I found an interesting article by Butch Lazorchak published in the The Signal, a newsletter devoted to digital preservation, published electronically by the Library of Congress. Lazorchak writes:
"In the midst of the South By Southwest Interactive Conference, I daydream about a time (ideally in the not-so-distant future) when librarians, archivists and museum professionals (LAMs) rule the world.
"Delusional talk you might say, spoken by someone with more than a little self-interest in ultimate LAM domination. But the halls of SXSWi are full of conversations about “big data,” “cloud computing,” “web usability,” “search and access” and a host of other subjects that are squarely in the domain of today’s information professionals."
Lazorchak also writes of "self-organizing libraries, archives and museums." Really? Self-organizing? How will that work?
He also predicts that librarians of the future may serve as Digital Repository Managers, Data Curators, User Experience Designers, Emergent Technologies Librarians, Directors of Digital Strategy, Open Source Evangelists and many more positions.
Lazorchak describes a brave new world. I doubt if all his predictions will come true but, if only half of them succeed, the result will be a fascinating environment where more information is made available to more people than ever before, probably at far lower prices than what we spend today.
You can read Butch Lazorchak's article at http://goo.gl/DF60Q.
I'd suggest you also click on the link in his article that points to the South By Southwest Interactive Conference (SXSWi) that is being held this week. It is a fascinating conference that I hope to attend someday. It isn't directly related to genealogy so I probably won't write about it here. However, if you have an interest in using technology to serve the public, you will find the topics of this conference to be very interesting indeed.
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