurist backdrop to navigate us through five areas in which technology will change the operations of the library in the near future: societal and economic issues, technological issues, education and learning issues, information content issues, and library leadership and organizational issues. Each of these articles lay the basic groundwork from which to understand where library information systems have come from and where they are going. For the novice entering the field, the two articles are indispensable.

My question for the group is whether they think Mullen Library falls under the bleeding edge, leading edge, in the wedge, or trailing edge category that K & M mention in terms of adapting to new technologies? Or, for the students who work in other local libraries, where do they think the library they work in falls?

References

Kochtanel and Matthews (2002). Ch 1. The evolution of LIS and enabling technologies. In Library Information Systems; Libraries Unlimited.

Arnold Hirshon (2008). “Environmental Scan: A report on trends and technologies affecting libraries.” NELINET, Inc. Retrieved from blackboard.cua.edu.