Not Your Momma's Library! - Sonya True, Professor/Digital Initiatives Library Director, Vanguard University

This was a great session going into detail about how mobile devices and our hand held electronic world is affecting our thinking process and in some cases our brains themselves.  Notes would not make up for the session, but if this idea intrigues you, then we need to talk it’s too deep just for notes.  This was really one of the best sessions at this conference and maybe one of the best I've ever seen.

Other reviews are here:

http://www.libconf.com/2014/10/27/mommas-library/

One of the videos she showed is here

http://conferences.infotoday.com/documents/204/D101_True(1).mp4

• DON’T GIVE A CHILD UNDER 2 A TABLET
• Brains have neural plasticity, which means that synapses grow
• To key to growing new synapses is to get to a cortical resting state, which means, get away from the computer, this is when the brain recharges and repairs.
• In the cortical resting state the brain is not being crammed with new information, this is where the problem solving process takes place.
• People remember less if they think that they can find it elsewhere, if it’s on Google I don’t need to remember it.
• IF SOMEONE SENDS/READS IT IN AN EMAIL THEY THINK THEY DON’T HAVE TO REMEMBER IT
• The Hippocampus and the olfactory system are the only places where new neurons are created.
• This is why smells have such a strong memory response
• Due to excessive use of internet mobile devices our brains are not powering up
• Mirror neurons allow use to mirror other people’s actions and allow us to have empathy
• Excessive focus on mobile devices and disconnecting from other people prevent us from being able to grow/create mirror neurons in the hippocampus.
• Selfies drain mirror neurons and we lose empathy
• People are no longer present when given mobile devices instead they are perceiving the world through smart devices, think about people watching concerts through the small screen because they are filming them.
• Library Canine Therapy:  At some colleges they have dogs come in just to calm the people down, dogs are more responsive to the emotions of the person and can mirror them.
• Library gamification
• Neomorphic Environment-  The environment responds to the person.  Such as colors and sounds changing based upon the actions of the person in the space.
• Librarians are the most trusted professionals except for nurses and firefighters

Opening Keynote: Driving Our Own Destinies ❱ Brendan Howley

• Libraries are cultural entrepreneurs and they should center on culture.
• Center around the local culture
• Use community storytelling to make maps
• In this regard actual physical maps developed from cultural information rather than just geographic information
• Contextualize community data (beneficial to the library) in a way that controls the dialogue
• Libraries can show the why of how people congregate
• Again, utilize the cultural information of the community to show why people go to where they are
• Libraries can be the place that publishes local art
• Didn’t really explain how to do this
• Library archives of images and art and community generated creative projects can be rented to local businesses
   
• LIBRARIES ARE A PLACE OF RESPITE AND CARE

BASE Guitar?

It's taking a lot of strength not to walk out in disgust

Why I hate Apple

This is how I'm having to take notes.

Irony

I'm sitting here in this amazing speaker and I'm noticing that there seems to be an ironic theme running throughout this Internet Librarian convention, the theme is pointing out all of the negative consequences of technology.  It feels like how Oppenheimer rebelled against the atomic bomb, which was of course his creation.

Nietzsche's writing ball

Today's keynote speaker mentioned Nietzsche's typewriter.  So I had to google it to see what was special about it and it's worth checking out.

http://www.malling-hansen.org/friedrich-nietzsche-and-his-typewriter-a-malling-hansen-writing-ball.html

"The Internet of Things and what it means for librarians"

Presented by Lee Rainie, Pew Research Center Internet Project

The Internet of Things (IoT) is defined as the development of the Internet in which everyday objects have network connectivity, allowing them to send and receive data (OED definition). This allows smart machines to communicate with each other even without human intervention.

Examples he gave of current or future appliances and other "things" that can use the Internet: wearable baby monitors, smart dispenser caps for medicine, pill sensors (that detect when medicines work in your body), monitors for family members.  Smart devices can include thermostats, electrical outlets, home sensors (are repairs needed?), plant sensors (detecting when water or fertilizer is needed), and trash bins (that notify waste management when full). IoT can provide data on available parking, pollution warnings, track water, help protect wildlife, and detect mudslides.

At libraries, Rainie believes that the IoT will affect people (changing our roles), place (library space and media) and platform (the role libraries play in communities).

Rainie drew his conclusions from Pew's surveys of the future of the Internet, focusing on its social impact. Pew has been doing the surveys since 2004, and they have predicted such trends as the rise of cyber attacks. the move to mobile-preferred connectivity, degradation of traditional publishing/knowledge businesses and growing concerns about privacy.

Survey respondents (scientists and other subject experts contacted by Pew) believe that the Internet will become like electricity, less visible yet more deeply embedded in people’s lives.

Upsides: Enhanced health, convenience, productivity, safety, and vastly more useful information
Downsides: privacy challenges, over-hyped expectations, tech complexity, lagging human adaptation to new realities (things will break and we won’t know how to fix them), possibility of greater digital divide among the rich and the poor

It will affect the insurance industry: Allowing sensors to be placed in their cars may lower customers' insurance rates.  Allowing sensors to be placed in their bodies could lower people's health insurance rates. 

Rainie has ambitious hopes that in this envisioned future, library staff can become tech experts, master teachers in an age of lifelong learning, visionaries for the knowledge economy, experts in sense-making and context, and curators of most relevant and useful material. He believes that librarians will be vital in helping people deal with the cultural disruptions that IoT will bring.

He sees the library as a platform (similar language from the session on start-ups) and a community resource.  He hopes that libraries can be trusted institutions and privacy watchdogs; advocates for free and open resources and for closing digital divides; data and collections repositories; entrepreneur enablers; civic specialists and gap fillers.