CIL 2009 Moving Libraries to “The Cloud;” Roy Tennant, Aaron Price

The “cloud” is the server that stores our data, and which can be accessed via the Internet using all the assorted devices we are accustomed to using (PC, Mac, Blackberry, Notebook, etc.) My photo collection, for example, resides on Flickr‘s “cloud”.

Servers – and all that goes with them - are costly to maintain; they require space (=$$$) and people (=$$$) and they absorb a great deal of time (=$$$). What if all of our data could be stored elsewhere and all of those expenses, and the worries that go with them, were somebody else’s problem? The photos Flickr stores for me aren’t stored on my computer, or on a local server; they are just out there floating on a Flickr cloud, and I don’t have to think about storage – that’s Flikr’s problem. I have no IT expenses related to storing my photos.

Currently, I access data using my office PC (1), or one of the Info Station PCs (2), or My Blackberry (3), or my Mac at home (4), or my new ASUS Notebook (5). If I need Microsoft Office, I use (6), either my laptop which has Windows XL, or my spouse’s PC. Here’s the thing: I really do use all of these, and I don’t think I’m different than a lot of people.

Using so many different devices makes work for me, because my Mac doesn’t have Word, it has iPage, and my Notebook doesn’t have Word, it has Microsoft Write. The PCs at Work have Word 97-2003 and my laptop at home has Word 2007. Additionally, many work documents are stored on the “SCO Server” which I can only get to from work; I do use a flash (rather than have documents stored on the hard drives of my Laptop, Notebook, Mac and PC), and that helps, but wouldn’t it make more sense for me to use Google Docs? Then I would be operating in a single environment and storing my documents all in one place: on Google’s “Cloud”.

And while we’re at it, I could store my iTunes library of 2 bazillion songs on a cloud, so that I could get to it from anywhere.

We are giddy at the thought of being able to do away with IT costs, but there are many service and access questions to consider before we get there. In LJ’s “Stranger than we Know”, Jason Griffey summed it up: “This new world will be a radical shift for libraries. Library buildings won’t go away; we will still have a lot of materials that are worth caring for. Buildings will move more fully into their current dual nature, that of warehouse and gathering place, while our services and our content will live in the cloud, away from any physical place. The idea that one must go to a physical place in order to get services will slowly erode*. The information that we seek to share and the services that we seek to provide will have to be fluid enough to be available in many forms.”