Week 1 Reading

Information Format Trends: Content, Not Containers
An interesting thing about this article was the observation that, "[t]raditional information formats (e.g. printed books and serials) are not going away." While this is probably true, and books and printed materials will always retain some cultural value, I highly doubt that they will retain their cultural role as a key information source. For example, I fully expect newspapers, as we know them, to be all but completely transformed away from a printed media in my lifetime. On the other hand, I am not very familiar with POD, so it is possible that in the future, printed materials will continue to be significant, even if they are distributed differently.
Another trend worth watching as gas prices make travel more expensive, is the tendency of people to use online materials rather than going to the library. As it becomes more expensive to travel, this trend could accelerate.

Information Literacy and Information Technology Literacy: New Components in the Curriculum for a Digital Culture
The article touches on a significant failure on the part of our education system. The author, in discussing the need for formal instruction on information literacy, points out that what is really needed is an educational program that "encompass a rather broad view of the technology infrastructures that support our society, including computing, telecommunications, broadcasting, publishing, electrical power distribution, transportation and financial infrastructure and related areas." It's sad, but our education system does not put many resources toward teaching students how the world around them actually works.

Lied Library @ four years: technology never stands still.
Moving back to the containers versus content issue, it seems that Lied Library is specializing in neither acquiring content nor acquiring containers. Instead, the library is focusing on acquiring
the technology for accessing content. This seems like a very good solution to the issue of libraries' role in the internet age. As the Information Format Trends article points out, there is a growing trend of users choosing to do online searches rather than using the library. Libraries like Lied could serve as a gateway to better searches that yield more useful content to users.