New publication: The 2009 annual Horizon Report of the New Media Consortium is now out. It seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, research, or creative expression within learning-focused organizations. The report is available at http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2009-Horizon-Report.pdf and identifies the following key trends
Increasing globalization continues to affect the way we work, collaborate, and communicate.
■ The notion of collective intelligence is redefining how we think about ambiguity and imprecision.
■ Experience with and affinity for games as learning tools is an increasingly universal characteristic among those entering higher education and the workforce.
■ Visualization tools are making information more meaningful and insights more intuitive.
■ As more than one billion phones are produced each year, mobile phones are benefiting from unprecedented innovation, driven by global competition.
IT also identified the following Critical Challenges:
■ There is a growing need for formal instruction in key new skills, including information literacy, visual literacy, and technological literacy.
■ Students are different, but a lot of educational material is not.
■ Significant shifts are taking place in the ways scholarship and research are conducted, and there is a need for innovation and leadership at all levels of the academy.
■ We are expected, especially in public education, to measure and prove through formal assessment that our students are learning.
■ Higher education is facing a growing expectation to make use of and to deliver services, content, and media to mobile devices.

You may find it interesting – many of the trends and issues are relevant to all libraries.

New wiki launched: This week the ALIA Interlending Advisory Committee (ILAC) wiki was launched - http://www.alia.org.au/shareit It aims to be an up-to-date resource on all aspects of interlending and resource sharing, assisting both new and experienced ILL staff in their daily work.