Things to pay attention to

Semantic Web / Web 3.0 / Linked Data / RDF:

• See Tim Berners-Lee's report on Putting Government Data online - http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/GovData.html
• "Google Recommends RDFa & Microformats" from L2.0 guru Casey Bisson - http://maisonbisson.com/blog/post/13988/google-recommends-microformats-and-rdfa/
• Linked Open Data In a Changing World - http://www.jenitennison.com/blog/node/108
• The Linked Data Brand - http://iandavis.com/blog/2009/07/the-linked-data-brand

Why watch this trend? Because part of our job as information professionals is to ensure that what we put out there is reusable/linkable/modular/compliant with commonly used web standards - and/or that we facilitate the transformation of data into such formats. These are building blocks for Web3.0 - the Semantic Web.

Mobility:

• SMS-based virtual reference - My InfoQuest Txt 4 Answers Launches today (7/21/09) - http://liswire.com/content/my-info-quest-txt-4-answers-launches-today
• Handheld Librarian Online Conference - next Thurs., July 30 - http://www.handheldlibrarian.org/
• Mobile Devices, Policy and Library Panel from ALA annual - a nice writeup at The Shifted Librarian - http://theshiftedlibrarian.com/archives/2009/07/12/mobile-devices-libraries-and-policy-panel.html

SOPAC (Social OPAC) Project News:

As a librarian you MUST care about this - http://thesocialopac.net/
Why? Because for the library user, this is a system that ensures that you're more engaged and that you get more out of the online library catalog experience. It meets (& perhaps even exceeds?) your expectations of a library catalog, bringing it more into line with what we see offered on popular sites like Amazon & LibraryThing ... Get it? Got it? good!

More on Open Source:
Not just SOPAC, but...

• An InfoPeople webinar on Open Source Library System Software: Libraries Doing It For Themselves - today, Tuesday, 3-4pm Eastern - http://www.infopeople.org/training/webcasts/webcast_data/338/index.html
• Over 40 Must-Have Open Source Resources - http://ostatic.com/blog/over-40-free-must-have-open-source-resources

These are some of the many inputs (as of today) shaping the vision for our new web presence...