The National Library of Australia has launched the beta of their new search interface, SBDS Prototype (SBDS stands for Single Business Discovery Service, I think), and the search experience is not only better than any other library-related search I have used, it is faster than most of them as well!

Other reactions:

• Roy Tennant at LibraryJournal.comt
• Roy Tennant at HangingTogether.org
• Lorcan Demsey (1)
• Lorcan Demsey (2)

This is an excellent example of what is possible today, and what we should all strive for in our search interfaces.  There is such a diversity of resources, and unifying these into a usable and fast single-search service is a credit to the developers at the National Library of Australia.

Gary Hamel’s blog post on the Wall Street Journal is titled The Facebook Generation vs. the Fortune 500, but the issues contained within the post are ones that are going to touch upon all businesses and organizations, including libraries.

He lists 12 “work-relevant characteristics of online life” that will impact the workplace, including:

• All ideas compete on equal footing.
• Leaders serve rather than preside.
• Groups are self-defining and -organizing.
• Power comes from sharing information, nor hoarding it.
• Intrinsic rewards matter most.

All of these are features of organizations that are in a better position to survive, simply because members are motivated to be adaptive, communicative, and supportive.  Think about groups and workplaces you have been a member of… most of your negative associations with them likely would be less critical if one or more of the ideas above were a greater part of the environment.

These ideas will slowly creep in, championed by those who have experienced the benefits a group/organization/business gains by applying them.  Resistance will be the unspoken response by those whose power lies in control of information, expression, and rewards.

The mix of these ideas will affect different groups in different ways, but they will affect every group, including libraries, in a profound manner.  The greatest benefits go to those who can successfully adopt the attitudes and behaviors that will ultimately succeed within that group.

Which of these offers the greatest opportunity for your situation?  What can you do to begin/continue the transition?  Think about this, because it is up to you to change your own approach, and encourage others to change theirs, as well.

found via Lorcan Demsey’s Weblog

Lorcan Demsey has a post on metadata that does a great job of illustrating two types of data collections by describing them as lakes and rivers.  The idea did not originate with him; rather he encountered it via OCLC’s Eric Hellman.

• Lakes are repositories of information that change little over time, and are fed from a few well-defined sources, supplemented by occasional “springs”.  A good analog for this is the library catalog.
• Rivers are cascading flows of information, changing rapidly and fed by many sources.  The quote that describes this most effectively is often attributed to Heraclitus : “you cannot step into the same river twice.”*

This is a fantastic way to frame the ongoing transition that libraries face.  We are transforming ourselves (being forced to transform?  some combination of the two?) from a lake-based information service to a river-based information service.  We are having to learn as we go to navigage ever-changing waterways, dodging sandbars and debris in a boat that was designed over a century ago for lake use.

Keep this analogy in mind… it lends itself well.

* Wikipedia offers the following quote listed within their page on Heraclitus: “We both step and do not step in the same rivers. We are and are not.” This quote is simultaneously much more illustrative of the complexity of our situation, and much more confusing.