Abstract
Purpose - To look back on the last thirty years of technology development for libraries.Design/methodology/approach - An interview that took place at the American Library Association Annual Meeting in Anaheim, California.Findings - Many of the developments are slow. There are very few really sudden revolutions in social scale technologies. They do not switch on quickly and cannot be sudden because the installed base is too thin.Originality/value - There should be some renewed conversation about how libraries can help the public. In the early days of the Internet libraries played an enormous uncredited role in teaching the adult population about the Internet. There are some opportunities like that now, and one place where we are starting to see signs of it is digital preservation, not as libraries do it for the cultural record, but helping individuals to do it for their own content.
Purpose - To look back on the last thirty years of technology development for libraries.Design/methodology/approach - An interview that took place at the American Library Association Annual Meeting in Anaheim, California.Findings - Many of the developments are slow. There are very few really sudden revolutions in social scale technologies. They do not switch on quickly and cannot be sudden because the installed base is too thin.Originality/value - There should be some renewed conversation about how libraries can help the public. In the early days of the Internet libraries played an enormous uncredited role in teaching the adult population about the Internet. There are some opportunities like that now, and one place where we are starting to see signs of it is digital preservation, not as libraries do it for the cultural record, but helping individuals to do it for their own content.
