Keynote: Cliff Lynch

March 16th, 2005

Here are my notes from Cliff Lynch’s keynote address this morning. I’m doing it in a free-flowing format rather than a “report”. Overall, a great talk. He obviously gets it, but will his predictions be right? I hope so. Culture and the Web will definitely be more intermeshed within the next few years. At least, I hope so..

I’ve embedded my own thoughts in parentheses with the SC: attribute (I’m such a library dork)

+ Reflection on events over the past 20 years
+ Network History - arpnet - “history of the Internet is a bit older than CIL”
+ W3 - 10 year summations of the Web
+ 1985 - beginning of online catalogs (very few had been on the Web)
- very few people had interactions with computers
- Automatic Teller Machines (ATM) launched people interactively with computers
- OPACS started people interacting with computers - we forget this. WHY???!!!! (marketing…)

+ Mid 1990’s - Astounding adult education problem in this country.
- Everyone needed to be taught about the Internet
- Libraries stepped up to the plate.
- 1992 ->1998 - Anne Lipnow

+ The Internet “just sorta is”. It’s just there

+ Trends - scarcity to abundance
- very significant part of open domain literature open on the Internet
- Systematic back file conversation of publishers (NYT)
- Long Tail!! - if you get a big enough audience, you see patterns that move you away from the hip oriented world. (SC: YES!! Go Cliff Lynch. (Away from the mainstream media))
- Aggregate the material that no one knows about (there is an expert in everything)
- digital representations that stand on themselves - Bib records to full-text
- Images are plentiful, physical things are much more available, survivable, accessible.
- People can have their own computers (SC: go further - people can have their own thoughts and can put it out there for “the world” to see.)
- Fast networking is starting to be taken for granted.
- Wireless is moving along that path as well.
- “We are awash in images of every kind” - will be much more accepted than 4 years ago.
- Broader Authorship - The web as a place to collaborate and cooperate.
- (SC: He said ‘Blog’) - connecting a new generation of a group of people, social and civic engagement. Energized a sizable base of people.
- Will we move into an age of popular authorship? (SC: He thinks so and so do I)
- Great deal of information will turn into conversation.
- Libraries digitizing enormous collections of information. Hundreds and thousands of images. The images are not described very well. You start hearing from people. “That’s not a federal officer, that’s my great grand-dad.”
- Structured data (SC: Structured blogging?) - content that is designed for humans AND machines to read. Maps - no maps anymore. But there are databases.
- Much greater in interest in preservation of information.
- Pretty good run on the buy on the run music systems (itunes, etc). What happens when they go bust? Can you play these tunes anymore? (SC: I think you can. Jenny?)
- “Blast Observation!!” - paradoxical quality - if you wish it will go away, it won’t.
- (SC: He said, “Googling yourself”. Why do we do that?)
- Personal history and personal trails - We have just enough content out there to make this an issue.

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