Trendwatching

One of my favorite e-newsletters is Trendwatching. You can subscribe for free here. They’ve just released their year-end issue here.
It is a special issue and a little longer than usual. It’s called “Virtual Anthropology”. I just loved it. My undergrad degree is in social anthropology and I took a keen interest in tool using behaviors and the relationship of tools to culture. No wonder I find this interface design stuff so interesting.
Anyway, this issue goes through ways to do modern observational anthropology on the web and points to a whole group of cool sites that are on the leading edge of the new web behaviors.
The two principles it ties to these observations are:
1. Live the lives of your customers.
2. Roam the world’s most inspiring places.
Who can hate a mantra that says library vendors should have librarians on staff (SirsiDynix has loads of us) and says to travel a bunch too (virtually and for real).
It also talks about the proces of “life caching”. Learn more about this here.
There appear to be loads of insights here for savvy (and trendy) librarians.
Stephen