Will Libraries Be Around in 10 Years? 20? 50?

I read a really interesting blog post on replacing library books and text books with digital textbooks. The article made some really good points, and I’d like to re-spin them here, of course giving full credit to Thomas Curtis, the original author. Read the full article here.

Here is a summary of what I took away from his article:

Why pay up to $100 for an average textbook that could be missing really important events only a short time after printing?
Electronic versions are cheaper and can be updated with current events such as the Iraq war, the country’s first Afican American president, and the decoding of the human genome to name a few that have occured in the last six years.

When studying a textbook, how often do you read the entire thing versus manually searching for specific pieces of information?
Every wish you could use CTRL+F (the keyboard shorcut for ‘Find’) on a textbook and search for information?

What hours is your library open, and how many copies can they have of each book?
Digital textbooks could be available 24/7 and available to an unlimited number of people (possibly limited by licensing)

I really liked the ideas in the article and hope more people can think outside the box on the future of textbooks for our students. Similar questions can be asked to paper mills and industrial facilities:

• How many copies of user manuals or safety books does your site have sitting in a room somewhere?
• If someone needs access to it, can they get it?
• Can they quickly find the specific information they need?
• What if someone else has it checked out or sitting on their desk?
• How up to date is it?

Has your site done anything outside-of-the-box to help make information accessible? Let us know!

Other Industries Embrace 3D Training, Why Not Pulp and Paper?

This is an article that I was a part of writing that was published on the Paper360.org site. I posted the full article on my personal blog, and to minimize duplicate content, below you’ll find links and info on the full article.

Teaser:
Surgeons, dentists, airlines, and the US military are all using 3D models and animations to train their next generation of workers. Will pulp and paper producers be the next industry to leverage this new technology to gain a competitive advantage?

Click here to view the full article.

Click here to download this article in PDF format.

History of Convergence Training

Convergence Training is a division of Capstone Technology. Convergence and Capstone were established to provide pulp and paper mills with software solutions that increase efficiency and reduce operating costs. Our founders and subject matter experts began their careers in the pulp and paper industry, hold various degrees in pulp and paper and chemical engineering, and are uniquely suited to provide software solutions for the industry.

Convergence Training began operations as a department within Capstone Technology in 2002. Since then, Convergence has authored more than 80 courses composed of 350 web-based training modules for pulp and paper, construction, mining, and automobile manufacturers. Our courses cover a variety of topics including regulatory information for government agencies such as MSHA, OSHA and the EPA, site-specific modules on pulping and papermaking processes, lean manufacturing fundamentals, equipment training, and software simulations.

Although we’ve created training materials for many industries, Convergence Training has retained the company’s original focus, creating more than 70 percent of our site-specific modules for pulp and paper clients. Chart A below summarizes our production for those clients.

Chart A

In addition to site-specific training modules, Convergence offers a comprehensive library of training modules for standard business needs, including OSHA compliance (8 hours) and MSHA Part 46 training (8 hours). Convergence also offers solutions to deliver training materials, track employee’s training progress, create training reports, and archive training records: the web-based Convergence Training Server, our robust Learning Management System that can be scaled on an enterprise level; and the lightweight Convergence Training Viewer, for companies that want to deliver high-quality training with minimal tracking or reporting functionalities.