The problems and opportunities that our public library faces were the focus of a recent public forum that I attended, a meeting that drew some thoughtful citizens to respond to the library staff's planning efforts. What came through loud and clear from this session is that in spite of the "the Web is killing libraries" meme that is popular in some circles these days, our library suffers not from lack of use but rather from overuse. Its books, reference desk, reading rooms, book clubs, online databases and Web site, lectures, equipment rentals and childrens' programs are the focus of so many people in our community that competition for access to them is creating some hard choices for the library's planners. How does a public library adjust its resources and programs to serve a public that is hungry for far more than just access to books on shelves?

The answer to this question is complicated by the changing nature of content. Now that our local news is being delivered not just by local newspapers but as well by local Web sites and blogs and other online resources, archiving local news and knowledge is not as simple as tucking away the latest catalog of microfiche or stack of papers. Ebooks are increasingly popular as checkout items, but an expanding array of technologies makes electronic acquisitions for ebooks more complicated. Many towns and cities participate in collective bargaining for books and periodicals, but acquisitions still tend to be done on a town by town basis. And even as our library prepares to upgrade its cataloging system, the question of what should be in that catalog becomes ever more pressing.

In short, what is a public library is supposed to be in an era in which storing a print-based catalog of items is becoming one niche service amongst many is rather complicated. Most importantly, the older patrons of our local library were not necessarily the ones most focused on print services. Many of them were, in fact, more concerned about whether their grandchildren would have the right range of electronic services available for them. They understood clearly that the world is now focused on electronic content and that our library needs to focus on getting them literate in this emerging world. This includes, increasingly, ensuring that people in our community are literate not just about content that's been created by others but also literate about how to create content. Yes, our high school has some courses in this for the teens, but what about a local businessperson who needs to understand how to build a Web site or to optimize their ads for Web search engines?

One of the more neglected possibilities, though, seems to be the opportunity for local libraries to begin to cut the cord between catalog services and patron services more aggressively. If 90-plus of library patrons are discovering content via major search engines, it would seem to make sense to get library content that's available locally into those search engine results more aggressively. Yes, you have a link to World Catalog in Google Books, but what if local libraries were to expose key content via localized AdWords results in mainstream Google search results? There would be no real competition for these placements and people would be immediately aware that a local library would be a reasonable choice to check out even before they clicked through to a retailer's site.

Most of all, though, public libraries are becoming curators of the very sense of that it means to be in the public realm in our local towns. Our downtown resembles more a drive-through mall festooned with nationally known stores than the funky collection of local stores that used to thrive there years ago; our local movie theatres pulled up stakes years ago to make way for restaurants and retail space. A Starbucks or a McDonalds is a far cry from a place that people can really call their own as a public space dedicated to a community. Our town hall, once a school building, has an auditorium that's used for public hearings, but many people are looking for smaller meeting spaces for a broader number of meetings at the same time. What's needed is a curation of knowledge transfer that goes not only far beyond collections of books and journals from far and wide but also beyond what's captured online. It is the community itself that needs to be curated.

I left the library feedback session with a great deal of hope for the future of local libraries in our country. Libraries are becoming increasingly essential components for the economic and social strength of local communities, empowered by electronic content to deliver traditional information services more efficiently while freeing up both facilities and staffs for more complex missions that make use of the unique knowledge assets that can be found and created in our local communities. We are still in the very early stages of this transformation of local libraries into being community curators, but I think that it will prove to be the cornerstone of a renewal of local economic and social vitality. If you know what your town has that's unique and valuable and you make it accessible to the world, and combine it with the best of what's available in the world as a whole, then you empower citizens to invest in their communities far more effectively.

There are more than 160,000 apps available for Apple devices that have been developed over the past two years, while in the six months since the introduction of the Android Marketplace there are already more than 42,000 Android apps available. The lure of having a little icon on the desktop of these devices for apps that can add engaging features to content - and, many hope, premium revenues - is hard for most publishers and services developers to resist.

Yet, curiously, neither the Web nor the power of search engines to get good content in context at the point of demand show any serious signs of going away. In fact, with the continuing expansion of HTML 5 Web standards, Web-enabled applications are starting to interface with many of the mobile sensors that today's apps toolkits enable software developers to exploit. Publishers may be looking to apps as an alternative to the Web for advanced functionality, but the Web itself is becoming increasingly functional and extensible into sensors on mobile devices. Even in today's apps on Apple and Google Android devices, most links in both editorial and ads in these apps lead typically to Web content. The notion that apps are going to make the Web disappear by the desire of publishers willing it to be so is a myth. There is no substantial "there" in apps without the Web.

Nevertheless, apps are going to be with us increasingly as combinations of information and experiences that provide value to audiences in new contexts. As such, apps fit Shore's definition of content, content that still needs to be discovered as Web pages do, even if, perhaps, in different ways. In a sense search engines traverse some apps already by querying databases that drive some Web sites. But the broader question is what happens when unique content gets delivered via apps and not via their Web page equivalents, be it via HTML 5-enabled apps or via apps using proprietary toolkits such as Apple's. There's the strong chance that some sources of content will sink permanently into the "dark Web" again, not to mention new sources of content that will never be discoverable via the Web.

Great minds are thinking about this, of course, but not necessarily equally. One of the great neglected opportunities of the apps era is creating search utilities that can place emerging apps into the right context via search alongside more traditional page-based Web content. Already we get video clips, images and widgets delivered up via search engines that match particular queries or metadata clusterings; why not apps also? Some apps providers may balk at this notion, preferring to keep content consumers corralled into can-like containers that limit their options for cross-pollinating with rival apps platforms. The gaming console industry has certainly managed to keep stores that used to stock software well-lined with CDs that are in essence apps for those devices, so perhaps publishers have reason to hope. But my sense is that it's largely a false hope.

I believe that it's a false hope because browsers aren't going away any time soon. In fact, Web browsers are becoming only more powerful, with ever more technology packed into them to launch advanced applications as well as run-of-the-mill Web pages. Thinking of the rapidly developing Chrome OS operating system, browsers are, in their own way, even becoming devices themselves. If you thought that the iPad was slick, imagine what happens when you get an instant-on device that you can log into once and be enabled for both everything that the Web offers and everything that premium apps offer from one Web-driven touchscreen device? Now imagine one step further - imagine that it's all discoverable via one search utility. Game over, content industry friends.

The same discoverability issues will exist within enterprise firewalls, of course, if not moreso. Most organizations cannot afford to have their content locked into proprietary apps if they are to build business intelligence dashboards from multiple sources rapidly and effectively. Few will have patience for publishers wanting to sell them independent apps "cans" - you may as well tell them to go back to the era of CD-ROM products. No chance. As more enterprise-ready apps make their way to the marketplace, their day-to-day utility to individuals in businesses on mobile platforms will clash more and more with the need for those businesses to break open those cans to increase productivity amongst collaborators. Images of jolly executives toting touchpads to board meetings with print-friendly digital documents are largely mythical representations of how businesses really need to work today. It's not about individual convenience as much as getting teams productive as rapidly as possible. In a corporate world that's trying to break out of its own silos constantly, tight-as-a-can apps for content consumption are silos that few will be able to afford.

With all this said, the new generation of software and content services developed via emerging apps offer tremendous promise as platforms that can deliver real functional value to audiences. However, that functionality in and of itself cannot replace the need to find all of the relevant content that's needed to accomplish personal or organizational goals, be it through an app or any other number of useful content consumption tools. It's the ability to integrate content from multiple sources with multiple sensors that makes apps most valuable; using apps as a short-cut DRM tools based on proprietary standards shuts down most of the value that they have to offer in the first place. So, as you approach your apps strategy, remember at least these three simple rules:

As announced recently by their CEO Reed Atkin, Legal River provides a marketplace in which people looking for legal services can provide information that describes their qualifications for obtaining services and that describes their needs for services anonymously to solicit offers from practicioners. While in some ways a page out of the Lending Tree playbook, Legal River is actually more of a cross between TechTarget's lead generation servicing model and a classifieds online response service. Legal River users don't reveal their personal data to potential services providers but can instead review the incoming offers anonymously and choose to deal with any of the providers who respond - or not. Legal River charges on a per-lead-provided basis, which encourages a broad range of respondents to requests, This is unlike LegalMatch, which requires an annual fee from legal professionals using the service.

Legal River is in its very early days, focusing largely on supporting tech companies in the Washington, DC area to prove out the mechanics of the model before expanding to broader markets. This is similar in approach in some ways to InsideView and Jigsaw, which honed their business information services amongst Silicon Valley companies before tackling broader markets. A good place to start as any, and one which promises to be able to scale easily into those broader markets, perhaps in partnership with some other business information services providers. I find it encouraging that companies such as Legal River are getting active backing at a time in which some business information suppliers have pulled back on some of their innovation initiatives in the face of challenging markets.

Even more encouraging, though, is that the Legal River business model focuses on key productivity challenges faced both by legal services providers who need to keep marketing time to a minimum and businesses that need to find legal services more efficiently to survive and thrive in challenging times. Instead of thinking like database curators, as some B2B directories publishers continue to do, Legal River is looking at the opportunities for transactions that generate win-win business scenarios from interactions. Expect the new wave of cost-conscious financiers such as LaunchBox Digital to eye additional business-oriented publishing models as key candidates for startups that can generate revenues quickly and scale rapidly using today's cloud computing resources.