He Is the Future One of our youngest Movers & Shakers, digital projects librarian Barry Bailey has been out of library school for less than two years and at Johnson County Community College (JCCC) for less than a year. Yet, he's already made an impact: from creating a digital collection of vintage fashions to developing a digital record of faculty scholarship and creative work. He migrated JCCC's collection of online research from a static home on the library's web site to the LibGuides information sharing system (and is teaching senior librarians how to manipulate it). Bailey also transformed a four-page bibliography created for an autism conference at JCCC into a comprehensive resource at LibGuides that Billington colleague and LJ reviewer Andrea Kempf anticipates will be a resource for their users for years to come.
Bailey is currently working on a mobile version of his library's catalog. “It works, but it's a dirty, dirty hack,” he admits. And then there is the shush! factor: “While half the library community wants to smack the phone out of a patron's hand, I see possibilities. I'd love to see dozens of users with smartphones in hand, searching a title, looking at a minimap, navigating themselves through the stacks,” he says.
“He sees digital opportunities in everything we do,” says Kempf. “He recognizes the future. Actually, he is the future—and it looks great.”
