» libraries
in computers
by daniel chudnov
Information Technology Specialist
Office of Strategic Initiatives
Library of Congress
A View From the Clouds
CLOUD It’s strange to watch something you’ve Nothing Has Changed …
taken for granted for years suddenly become
Except Everything
“a thing.” Cloud computing is definitely a
COMPUTING IS thing now, but it’s not new and it’s not even On the one hand, nothing changed. More
novel. Back when we were first learning and more of these kinds of applications ap-
DEFINITELY A about the internet in the 1990s, every dia- peared, providing web-based ways to do
gram you saw showing how the internet things we’ve done for years on our desktops
worked had a big cloud in the middle. That and, before that, on the reliable old “pen and
THING NOW, cloud represented the diverse links, routers, paper” platform. A few key differences mat-
gateways, and protocols that passed traffic ter the most: Better usability makes it easier
BUT IT’S NOT around in common, low-cost ways between for new apps to gain popularity; social fea-
our local networks and other local networks. tures like simultaneous editing of documents
If you hooked your local network up to the and users as access points offer efficiencies
NEW AND IT’S cloud, everything else seemed like it was over old approaches (and inefficiencies due to
right next door. Ten years passed, and most distraction!); free or low prices can make of-
NOT EVEN of us didn’t spend much of the intervening floading service hosting into the cloud a
time thinking deeply about that cloud any- worthwhile move. This last point is the obvi-
more. We’ve all been leaning on the cloud to ous one right now, as budgets stretch and IT
NOVEL. connect us to each other for all these years. skills stay scarce, but the option of switching
So why the sudden interest in “cloud com- to cloud-hosted services wouldn’t be com-
puting” now? pelling at all if those first two components—
The simple explanation is that you can greater usability and efficiencies from social
do a lot more than just talk to each other in features—weren’t part of the deal.
the cloud now. For a very low marginal cost, On the other hand, everything’s changed.
you can host and edit documents, manage If going from pen and paper to a computer
group projects, run surveys, track usage was the first step, and going from software
statistics, and apologize to your former high on your computer to software in the network
school mates for various rudenesses you cloud was the next step, having computers
committed way back when. But that’s not themselves in the network cloud feels like the
exactly news either, is it? Everyone writing next big shift. Many of us have been using
about Web 2.0 a few years ago did plenty to “virtual machines” (VMs) for years. Virtual-
hype these kinds of new applications. So ization is a decades-old concept in computer
what changed? science: splitting up the hardware resources
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www.infotoday.com « APRIL 2010 | 33
COMPUTERS IN LIBRARIES
libraries in computers
on a single machine to give one or more long as you want it. This is great for where