Over on Talking with Talis, we’ve just released our third podcast. This one is a conversation with Ed Batista, Executive Director of the AttentionTrust.

Fundamental to the AttentionTrust are four principles;

1. Property
2. Mobility
3. Economy
4. Transparency

Together, they encapsulate the notion that the record of the things I visit, look at, listen to, buy, or otherwise engage with – the things to which I give my attention – is mine.

Attention has proved something of a hot topic recently, attracting the interest of Robert Scoble, the Gillmor Gang, and many more. As I mentioned at the time, AttentionTrust’s proposals struck me as amongst the most important issues explored at the recent Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, too.

Theoretically and conceptually, it’s all certainly very interesting. It feels right that information about what I do and where I go should belong to me, and that I should decide who else gets to access that flow. Listen to Ed, and hear more about attention and the coming of the Attention Economy.

But what might it mean for Library 2.0, and am I any closer to understanding my feeling that Attention and Identity are just begging to become more closely associated?

Building upon well understood library processes, the most obvious application area is clearly around borrower history, where it is entirely feasible to envisage attention data being used to drive recommendation services around items that a patron might like to borrow. Mechanisms to amalgamate anonymised data from across large numbers of ’similar’ libraries should make it possible to counteract the odd results likely to be generated by the relatively small sample size in any single institution. Offering readers the tools to easily combine aspects of their borrowing history with purchase data from online bookstores and borrowings from other libraries to which they might have access creates the potential for truly powerful and tailored recommendation, especially when aligned with the knowledge of library staff.

Whole new markets open up for reading groups and similar activities, bringing discussion of particular authors to the attention of interested library patrons who frequently read their work, whether they are currently a member of a library reading group or not.

Existing services such as whichbook.net, interesting as they are, clearly suffer from a lack of data about a sufficiently large number of books. Might the wisdom of crowds not be deployed to their advantage, enriching their existing reviews and book selection mechanisms with a vast body of empirical evidence about how similar readers actually found ’similar’ books to be, and reviews from those very readers?

Stepping back a bit, a fundamental aspect of Library 2.0 is surely that the sector take its place within the broader information landscape. To the degree that Attention is gaining attention within that broader landscape, libraries and their systems should therefore be capable of participating, and permitting their users to consume and contribute their own attention in the library context. What types of uses might the current generation of library patrons be prepared to permit of their data, and what new uses might they actively seek out?

Changing tack slightly, might attention data be used in a university or college – with the agreement of students – to follow the resources that they use during their course of study, to identify the popular books, VLE/CMS units, web pages and more, and to look at the ways in which these mesh together when used by successful students, or fail to when students struggle? Might we learn to guide students better by more closely observing ’successful’ behaviours?

Where else might Attention impinge upon Library 2.0?

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