The Library 

Libraries focus on new technology by Kelly K. Spors

Come March, the Cerritos Library is more likely to resemble a theme park than a community center. The suburban Los Angeles public library will unveil its new digs, a $40 million expansion complete with a floor-to-ceiling saltwater aquarium, a life-size replica of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, a rainforest room with trees, a stone-paved "Main Street" walkway and souvenir shops.

But just as jaw-dropping may be the library's technology effort -- 200 computer workstations, 1,200 laptop ports, wireless headsets and handheld computers for librarians, multimedia rooms, and a more efficient circulation system that uses radio frequency to track books instead of bar codes or magnetic strips.

The new circulation system, which alone cost the library about $150,000, automatically checks in books as they fall through the drop-off bin. Eventually, this wireless technology could allow cardholders to borrow books by simply walking out the door.

"We've been compared to Disneyland, just down the street," says library director Waynn Pearson, who dubs Cerritos the first "experience library." [read more]

Print on demand 

Technology: Bringing the Press to the People by Bill Marvel

Someday soon you'll walk into a bookstore, browse an online catalog for the book you want, order it, then repair to the coffee bar for a latte while your book is printed and bound.

It could be any book, because in this bright new future, no book need ever go out of print. Every title will be at least potentially available at any bookstore.

It's called on-demand printing, and it's closer than you think.

In the wooded hills 12 miles out side Austin, the future is already arriving at the rate of one book every five minutes.

That's how long it takes Eakin Press' new BookBuilderOne to print, trim and bind one paperback book. [read more]
(link via futureofthebook)

The Information Game 

My Rules of Information by Marylaine Block

A few years back, just before doing my first bibliographic instruction session for a class of freshmen, I had to figure out what the few, most important things were we could teach them, the things we information professionals knew and the students didn't, the lessons that would make all the difference between finding and not finding what they needed. I emerged from my office with a piece of paper with four sentences on it: my four rules of information. I have added to them over the years, but the fact that I and my colleagues still know and practice them seems to me the signal difference between us and our users.

I didn't invent the rules. I merely codified them. Codification ã another one of the things that information professionals routinely do when people ask them questions. [read more]
(link via Library Juice}