Library and information services: the future of the profession themes and scenarios 2025

The purpose of this paper is to promote discussion across the sector between library leaders, information service providers, vendors, practitioners, students, commentators, colleagues in Australia and internationally – anyone and everyone with an interest in the field. The paper is intended to engage, excite, provoke. It is not our blueprint for the future. The feedback we receive through various fora will help us create a final document towards the end of the year. The findings of this project will enable us to review the strategic direction of the Association and develop our new strategic plan for 2015. THEMES Having looked at the historic and current situation relating to library and information services, and freely-available futurist thinking, we have developed scenarios for school, public, university and TAFE, and special libraries, and collecting institutions under three themes: Convergence Connection The golden age of information  CONVERGENCE Convergence is an efficiency model. Generally, it means fewer jobs but the positions that are available require people with significant skills. CONNECTION Connection is good for libraries, it plays to our strengths. In this environment, libraries thrive, although library and information professionals have to step outside their comfort zone.  THE GOLDEN AGE OF INFORMATION The golden age of information is coming, the question is whether or not today’s library and information professionals can make it their own.  If we can, this era offers highly attractive opportunities for the profession and it opens up the possibility of many more of our members occupying senior positions in government, not-for-profit and commercial enterprises

Aviation Forecasting in ICAO

Opinions or plans of qualified experts in the field are used for forecasting future requirements for air navigational facilities and services of international civil aviation. ICAO periodically collects information from Stators and operates on anticipated future operations, consolidates this information, and forecasts the future level of activity at different airports

Large-scale educational telecommunications systems for the US: An analysis of educational needs and technological opportunities

The needs to be served, the subsectors in which the system might be used, the technology employed, and the prospects for future utilization of an educational telecommunications delivery system are described and analyzed. Educational subsectors are analyzed with emphasis on the current status and trends within each subsector. Issues which affect future development, and prospects for future use of media, technology, and large-scale electronic delivery within each subsector are included. Information on technology utilization is presented. Educational telecommunications services are identified and grouped into categories: public television and radio, instructional television, computer aided instruction, computer resource sharing, and information resource sharing. Technology based services, their current utilization, and factors which affect future development are stressed. The role of communications satellites in providing these services is discussed. Efforts to analyze and estimate future utilization of large-scale educational telecommunications are summarized. Factors which affect future utilization are identified. Conclusions are presented

Customized television: Standards compliant advanced digital television

This correspondence describes a European Union supported collaborative project called CustomTV based on the premise that future TV sets will provide all sorts of multimedia information and interactivity, as well as manage all such services according to each user’s or group of user’s preferences/profiles. We have demonstrated the potential of recent standards (MPEG-4 and MPEG-7) to implement such a scenario by building the following services: an advanced EPG, Weather Forecasting, and Stock Exchange/Flight Information

A comparative study of cloud services use by prospective IT professionals in five countries

Individuals and organizations utilise the cloud technology and its services in various ways. Cloud-based services are becoming increasingly popular, while there is no adequate knowledge offered for their secure use in the education for future IT professionals. It is important to understand how security and privacy issues are perceived and handled by male/female users and IT professionals of different cultures. The authors aim at presenting and scrutinizing information about cloud services’ use by prospective IT professionals in five countries, namely China, Finland, Greece, Nepal, and the UK. In particular the authors, wanting to find out what are the future IT professionals’ conceptualisations and awareness, collected data from male and female IT students in higher education, who use (or not) cloud services. The authors further illustrate the research findings by proceeding to a comparative analysis considering different perspectives such as: gender, education background, national culture (values and culture), and IT-related knowledge. The final research outcomes reveal attention-grabbing information for future IT professionals’ skills, knowledge, and digital competencies. For the IT professionals and software quality engineering communities the latter comprise a body of realistic knowledge, worthy of note when designing curricula for security technology by accommodating practical and accessible solutions (e.g., cryptography-based cloud security) for developing and enhancing the IT professionals’ role

The infosource scale: a measure to assess the importance of external tourism information sources

Information sources have long been considered an important variable in understanding consumer purchasing behaviors. Although research on information sources has been performed in a wide range of social disciplines, this variable has never been operationalized in a services marketing context. In this paper we develop a scale that measures the importance of information sources to the selection of tourism services. Insights from an empirical study of 350 tourists indicates that this multi-dimensional scale incorporates five types of information sources: 1) media, 2) institutional brochures, 3) commercial brochures, 4) travel agents, and 5) internet. Discussion centers on implications of this scale to theory and managerial development of tourism and services strategies. Directions for future research are also presented.Tourism, Information Sources, Services Marketing, Communication

Planning for the mobile library: a strategy for managing innovation and transformation at the University of Glasgow Library

Modern mobile devices have powerful features that are transforming access to information. Lippincott argues that as mobile devices such as smartphones become ‘key information devices’ for our users, libraries will want to have a significant presence in offering content and services that are suitable for this medium. This article outlines the process of development and implementation of a mobile strategy at the University of Glasgow Library. What began as an investigation into a mobile interface to the library catalogue evolved into a comprehensive strategic review of how we deliver services now and in the future in this rapidly changing mobile environment