We enjoyed the holiday break and I hope you all did too. We have been spared the wrath of Hercules in central CT. As far as I can tell, we got about 3 inches of snow, however, it is supposed to be bone chilling cold. Boston area seems to be affected more significantly and the College is closed for the day.

Though weekends, end of the month and beginning of a year are all totally arbitrary, we have grown accustomed to them and live with the cycles and in some cases the hype that comes with them. In that spirit, I have been following the various technology predictions for 2014. “2014: The Year That Puts the Nail in Desktop’s Coffin“, “Eric Schmidt’s 2014 predictions: big genomics and smartphones everywhere“, “Top Technology Trends for 2014” and “Cybersecurity Will Get More Complex in 2014” are a few that are worth a quick read. The problem with all of these is that no one bothers to measure these predictions at the end of the year to identify who has been a reliable predictor so far. In fact, in the second one regarding Eric Schmidt, the author notes correctly “It’s worth noting that Schmidt has a shaky track record on predictions.” It is the case that these trends have significant implications for libraries, but you would be hard pressed to find direct predictions for libraries!

Many of these predictions are relevant to businesses to prepare to maximize their profits and based on “consumer” behavior. Whereas we all have a “consumer” persona when we make purchasing decisions in our personal lives, it is a bit different when it comes to the use of technologies at the College. Primarily, the “consumer” options don’t always work well for what one needs to get done as a faculty, staff or a student. Whereas all the buzz about mobile phones and tablets is exciting and these devices are great for information consumption or even reading (for those who can like e-books), you can’t write a paper on them or solve a math problem or even run many of the academic software that you need to run. Of course, for the advanced users, there are apps that solve every one of these, but they are not convenient or efficient. Though it is extremely important to be tuned into these trends because our future students will be arriving on campus as users of some of these trendy technologies and we need to be prepared to support them.

A more relevant prediction for us is from New Media Consortium’s Horizon report.  For 2014, they have identified what is going to be featured in the report and we will closely follow how it develops.

(more…)