Wednesday, February 27, 2008

broke breakout

I proposed a breakout at code4lib today but I didn't really get enough takers for it to fly. So here are some notes on it, DOA:

The topic was to be on "cloud computing and network level services" a discussion of the Nick Carr Big Switch thesis and its application to library environments; in addition, consideration of what library applications, services, and databases should be provided as network level services.

Cloud computing questions:
  • Is Nick Carr's thesis about utility style computing applicable to the library software world?
  • Do some of our open source projects (eg LibraryFind, Vufind, Scriblio, eXtensible catalog, Evergreen, Koha) miss out on the network effects of a more centralized model of data/services provision?
  • Should open source projects be approached differently from a cloud computing perspective?
  • Who in the library world is positioned to provide utility-level services? OCLC? Talis? Internet Archive? What should they provide?
  • Are there two visions of cloud computing out there, one more commercial another more open?
  • How does the cloud computing model intersect with the semantic web?
  • Are people using utility style computing as they build applications (Talis platform, OCLC web services, bibliocommons, Amazon S3, etc.)

Examples of network level services floating around the conference:
  • OCLC grid services
  • Talis platform
  • LibraryThing
  • OpenLibrary
  • BiblioCommons
  • Zotero 2.0

1 comment:

roguejuly said...

we have been having the conversation a lot around the water cooler. Those very questions you post would be great points of research to explore and get others to collaborate around, especially in the areas of digital library, and digital preservation