On Technology Planning

This week's readings were an interesting bunch, containing articles on the historical background of several federal support programs to foster technology in libraries. Some documents were very useful and detailed howtos, others rather impish and somewhat personal like Michael Schuyler's "Life is What Happens to You When You Are Making Other Plans." Even if I understand his frustration and irritation with "meddlesome" bureaucracy, I did not find his article particularly helpful as guiding material. There were moments when he came to his senses and tried to treat the subject seriously, but it's difficult for me to believe that he tried "really hard not to rant." It was fun to read it, though.

Two documents, however, stood out for me: OCLC The 2003 OCLC Environmental Scan: Pattern Recognition, and ALA's Information Technology at ALA: 2000-2005. These were really thorough and detailed analyses. While the OCLC report was general in nature, the authors of the report tried to depict trends in ways knowledge is being accessed, transmitted, and stored; not only on national, but on the global level. They attempted to capture the position of libraries (the term that they use to represent libraries, as well as museums, archives and other institution dealing with education, heritage, or culture). I was particularly impressed with "The Technology Landscape" chapter. It did not bring up any surprises, but I liked how the authors managed succinctly wrap up the current state of the field. I do occasionally follow Lorcan Dempsey's weblog, who was one of the crafters of the report. He often posts various reports and findings related to literacy, knowledge management, learning and research, and also social networking on his weblog and in doing so permanently updates the OCLC report.

The other document that impressed me was produced by ALA: the goals, needs, assessments, benchmarks, evaluations were all clearly stated, no verbiage - everything to the point. It was a well-structured and transparent document. Some of the other texts on technology planning advised not to set too rigid goals, and even if the ALA document called for flexible planning, their plan when it came down to implementation was very specific. The only criticism I would have is that there was no mention of any person responsible for any of the steps taken. In addition, even if the plan contains a list of possible implementation issues and conflicts, there is no hint how they are going to be resolved.

If I were to participate in any technology planning activities, I think I would start with documenting my current activities and workflows. Once these activities are documented, they can be evaluated and eventually improved.

There are also some more system-oriented concerns that I would have now - how do systems scale up with the needs and workflows in place? Are the applications modular, expandable? Do they support open and shared standards - or is it a closed black-box operation? And if the system is closed are there any open source alternatives? And if there are alternatives, do we have the manpower to run them and maintain them?