Congratulations to Liz Finlay on winning our NLS8 Bursary earlier this month. Below is her full entry.

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NGAC loved the hat and all it represented.

It is a creative and succinct visual representation of Ms Finlay’s ideas about the future of libraries and the semantic web.  There is a lot of nice detail, and obviously a lot of work went into it. It is ingeniously short but with a whole lot of depth. The explantation below was also well presented.

And we’re glad to announce that Liz can bring it to NLS8 and will let us put it in the ALIA 100th Birthday time capsule!

Thank you to everyone that entered. ALIA was so impressed with the overall quality that we have been allowed to include in the time capsule, along with Liz’s hat, a paper copy of every entry we received.

Well done!

The Library & Information World in 2037: NLS8 Bursary Competition

I have expressed my thoughts about where the Library & Information world will be in 2037 through the creation of a hand knit hat. Knitted hats are hard to send by email so this document describes the hat.

The hat has the Dewey Decimal Classification number 025.0427 knitted into the pattern: the classification number for the Semantic Web.

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Just as knitting creates a web of threads extending throughout the fabric, I believe that in 2037 the Library & Information world will be part of the machine readable Semantic Web created through linked data.

Every drop of structured data added to library catalogues and information agency repositories will create an impact rippling out through the web of data like a pebble dropped in a pond.  This effect is reflected in the crown of the hat.

The linked data underpinning the Semantic Web is represented by the circle of chain links edging the button on the side of the hat.  The button is also made of metal, referencing the circuitry of processors and servers that provide the physical infrastructure for the Semantic Web.

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And, most importantly of all.  Working with this web of data will be human beings – without which a hat is particularly useless.

I am Liz Finlay, Master of Information Studies student at Charles Sturt University, and owner of a rather fabulous hat.  If my hat is a successful entry depicting the Library and Information world in 2037, I will cheerfully donate it to the ALIA time capsule (I have enough yarn left to knit another one!!).

 

 

Well done again Liz! See you at NLS8!

James McGoran

NGAC, Acting Chair

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