Running Through Airports

Friday, March 18, 2011

I took a mega-trip across the United States the last 2 1/2 weeks. First I went to Seattle during spring break to attend to medical issues for myself and my daughter. The medical world seems to be completely digital these days. My doctor e-mails me my test results. I can access my medical history going back more than a decade online and see charts showing how my health is improving over time. My mammograms are all stored digitally and changes over time can be compared from doctor to doctor. I wouldn't be surprised if my doctor starts tweeting me
someday soon. She has young children so is always up on new technology.



Then I went on to Denver to visit an old friend for a couple of days. As I was running to catch a plane I noticed this billboard in the airport. A local Denver bank posted these huge QR codes advertising free crossword puzzles to download to your phone. There was one for easy, medium and difficult. I downloaded one. Fun!


From Denver I went on to a week-long conference for the Association for College and Research Libraries in Philadelphia. The theme of this year's conference was Interdependence. Philadelphia, birth of independence of the United States, was the site of a conference proposing that for academic libraries in higher education must acknowledge that we can no longer see ourselves as independent of one another. We must act interdependently.


Two of the keynote speakers who underscored the theme of interdependence were Tiffany Schlain and Raj Patel. Tiffany Schlain http://connectedthefilm.com/ talked about her new film Connected. She is an award winning documentary film-maker. She studies and speaks on humanity and the impact of technology and the Internet. Raj Patel http://rajpatel.org/ is an activist and economist. A witty speaker, he uses food as the centerpoint of all he speaks about.




From Philadelphia I went to a two-day conference in San Diego called the Coalition for Networked Information. This was a gathering of information technology officers and library administrators who reported cutting edge uses of technology.

I listened to not one, but two reports of academic libraries who designed gaming rooms into their new buildings, touchscreen walls, large cafes, digital media studios, and who said that libraries needed to make sure that electrical outlets were everywhere so that students could charge their phones, iPods, iPads, and laptops. Libraries of the future are about digital information AND also unique archival information.

Seattle was gray and overcast for the most part except the cherry blossom trees provided beautiful relief. Denver was snowbound in the mountains, unbelievably beautiful except for the tree bug that infested many of the pine trees causing them to die. Every other tree on the mountainside was brown and will fall over soon. I understand the wood has turned blue. Philadelphia was cold and also snowed. San Diego was warm and blue skies.

But Hawaii no ka oi! Aloha, Kim