Review of Emerging technologies changing our service delivery models

Kajewski "aims to explore the range of free and inexpensive technologies that are available and have been simply implimented with practical and immediate benefits both for library staff and clients". These aims appear to have been achieved in this article.

According to Kajewski blogs, wikis, RSS feeds and aggregators, podcasts, vodcasts, web conferencing, and instant messaging are free or inexpensive technologies that increase user interaction with and access of the library, particularly with tech-fluent young adults. It appears from the article that the new technologies meet user needs in a variety of ways in that the user has 24/7 access to information that can often be tailored to their specific needs, and that the technologies are not theoretical or untested but have been applied in actual libraries.

While I generally agree with Kajewski there are two minor issues that detract from her article, and a few more that detract from the overall argument that emerging technologies are beneficial. They are, but not to the extent the article suggests.

The detracting issues:
(1) the wording of the purpose of the paper does not suggest limitations that are only found in the design/methodology/approach – only public libraries are discussed in the take up of the emerging technologies leaving this reviewer wondering about the relevance of these technologies to users of other types of libraries
(2) for a paper on “emerging technologies” it appears a little dated in that no technology that emerges after 2006 is discussed (the latest date of any item in the reference list). The latest technology discussed appears to be podcasts which were about three years old in 2007, while blogs were more than ten years old in 2007 and already somewhat mature ICTs

The limiting issues, problems or potentially emerging problems:
(1) there is much claimed about the emerging technologies but very little in terms of verification of their actual usefulness and none presented by Kajewski. For example, a statistic on what percentage of Australian public libraries use blogs to communicate only provides a part of the picture of the communication channel; the other part is the user. If users are not reading blog content then the library has used a communication technology of limited usefulness
(2) to keep users reading the output from their library sent via emerging technologies, the user has to have a reason to read the output, and generally it is because the content is relevant to their specific needs. This makes some of the emerging technologies other than free or inexpensive as there is a cost in staff time to make the user want to read content that has been, at a cost, tailored to be relevant to their specific needs
(3) the plethora of emerging technologies is an asset in that specific technologies might be applied to specific needs, but there is a risk of either fragmentation or duplication of content. For example, if a user is communicated to using one technology but not another, then the message to all uses has to be sent via each technology otherwise that user may miss being communicated to, however, if that user receives information from the library by two or more technologies, they will receive a duplication of information – potentially increasing the chance they will view library communications as spam
(4) there is a cost to the library in preparing content to be issued in each emerging technology. Often the content is virtually the same such as text in blogs and instant messaging, but a technology such as podcasts require the content to be prepared in a different (audio) format
(5) there is a risk not discussed by Kajewski that as emerging technologies become more mature users become more selective of the content they want delivered by those technologies. A recent example of this is email (email was a decade ago an emerging technology) but users now generally regard library emails as spam.
(6) Kajewski acknowledges the non-technological aspect of technology – the need for staff buy-in, but does not note the lack of resources for staff training in many libraries, nor the lack of resources to train the users. Many users might be tech-savy, but many are not and there is no discussion by Kajewski of the role of technology as a cause in increasing comparative information poverty even as information poverty as a whole is decreased. Kajewski’s design/methodology/approach refers to “Questions around the level of use or non-use by public libraries are also explored”, perhaps there should have been more focus on levels and reasons of non-use by library users

With time the emerging technologies will found useful, will be modified until they are useful, or will be discarded – especially if replaced by yet newer technologies. Of more concern is the impact of these technologies on many non-users who may be sidelined as more resources go via newer service delivery models to tech-savy users.

References

Kajewski, M. A. Emerging technologies changing our service delivery models [Electronic version]. The Electronic Library, 25(4), 420-429.