Prehistoric digital footprints

Updating my CV this afternoon for the first time in 7 years I was amazed to find in the ERIC archive some very early publications that I thought were available only in boxes packed in the garage. I certainly didn't have a digital copy.

One of them was: Mitchell, P. & Indermauer, J. 1997. Selecting a second generation automation system, in Dillon, K. School library automation in Australia 2nd ed, Centre for Information Studies, Charles Sturt University, pp. 143-159.

The scanning is very rough with no OCR, but some of the content has stood the test of time. I wish I'd followed this checklist more closely since then - "global change on authority records" and "can customise search screen to suit users" particularly made me wince.

I don't know what generation we are up to now, but with South Australia and ACT departments both reviewing library systems again it seems a good time to revisit this kind of document. What are the priorities for library administration systems for the next 5 years? A few to get started with...

1. fast, single search across physical resources and digital content
2. easy user uploading, cataloguing, tagging, bookmarking, rating, annotating, linking, editing and exporting
3. made for mobile

Tags: libraries archives
Posted at 04:44PM Jun 28, 2008 by Pru Mitchell  |  Comments[0]