Week 6: "Thing 15"

After reading the articles, Away From Icebergs and To a Temporary Place in Time, I must agree that the days of cuddling up with a good book in front of a big library window are over. Instead, these days you see people at the book store sipping on specialty coffees and typing furiously on their laptops.

The Away From Icebergs (written by Rick Anderson) article was surprisingly interesting and upbeat; the article title lead me to believe that the content would be a little bit more "icy" and undesirable. The message that I received after considering Rick Anderson's viewpoint though was not that libraries will soon be extinct but rather that libraries and librarians still have a place in this world, there are just some changes that need to be made.

Anderson explains that there a three main icebergs that libraries and librarians need to stay away from in order to remain afloat.

Iceberg 1 - there is no longer a need for the "just in case" collection. Anderson explains that "It no longer makes sense to collect information products as if they were hard to get. They aren’t. In fact, it may no longer make sense to “collect” in the traditional sense at all. In my library, we’ve seen a 55 percent drop in circulation rates over the past twelve years, making it harder and harder to justify the continued buildup of a large “just in case” print collection. As a Web 2.0 reality continues to emerge and develop, our patrons will expect access to everything – digital collections of journals, books, blogs, podcasts, etc. You think they can’t have everything? Think again. This may be our great opportunity."

Iceberg 2 - library success is reliant on user education. Anderson says that "Libraries are poorly equipped and insufficiently staffed for teaching. Ask yourself what your patron-to-librarian ratio is (at the University of Nevada it’s about 680 to 1) and then ask yourself how you’re going to train all those patrons. We need to focus our efforts not on teaching research skills but on eliminating the barriers that exist between patrons and the information they need, so they can spend as little time as possible wrestling with lousy search interfaces and as much time as possible actually reading and learning."

Iceberg 3 - the "come to us" model of library service must change. Anderson suggests that "There was a time, not very long ago, when libraries exercised something close to monopoly power in the information marketplace. During the print era, if you wanted access to pricey indexes or a collection of scholarly journals, you had no choice but to make a trip to the library. It wasn’t a good system, but it worked. Sort of. That is to say, it worked moderately well for those privileged with access to a good library. In the post-print era, libraries no longer have the monopoly power that they had in the days before the Internet. We have to be a bit more humble in the current environment, and find new ways to bring our services to patrons rather than insisting that they come to us—whether physically or virtually."

I agree with Anderson and the viewpoint he expresses in his article. I think that the life span of the traditional library is almost up but that libraries can remain strong and prosperous, it is just a matter of changing the way things have been done in the past to better fit the needs of the future reader.

The article entitled To A Temporary Place in Time (written by Dr. Wendy Schultz) was helpful as it provided a basic definition for the traditional library but also went on to explain how the library has changed as the world wide web have evolved.

I found it interesting to reflect on the ways Dr. Wendy Schultz explained the value of the library as well as its life stages...

Dr. Schultz proposes "Libraries are not just collections of documents and books, they are conversations, they are convocations of people, ideas, and artifacts in dynamic exchange. Libraries are not merely in communities, they are communities: they preserve and promote community memories; they provide mentors not only for the exploration of stored memory, but also for the creation of new artifacts of memory." As well as that "Librarians today are not just inventory management biobots: they are people with a unique understanding of the documents they compile and catalog, and the relationships among those documents."

Stage 1: Traditional Library
Dr. Schultz asks "What was the library of the past? A symbol of a society that cared about its attainments, that treasured ideas, that looked ahead multiple generations. Librarians were stewards, trainers, intimate with the knowledge base and the minds who produced it."

Stage 2: Library 1.0 - Commodity
Dr. Schultz maintains that in the beginning libraries were just a source of commodity, for example, "The library from Alexandria to the industrial era: Books are commodities, collected, inventoried, categorised and warehoused within libraries. Libraries represent a resource base, contributing to educating the labour force, to supporting innovation processes fueling growth, and to informing the present and the future—whether in the neighborhood, in academia, or in business."

Stage 3: Library 2.0 - Product
Dr. Schultz believes that commodity then leads to product distribution and that librarians need to consider "How should the library package its commodity—books—as products in an environment which disintermediates, dematerialises, and decentralises? Chad and Miller’s essay, and the debates and conversations around it, raise this question and answer it with the characteristics of our emerging information infrastructure: the library is everywhere, barrier-free, and participatory."

Stage 4: Library 3.0 - Web 3D to Library 3D - Service
Dr. Schultz explains that we wil "arrive at virtual collections in the 3D world, where books themselves may have avatars and online personalities. But the avalanche of material available will put a premium on service, on tailoring information to needs, and on developing participatory relationships with customers. So while books may get in your 3D face all by themselves, people will prefer personal introductions—they will want a VR info coach. Who’s the best librarian avatar? How many Amazon stars has your avatar collected from satisfied customers? This could create librarian “superstars” based on buzz and customer ratings. People will collect librarians rather than books—the ability not just to organise, but also to annotate and compare books and other information sources, from a variety of useful perspectives."

Stage 5: Library 4.0 - The Neo Library - Experience
Dr. Schultz then predicts that this stage "will be the library for the aesthetic economy, the dream society, which will need libraries as mind gyms; libraries as idea labs; libraries as art salons. But let’s be clear: Library 4.0 will not replace Libraries 1.0 through 3.0; it will absorb them. The library as aesthetic experience will have space for all the library’s incarnations: storage (archives, treasures); data retrieval (networks—reference rooms); and commentary and annotation (salon). Available as physical places in the library “storefront,” they will also be mobile, as AR overlays we can view (via glasses, contacts, projections) anywhere. Both virtual and augmented 3D reality will enable us to manipulate data via immersive, visual, metaphorical, sculptural, holographic information theatres: the research and analytic experience will merge with drawing, dance and drama."

I found the detailed descriptions that this article offered explaining the ways in which traditional libraries have already morphed as technology has evolved within our society to be interesting and accurate. I appreciated Dr. Schultz's predictions for the future of the library and now feel motivated to keep up to date on this topic in order to best be able to meet the needs of students in the future of education.

As Dr. Schultz wraps up her article she ends with an invitation, "I'll meet you there." I have always loved the library (as a small child and even now as an adult) and I am excited for the changes that will occur. I look forward to many rewarding library experiences as the world continues to change throughout my lifetime.