Anticipating the Future of Librarians: Understanding Trends and Staying Relevant in the Digital Age

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Anticipating the Future of Librarians
Understanding Trends and Staying Relevant in the
Digital Age

• Andy Hines
• ALIA January 22, 2009

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About Social Technologies
What Global research and consulting firm
specializing in the integration of foresight,
strategy, and innovation Where Offices in
Washington, DC, London, and Shanghai How A
holistic, long-term perspective combined with
actionable business recommendations Who Leading
companies, government agencies, and nonprofits
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• Why Foresight?

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Emerging Challenges How Will You Respond?
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VALUES

• Values Change Predictably
• Follow the Rules, Achieve, and Whats It All Mean
• Evolving over Times
• Shifts from Values Changes

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Values Change Predictably

• Poor countries focused on survival show
  traditional values and resist change
• Middle-income countries focused on belonging show
  modern values and embrace change
• Affluent countries focused on self-actualization
  show postmodern values and are skeptical about
  change

Source A Hines based on Inglehart
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Follow the Rules, Achieve, and Whats It all Mean?
Achieve!
Whats it all mean?
Follow the Rules
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• Evolving over Time

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Changes from the Values Shifts

• Rejection of authority and disenchantment with
  science and technology
• Revaluing of tradition
• Growing insistence on interesting and meaningful
  work
• Greater tolerance
• More time thinking about the meaning and purpose
  of life
• Increasingly sensitive to imposed risk

• Increasing urbanization
• Growing occupational specialization
• Higher levels of formal education
• Relatively high levels of social mobility
• Emphasis on achieved rather than ascribed social
  status
• Diminishing sex role specialization
• High standards of material well-being
• Much higher life expectancies
• Rising levels of mass political participation

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Demography

• Gen Y and Practical Happiness
• People Are Not Well.Behaving!

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Gen Y and Practical Happiness

• Family, friends and faith..but dont forget
  pleasure
• Dont be fooled by appearances

Relationships are everything to me.
I never met my best friend in person
I'm in control of my own happiness and I can
change anything that makes me unhappy.
How practical will show up With big issues
care, but only give time where they can make a
difference With friends. Self-express, but peek
over shoulder With parents. Parents annoying, but
useful . With fame. Want to be famous, but see
the odds With technology. Technology is a means,
not an end. Comfortable and natural, the leading
edge makes little distinction between virtual and
f2f.
I have the power to change things I believe
inand that will make me happy.
Things happen for a reason and we should be
thankful/ grateful for having had the experience.
Im happy when I have the freedom to create,
using technology as an enabler for
self-expression and connection.
I'm going to plan to be happy and I'm going to
succeed by following my plan.
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People Are Not, Well.Behaving!

• Retirement is an obsolescent concept
• Second childhoods Boomerangs kidults,
  rejuveniles
• Women increasingly in charge
• Traditional family on the endangered species list

Image www.senirojournal.com
.
Image Pete Jelliffe (Flickr)
Image Photos.com
Image Photos.com
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Lifestyle

• Co-creation
• Enoughness
• Localization
• Ethical Consumption

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Co-Creation
Image Flick whurleyvision

• Extreme personalization
• Identity products/services
• Create, augment, or influence design and content
  of products and services
• Share creations with their peers

Image www.deomotix.com
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Enoughness

• Sense of limits and desire to take back control
  of my life
• Environmental concerns
• Time is more precious than money!
• Slow food, slow life

Image gin_e (Flickr)
Image Photos.com
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Localization

• Sense of limits to globalization
• Seeking greater community connection
• Value authenticity
• New urbanism, smart growth, and live-ability

Image Social Technologies
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Ethical Consumption

• Express values via purchases
• Stampede of the Footprints

Image Flickr Mike (el madrileno)
Image Social Technologies
Image Social Technologies
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Technology

• Virtual Made Real
• Technology as Partner
• Transparency
• Just-in-time Life

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• Virtual Made Real

• Increasingly porous virtual-real boundary
• Bringing objects into real world, e.g, Webkinz,
  Scion
• From small objectsto cars, buildings, landscapes
• Virtual economies

Image Alex Hopkinson (Flickr)
Source blog.toyota.com/scion_son_of_toyota/
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Technology as Partner

• Division of labor shift burden of
  decision-making to software
• Ambient Intelligence
• The profile

Image http//www.segway.com/products/
Image bru76 (Flickr.com)
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Transparency
Image evildude1a (Flickr)

• We all live in glass houses
• Ubiquity of networks and sensors
• More is known and knowable about people,
  companies, and governments as information flows
  grow.
• Take the YouTube Test

Image www.spalet.com
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• Just-in-Time Life

• Making plans and adjusting schedules on the fly,
  e.g., Twittering, Flashmobs
• Decisions based on real-time information
• Intensifying based on mobile info, location-based
  services, and tracking

Image Toshinori Kawate (Flickr)
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work

• Knowledge Worker and Customer Aspirations Are
  Changing.
• .And Organizations Are Responding

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Knowledge Worker (and customer) Aspirations Are
Shifting..

• Open source
• Workforce of one
• Information wants to be free
• Creative Class
• Long tail

Image www.opensource.org
Image thelongtail.com, used with permission
under Creative Commons license
Image Phil Whitehouse (Flickr).
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.And Organizations Are Responding

• Hollywood Model
• Virtual teaming
• Sharing

Image Stephen (Flickr).
Image Shiv (Flickr).
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education

• Online Learning Takes Off
• Lifelong Learning For the Knowledge and the Money

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Online Learning Takes Off

• Stand-alone Virtual Schools are appearing at all
  levels from K-12 to online PhDs.
• Online enrollment is soaring General enrollment
  is stagnant
• Online classes are becoming a normal part of
  regular schools

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Lifelong Learning For the Knowledge and the
Money

• Boomers are pursuing lifelong learning for its
  own rewards..
• And it pays well, too!
• Wage Gap US college grads earning 45 more
  than high school grads, twice the number in 1979

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Emerging Challenges How Will You Respond?
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For More Information
Andy Hines )Director of Custom Projects andy.hines
_at_socialtechnologies.com Mobile [phone]