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Computers in Libraries Conference Report: 25 Years Later, Still Pushing Boundaries

May 20, 2010

Twitter, ebooks, and the diffusion of knowledge were the marquee topics at last week's Computers in Libraries (CiL) Conference, which drew some 2000 people to Arlington, VA, for its 25th anniversary

Over the years, the conference has increasingly covered networked and mobile services only tangentially related to physical computers in library buildings. This year was no exception with much emphasis on how cloud services open up new possibilities. Conference attendees included public, academic, and special librarians from 47 states and 17 countries.
Coming of age
The first conference 25 years ago was initially called Small Computers in Libraries, for an era when computers of any size were a rarity in libraries.
In 1985, mainframes had ruled the roost for a decade. That year, Microsoft released Windows version 1.0, the CD-ROM was first introduced, and the New York Public Library closed down its catalog room to replace 9,000 card drawers with 50 electronic terminals. A computer manufacturer registered "Symbolics.com" as the world's first domain name in March of that year, marking the Internet's first foray beyond the province of the military and university computer science departments.

In 25 years, we've come a long way. Conference goers arranged their trips online. Keynote speeches were streamed live over the net. PowerPoints and PDF handouts were made available for download in advance. Attendees blogged or tweeted their reactions and opinions. And this article was composed via the cloud, using a truly small netbook, Google docs, and free Wi-Fi aboard a speeding locomotive.

Networked knowledge
Indeed, the sharing of knowledge at high speed was a recurring theme at this year's gathering. Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, set the stage with his opening keynote on the latest user statistics: 75% of all adults are now online and two-thirds of them use cloud computing in some way. Additionally, 57% use social networks, 15% maintain a personal web site, and 14% blog.

We are in a time of "fast, mobile connections built around outside servers and storage," he observed. Rainie reminded listeners to keep in mind a new breed of content creators who are networked, who challenge conventional media, and who use the net to enhance their own civic and community roles. Meanwhile, the wisdom of crowds-or the crowd's failure to act wisely, as in the rise of unruly flash mobs-has never been more apparent, he said.

Twitter dominates discussions
If there was a single word on everyone's lips this year, it was Twitter. In her search tips seminar, Mary Ellen Bates of Bates Information Services pointed out the value of tweets as a kind of content filter: if users have taken up their limited message space with a web address-even a truncated one-it's likely to be a link that they consider important.

Michael Porter of WebJunction and Amanda Clay Powers of Mississippi State University explored retweeting as knowledge sharing, and how a time investment in Twitter can reap rewards in terms of gaining and keeping a large and loyal following. Later, attendees tweeted their comments in real time to the Nebraska Library Commission's Michael Sauers during his interactive session on Twitter Success Stories.