I would like to recommend another excellent library-related blog to you. This one is written by K.G. Schneider and is called Free Range Librarian. Schneider is an excellent and experienced writer who tends to blog about libraries and technology (go try to figure out why I like her stuff!) with occasional posts about personal life and the Internet.

Anyway, she also writes annually (or more) about trends in technology. The beginning of any year is a great time to reflect on just what’s going on with technology, with a long peek into what could be coming and happening during this next year. Her latest look at technology trends (from a perspective of early 2007 in North America) includes some interesting thoughts and observations:

People increasingly rely on and trust the web for news and information.

It is increasingly difficult to function without email, and even easier to function with it.

Many more people have IM than you might think.

The bookstore is going away. (That makes me sad, and yet I buy from Amazon, too.)

The film camera is an anachronism.

Wifi is an assumption in many settings.

Everyone has a cell phone. O.k., only 203 million Americans have cell phones, and only 2 out of 3 global citizens. Most of those citizens are teenagers and college students, for whom the cell phone must be attached to one ear for at least 80 percent of the waking day, as far as I can tell from observation.

It is now pretty much a given that anything you do in a public setting can potentially be blogged, podcast, or uploaded to YouTube in a matter of minutes. (Privacy is increasingly porous.)

Library vendors’ customers (that would be us) are expecting more for their users, and asking harder questions.

Be sure to read the whole thing. For that matter, bookmark her site, add her RSS feed to your personalized Google home page, and leave admiring comments on her various posts!

And tell her Scott sent you! ;-)