John Markoff’s article in the NYT about Microsoft’s new “Live Mesh” is a move by another major player toward [wikipedia]cloud computing[/wikipedia].

“The Web is the hub of our social mesh and our device mesh,” he wrote. That statement is the first of a set of three “guiding principles” that Mr. Ozzie outlined in the five-page document entitled “Services Strategy Update.” In taking the PC off center stage, Microsoft is refocusing some of its resources to catch its cloud computing rivals.

In an earlier post, I suggested this trend will be significant for libraries. Initially I thought of libraries using cloud computing as a consumer of cloud computing as in the model that OCLC is developing with WorldCat Local. I believe it is more productive, though, to develop means for  libraries to become an active part of the computing cloud that allows consumers to library resources and services.

A few days ago I attended the heard Jay Jordan speak about the future of libraries at the NELINET Library Directors Forum. Among other things, he talked about the Local WorldCat pilot project as a significant shift in the way libraries will provide bibliographic information to library users. (The University of Washington Libraries is the first to launch its Local WorldCat interface.) Growing out of recent findings that nearly 90% of all information seekers begin with an Internet search engine (like Google, Yahoo, etc.), OCLC determined that making WorldCat a search engine for all of the world’s “curated” (professionally selected and cataloged) information is a way to enable libraries to compete. He suggests that OCLC can do things with its massive database and computing power that local libraries (even major research libraries) simply can’t do effectively. The premise of Local WorldCat is that libraries can benefit from an individualized interface to such enhanced data services and computing power that is delivered via the network rather through local computing resources. Though he didn’t name it, this represents a significant shift toward what is sometimes called “cloud computing.”

This morning’s NY Times article by Steve Lohr and Miguel Helft points to Google’s adoption of that strategy in much of their technology.

“To explain, Mr. Schmidt steps up to a white board. He draws a rectangle and rattles off a list of things that can be done in the Web-based cloud, and he notes that this list is expanding as Internet connection speeds become faster and Internet software improves. In a sliver of the rectangle, about 10 percent, he marks off what can’t be done in the cloud, like high-end graphics processing. So, in Google’s thinking, will 90 percent of computing eventually reside in the cloud?” (“Google Gets Ready to Rumble With Microsoft”, NY Times, Dec. 16, 2007)

Cloud computing is a significant trend that could radically change the way libraries provide access to information resources.

I’ve been writing about the Library as game, but it’s important to recognize another significant trend in libraries. Many libraries (both public and academic) are adding games to the collection and providing space for playing games in the library. The University of Illinois Library has a recent post on gaming in the undergraduate library. Among the helpful links is a link to the Gaming Collection page that has links to a gaming research guide, gaming literature, and donate games to the library (among others.)

After the MIT Communications Forum on “gaming and civic engagement” a few weeks ago, I mused about the possibility of viewing the library as a game. Ian Bogost commented that one of the things he finds most fascinating about games is that they force the player to live in a world whose rules are constructed by someone else (see my previous posts). Librarians construct the rules (policies, procedures, physical arrangement of materials and furnishing, subject headings, indexing, etc.) and require players (those who use our libraries) to function within the world we construct to obtain the information they seek to complete their tasks. I still find this an interesting way to look at the Library. The recent University of Rochester Undergraduate Research Project suggested that students may already be interacting with the Library like a game.

Nancy Fried Foster observed about the trend toward a self-service model that we see in most young adults:

It is tempting to relate this trend to lack of time, but I think it resembles a pattern of information seeking that is evident in students’ recreational activities—gaming, for example—when time is not an issue. Video and computer games come with little by way of directions. Manuals are available but not all gamers want or use them. When a gamer gets stuck in a game, s/he commonly runs through a variety of information-seeking activities, starting with experimentation with the game itself (Gee 2003). If this fails, the gamer may seek an online site for the particular game to see whether there are any “tips” or “tricks” that solve the problem. The point is that the parsimony of the gamers’ information seeking is not related to time pressure. It is related to a view of life in which instrumentality trumps relationship.

So self-service is the preeminent model and strategy of the information-seeking student. But when the student cannot satisfy his/her own needs and turns to real-life service providers, what happens? In their drawings of ideal library spaces, students sometimes group librarians with technical support staff and baristas at service desks (see Chapter 4). When they do not differentiate between different kinds of service providers, it is in part because they do not know the service providers, having experienced few person-to-person service relationships. If they have a need, they want it filled. If they want a need filled, they want to go to a font of all sorts of service, a sort of universal service point, a physical Google. In other words, they want Mommy.
….
But “Mommy” is not the same as a real student’s real mother, a person with whom s/he has a complex and ever-changing, ever maturing relationship. When I speak of the Mommy Model of Service, I refer to a Mommy who is the provider of everything to the infant. (p75-76)

If we were to imagine making the Library more game-like, perhaps we might:

1. Make the Library’s Web site a place to go for Tips and Tricks to be used when the player gets stuck.
2. Think about creating different “levels” in the Library that can be entered when one has found the right tool or accumulated the right number of points to proceed.
3. Ensure that guides and wisdom figures (avatar-like or not) become visible to the players periodically, giving the player the visual queues necessary to them identify them as safe to approach.
4. Provide an easy way to “save the game.”
5. Develop and support remote, virtual and on-site playing areas.
6. Develop and support multi-user as well as single-user playing modes.
7. Develop and support interactive interfaces for players who play the Library remotely, virtually, as well as physically in the Library.

Foster, Nancy Fried, and Susan Gibbons. 2007. Studying students the Undergraduate Research Project at the University of Rochester. Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries. http://www.acrl.org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs/downloadables/Foster-Gibbons_cmpd.pdf.

My earlier post about using a feed from an OCLC web service to supply data to our web site exemplifies a principle that I’ve adopted for the Theology Libraries efforts. There are a number of companies and organizations with massive computing power, and even a few smaller ones, that are able to provide data to us if we can utilize it. We need to develop the ability to mashup the data that are available to us with our own data to better serve our users.

John Wilkin’s post about the Next Generation Library Systems nicely states the principle and its corollary. We need to develop ways to make our data available to others…

We must not try to do what the network can do for us. We must find ways to facilitate integration with network services and ensure that our investment is where our role is most important (e.g., not trying to compete with the network services unless we think we can and should displace them in a key area). For example, we have recognized that Google will be a point of discovery, and so rather than trying to duplicate what they do well for the broad masses of people, we should (1) put all things online in a way that Google can discover; and (2) because we recognize that Google won’t build services in ways that serve all scholarly needs, work to strategically complement what they do.