The ALA Virtual Conference: Mapping Transformations continues today, with George Needham & Joan Frye Williams kicking off this morning with a presentation on "Libraries in a Post-Print World."

Despite all of the technological changes in libraries over the past several years, for most people the library "brand" is still "books" - good, old-fashioned, paper, bound books. George & Joan talk about how this is a powerful symbol that needs to change as libraries step forward to lead the rising trend of redefining what a "book" is. Books are changing in significant ways, more than simply the transfer of content from print text to digital format. For example, some books are becoming more like gaming than reading, other books provide apps without any narrative, plus there are now "book tracks" (music and sound effects) to go along with the reading experience.

George & Joan also encouraged librarians to rethink everything:

One of their strongest points was emphasizing how ridiculous it is that library software requires users to leave every system they know in order to use the library system. Users have to learn a different approach to everything, an approach that is not intuitive. Instead, George & Joan suggest that we build a "library layer" on top of existing systems.

Any ideas of how we can do this? The library software field is wide open for innovative ideas, so bring them on!