OUseful.Info, the blog…

When I was putting together a talk (Users and Demons) for some visitors to the OU Library from the Cambridge University Library Arcadia project (who also put together the Cambridge Library Science Portal) a month or two ago, I included a slide depicting what might be a “typical” user of Library research related services.

“Where I work” by Zach Klein

Note the presence of the dual computer screens on the desk – wandering round the various corridors of the OU, it’s surprising how many people are now working with dual screen computers.

But the dual screen view is not just for the office desktop. I now find that I watch television with a laptop on my knee (and looking at my friends’ Tweets, I know some of them are in the habit of watching television with iPod or iPhone to hand (I can tell from the clients that the tweets are posted with)) – dual screen viewing again, though this time with one big screen relaying “pure” video content, and the other information, or a conversational back channel.

I also read Sunday papers with a laptop nearby – for fact checking, story chasing, and related info… Not a dual screen view, but a dual media view: one display surface for “fixed” textual information (the newspaper), one screen, with network connection.

Every time I go to a seminar or conference presentation, and many of the times I go into a meeting, I take a laptop. Dual channel, stereo info… One channel: other people, face-to-face; one channel: a screen and keyboard connection to the net.

And even if 2D Sema codes are not the way to go for Printing Out Online Course Materials With Embedded Movie Links, I’m convinced that dual media channels are going to have a huge impact on the way we deliver educational materials, particularly to distance education students.

In fact, I’d probably go further and suggest that it’s likely that one of the channels will be a predominantly one way, fixed content, information delivery channel (a book, TV programme or lecture, for example), and the other channel will be a two way channel to the net, providing access to supplementary information, user discovered resources, and people – discussion, conversation, and active reflection.

We used to engage with content through marking marks on paper – it was called taking notes. We’re going to engage with it in a far more active way, embellishing it and enriching it (not just noting it or annotating it) with supplementary material pulled viewed via a screen.

PS if you haven’t checked out the Cambridge University Library Portal, you should do…

The shape of things to come, maybe? It’ll be interesting to see what their web analytics say about the performance of the site? ;-)

PS see also: Daddy, Where’s Your Phone?