When I tell people that my title is Emerging Technologies & Distance Services Librarian, without fail they ask me, “So what does that mean?” I usually make a hokey joke about how I’m still trying to find out, but I’m actually serious, and that’s the best part of the job. Consider this weblog an idea board and a lab notebook as I explore new territories and revisit old ones.
A few things I’m excited about are NFC, NLP, 3D printers and scanners, quick-printing book machines, mass transcription, Wikipedia, MOOCs, digital humanities, drones, Google Fiber,and social media. I hope to investigate more of these in future posts, but let’s not forget that sometimes emerging tech also means reusing and repurposing old tech, too (especially in libraries!). With that in mind, my next post will detail what I was up to earlier this week.