The central purpose of a library is to provide access to information. Next to salaries, the largest expenditure that a library makes is on the acquisition and licensing of resources which are being made avaialble almost exclusively online. With such an investment in resources, we are talking tens of millions of dollars in academia, libraries have had to continuously innovate services in order to maximize access to information in order to realize a return on its investment.
It has become increasingly critical that libraries investigate and integrate emerging technologies and use them creatively to create new services to meet their customers changing information seeking needs and behaviors. To do this, libraries need to anticipate the technologies that customers will be using in the future to access resources that they want, when they want it, and how they want it.
The role of an emerging technologies librarian is to serve as a leader in exploration, identification, implementation, and evaluation of new technologies and their use in the library seting. They then adapt the technologies so that they become innovative solutions within the library setting which support of evolving reference, instruction, and access services models. In addition to customer services, emerging technologies can also have a significant impact on creating staff workflow efficiencies and facilitating their interactions with customers.
An emerging technology is simply any new advancement or innovation in technology. It can be hardware or software-based technology, or a combination of both. (Many librarians have taken to using Web 2.0 to label many such technologies. I dislike this term but use it here to make a connection with those that use it.)
Examples of emerging technologies that I have implemented in the past have included social media, blogs, RSS feeds, wikis, bookmarking systems, instant messaging and chat, browser plug-ins, cloud computing systems and services such as online storage, and bibliographic management systems. However, not all the technologies that are investigated can, or should, be implemented. Some technologies investigated are not sustainable or discarded since they are disrupted by even newer technologies. For example Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), Near Field Communication (NFC) or Second Life. (the list can go on and on: Cha-Cha, knol, Netbooks, Quora)
An emerging technologies librarian spends a good deal of identifying and experimenting in order to better understand how a system/service works. This is an important part of the process since most times an emerging technology is created for use by another discipline or context. By tearing technologies down to see how they work, many times virtually by spending hours online researching a technology, the emerging technologies librarian gains a better understanding of how it could be modified and applied in the context of services offered by a library.
Once a technology is identified, an emerging technologies librarian must work with colleagues to create buy-in and to implement the technology solution. The success of an implementation is often dependent on librarians and library staff learning about and understanding how to utilize, assist, and interact with customers using these technologies. As a result, another role the emerging technologies librarian plays is as a teacher who demonstrates and encourages others to participate in purposeful play, using formal or self-guided approaches.
The emerging technology librarian must also spend time educating themselves as to what other libraries are doing. While paying attention to what other libraries are doing is an important part of this, one needs to spend a good deal of time looking outside the discipline to spot technology trends that lead to their implementation as innovative library services.