Not to rain on Matt's dork brigade, but today Cornell announced that its interim university librarian, Anne Kenney, would (pending approval from the Board of Trustees' executive committee) be officially named the Carl A. Kroch University Librarian. Why is this significant? University libraries have long been ahead of the game when it comes to developing new technologies for scholarly research. Kenney is "an internationally respected expert in digital library development," and that means extending Cornell's already formidable leadership among research libraries to the kinds of information technologies that will redefine what it means to "go to the library" in the coming years. A quick glance at Kenney's publication record makes it clear that her expertise in digital collections will serve Cornell well. I'm not sure if Cornell's deal with Microsoft (instead of Google) to digitize many of its holdings will matter all that much to the library's innovation efforts, since I think in the long run, it will be university collaborations and open-source tools that will drive a lot of this development ... as it has so far.
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