Technology will continue to grow and morph, and impact information professionals in new and different ways, according to information industry guru, Mary Ellen Bates. Ms. Bates was the guest speaker at our March 15, 2004 Chapter Meeting at the Ferguson Library in Stamford. This meeting drew our highest attendance of the year and even brought in several ALA members and col­leagues from The Hudson Valley Chapter.

 

Mary Ellen offered an overview on the changes in information technology. She talked about how these are not necessarily big, splashy, obvious changes, but perhaps even more worthy of attention because of their potential to change the way information is gathered and presented. She continued to say that traditional online services will dump command searching, and Internet search engines will go non-linear.

 

Mary Ellen advised us to say goodbye to Google and get ready for search engines that will read minds by knowing to search for synonyms and figuring out the context into which the search fits. This has already begun with the advent of new search engines like Mooter and Grokker that group results in relational clusters.

 

What must information professionals do to get ready for these changes? Mary Ellen exhorted us to move beyond our comfort levels. She stressed that we must examine what we do and where we fit within our organizations. She emphasized that our value is enhanced when we provide answers, not simply information; our visibility is increased when we are embedded within our organiza­tions, and not stuck in our libraries. Clearly, we must keep up-to-date with new technologies and find inno­vative ways to incorporate them. We must out-Google Google. In other words, we must embrace the revolution!