Analysis of "Content, Not Containers" report

In the follow-up report, “2004 Information Format Trends: Content, Not Containers”, the OCLC Marketing Staff achieves its goals of updating its predictions of format trends. It continues to build upon predictions made in the 2003 report, Five-Year Information Format Trends. The staff dedicates much of the report to “format agnostic” nature of consumers seeking contextual and non-contextual information.

With regard to increased content communication, the staff refers to the “disruptive technology in the content world” (2004 Information Format Trends: Content, Not Containers, OCLC Marketing Staff).

According to the bar graph on page 4, email and text message traffic increases exponentially, but the decline in ILL and USPS is relatively small. This is a clear indication of the need to embrace the technology around us; a view not prevalent in the report. The staff introduces a good argument for creating contextual guides, for which it included two excellent models on pages 14 and 15. However, the writing becomes hindered by an overtone of disdain for things of a “techie” nature, i.e., smartphones. The reader is left with a feeling of fear rather than courage to face “the most disruptive changes…taking place outside of the arena of traditional information management” (2004 Information Format Trends: Content, Not Containers, OCLC Marketing Staff).

When referring to wikis and blogs, the staff’s opinion seems to shift to excitement for the possibilities available to librarians. The authors touch briefly on the social nature of information sharing today. The real-world quotes selected to support this argument were appropriate.

However, the writers then delve deeper into micropublishing and microcontent and away from their main argument of contextual guides. Specifically, the CEO of Blogads is quoted as saying, “…users want granular pieces of information and data, at the moment of need, in the right format…’Everything, everywhere, when I want it, the way I want it.” This does not seem to support the main force of the report, which stated that content consumers were “format agnostic”.

At the end, the staff contradicts itself again by claiming that consumers demand “more personalization and dynamism” from their content. In the next paragraph, it is stated that “content with personalization features” will be attractive to “an ever more demanding, format agnostic information producer and consumer” (2004 Information Format Trends: Content, Not Containers, OCLC Marketing Staff). I feel the report was well-researched but ambiguous at times. I would be interested in reading a subsequent follow-up report.