[Web4lib] Re: [lita-l] "The Ultimate Debate: Do Libraries Innovate"at ALA this month

[Lars Aronsson]

HAZEL Margaret E wrote:

> If necessity is the mother of invention, and libraries have

I don't know about the people who asked the question that started 
this discussion,

> > > **Title - "The Ultimate Debate: Do Libraries Innovate?" **

but some people are very careful to distinguish

invention = coming up with something new

from

innovation = bringing it out to the masses.

If you ask me, the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee is primarily 
an innovation, bringing out to the masses the combination of the 
already known technologies of SGML markup (HTML), hypertext (URLs) 
and a simple client-server protocol based on TCP/IP (HTTP).  This 
is something that Gopher and FTP had failed to do.  If there is 
any invention in there, it's the URL, which is a new smart way to 
write the protocol, hostname and filename as a unit.  Ward 
Cunningham's "wiki-wiki" concept is an invention, but Wikipedia 
(using this for an encyclopedia) is innovation.  And maybe most of 
"web 2.0" is innovation, rather than invention.

Does it make sense to separate invention from innovation in this 
way, and ask what libraries do in innovation, as opposed to 
invention?  (Rather than "as opposed to doing the old thing".)
Perhaps libraries are spending too much effort trying to invent, 
when instead they should be innovating?


-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se