Reflection Blog: New Horizons

Here I am, back again with a screenshot of my notes app! So you know what that means, it’s Reflection Blog Time!

Expanding on these thoughts…

Trend Reports:

Not sure if it’s just me but I love a data report. In my school library I LOVE looking at our circulation statistics and comparing data month to month. Part of this I learned from my teacher librarian who used to work in retail and has a, in her words, “sales growth mindset” that is driven by stats. But the other part comes from me and my enjoyment of seeing important information organized in a pleasing way, it makes my brain feel warm in a good way! Which is why I love re-visiting the IFLA Trend Report (2024) and reading through the EDUCAUSE Horizon Report and the Horizon Report Library Edition (2017). I found it interesting that each report organized their trends in different ways. For example, EDUCAUSE has their report and trends organized by topic, then has a separate section discussing the signals of change. And the Horizon Report Library Edition was mainly organized by time, but also by “difficulty” which by some definition can also be seen as time related.

I find these different types of organization important for those who are making trend spotting and change signal watching a part of their regular professional practice because it highlights different aspects of some of the same trends. If you’re reading the Horizon Report Library Edition and getting a lot out of the section that divides trends and changes into the solvable, difficult, and wicked challenges, you might take that system of organization into what you’re seeing being reported from the topic-sorted EDUCAUSE or IFLA Trend Reports. Many of these reports overlap because they are seeing the same things coming through, I find this interesting especially because I am comparing trend reports that were published almost 10 years apart from each other, but I am still seeing some of the same things (I ctrl+f’ed Artifical Intelligence in the 2017 Horizon report to see what was there and it included a technology development timeline that looking back now quite accurate!) being mentioned and being flagged as important to keep an eye on or include in your work right now.

The other reason I like these trend reports is because I feel like they are not just important to the now, but will be important for the future as historical record of the way we in this field have thought and worked and persevered before. Like i said before, from 2017 to now many of the same trends still exist and yet are so different, how will it be in another 10 years and will the pattern of change be something worth paying attention to? I have also been seeing these trend reports as a motivational factor. If libraries survived huge change that impacted society for good, like the introduction of the internet, then we can make it through whatever changes are coming next, and record of how signals of change were charted and understood and then acted on are helpful tools that we should be attuned to.