At the conference I found out a little more about automated libraries. This is basically where you can request a book from the library archives and it is delivered to you in a few minutes by robots. Each book is electronically tagged so it knows where it is meant to be and also it can keep track of if the book has been signed out or not.
Rather than being the end of librarians I think that actually systems like this unlock librarians to work more with the customer. Automated libraries are also able to build in social recommendations for when people sign books in and out – just think Amazon, ‘people who have already read this book also liked this book…..’
Sam Elphick on 22 Nov 10A slideshare presentation focussed on web research which is well worth viewing for any TL. Has some great information and statistics on search, and how search-englines work. Also shares tools you can use for optimizing your search and saving your sources for later viewing.
