Upcoming Education Institute audio talks include

November 30
Stephen Abram on 15 Minutes a Day! All It Takes to Keep Up in a 2.0 World

December 7
Barbara Quint on Wit & Wisdom: Insights for Info Pros

December 14
Jenny Levine on Gaming & Libraries: Engaging Stratetgies.

Listening to Ran Hock, Online Strategies & Author, Yahoo! to the Max, talk to the Education Institute on the topic of Yahoo! Tips. Ran indicated that lots of people look at Google Labs to see what’s coming along but Yahoo! Research Labs (Yahoo! Next) has even more forward looking projects.

I was also impressed with the multi-lingual search which is, unfortunately, only available on Yahoo! France and Yahoo!Germany. Cool.

It’s interesting to me that wikis are being touted as the the next big thing by a Canadian I really respect and have know for many years — Don Tapscott. If Don talks about it, and writes about it, it must be true. I used the following example about wikis when I talked to a group of parliamentary researchers and librarians earlier this year at IFLA in Seoul. Business did not embrace personal computers in the 80s because they had huge machines that worked just fine. Today we could not live without PCs. Business did not embrace the net or the web in the 90s because they were only populated by
*&(#$? (junk), right? Today the web and the net are an infrastructure we could not live without. I said to the group that wikis were like that and we would soon not know what we did before they came around. So I’m thrilled to see that I was right, because as I say, if Don says it’s true, it is! Can’t wait for his new book!