> "Library use" is a tricky statistic to calculate.
Indeed. And, for clarification, I was looking at our electronic resource usage stats here, not circulation counts.
--Dave
==================
David Walker
Library Web Services Manager
California State University
http://xerxes.calstate.edu
________________________________________
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries [NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Ed Jones [ejones_at_NU.EDU]
Sent: Tuesday, May 05, 2009 12:46 PM
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Another nail in the coffin
"Library use" is a tricky statistic to calculate. To be useful, it must
take into account variations in the size of the potential user
population from year to year. For an academic library, a decline in use
is not necessarily a cause for worry if the student and faculty
populations are declining at a faster rate; conversely, a rise in use is
not necessarily a cause for celebration if the potential user population
is increasing at a faster rate. For example, choosing a random library
from the annual ARL statistics, I find that while initial circulations
declined 17.9 percent from 2004 to 2006 (the latest year available),
initial circulations per FTE student declined 25.0 percent because the
FT student population increased 9.4 percent over this same period;
likewise reference queries declined 18.7 percent from 2004 to 2006 but
25.7 percent on a per-FT student basis. I don't report these as being
typical ARL figures but simply as examples of how taking the potential
population into account can alter the magnitude (and sometimes the
direction) of any measured change.
In the abstract, one would expect library circulation and reference
queries to decline in an environment where more and more resources are
readily accessible via other channels, so my inclination would be to
look for other causes for any marked increase in these transactions.
Use of library facilities (e.g., for group study) is another matter, but
ARL doesn't report gate counts.
Ed Jones
National University (San Diego, Calif.)
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Walker, David
Sent: Tuesday, May 05, 2009 8:55 AM
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Another nail in the coffin
> This is about pointing out realities
> that's happening right in front of our faces
So let's point out some other realities:
1. As Karen and others have mentioned, usage of libraries is
*increasing*.
And not just at public libraries. I'm looking at our stats right now,
and for the umpteenth year in a row our usage numbers have gone up. If
library systems -- and by implication libraries themselves -- are
"becoming more or less irellevant," then how do you explain this?
2. For the past decade, usage in academic libraries has shifted from
print resources and the system that support the discovery of such (i.e.,
library catalogs) to online subscription resources and the systems that
support their discovery (i.e., databases). There have been a *lot* of
new systems and improvements to the latter over the past decade, with
many more improvements coming down the pipe. Things are by no means
standing still.
3. For well over a decade, academic libraries have been shifting people
and resources from the reference desk to in-classroom instruction. The
libraries that have been the most successful in this cannot hire people
fast enough to keep up with the demand.
I think the reason why your posts come off as rather "doom and gloom,"
Alex, is because your characterization of the current state of libraries
and library systems is -- from where I sit anyway -- rather exaggerated.
Don't get me wrong, we absolutely need to make improvements to library
catalog systems. But, for academic libraries anyway, this is just one
small part of the overall technology picture. Our problems (and
achievements) do not begin and end with the catalog and MARC data.
If you think of academic libraries as places focused on books with
librarians sitting around the reference desk ignoring technological
innovation; well, I think it's actually that outmoded image of the
library, rather than libraries themselves, that should be put in a
coffin and laid to rest.
--Dave
==================
David Walker
Library Web Services Manager
California State University
http://xerxes.calstate.edu
________________________________________
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries [NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU]
On Behalf Of Alexander Johannesen [alexander.johannesen_at_GMAIL.COM]
Sent: Monday, May 04, 2009 10:02 PM
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Another nail in the coffin
On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 00:18, Jonathan Rochkind <rochkind_at_jhu.edu>
wrote:
> What is your point, Alex? How can this discussion help us serve our
users better?
What's my point? Ouch. Let's first turn to a guy I happen to trust,
David Weinberger (of "Everything is Miscellaneous" fame), who you'll
notice was in the room of the demonstration (and asked the third
question or so), with a pro and con post ;
http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/2009/05/04/how-important-is-wolframalpha
/
Ok, that out of the way, I *was* expecting this sort of reply (and
possibly especially from you, Jonathan), and I do set myself up for
such, so let's make a few points then ;
1. Sanitizing data is a huge problem in the library world. The MARC
record is a mess and lacks any rigour to make it denormalized enough
for computational consumption, which seems to be what most techie
library folks are trying to do. The library world spends millions on
this problem alone (the larger ones, and most through ie. OCLC), and
it's at the forefront focus of the whole FRBR / RDA debacle.
Centralizing this task is one of course that's a bit scoffed at these
days, and as such Wolfram|Alpha fits smack bang into that, but for
highly curated data this is probably something you need. And you have
done this for some time. No one has curated their data more than
libraries have the last 30 years, but where the data should have been
made itemized, tokenized and normalized, you have done neither (except
some work by OCLC).
Point: You were on the right track for having the best meta data
collection that curation can muster, yet you let people and technology
race past you without any real or tangible reaction. Was this because
you didn't see it coming, because you didn't think it would happen, or
because you can't even see it still? And if the latter, I've got some
swap I'd like to sell you.
This is not about doom and gloom. This is about pointing out realities
that's happening right in front of our faces, on things that will
impact us deeply, and if nothing else, a speculation as to why it's
happening seemingly without the library world pointing this out.
2. Analyzing sanitized data is hard, but it's something people have
been pursuing for years. The AI crowd of course has hailed this as
their holy grail, and even where NLP has made huge strides, W|A only
has to deal with contexctualized first-order logic. How? Well, by the
use of ontologies, of course. (Hint: It's not done in RDF, but
certainly can share it as such)
Point: New exciting technology that has huge relevance to the library
world is happening through technologies the library world is sadly
lacking resources and expertize in, and that perhaps it would be a
good idea to invest in directions in which advances seems to be made.
This has implications for both the library business model and the
internal infrastructure and formats used.
3. There's things you can do to data, and Wolfram, being a
mathematical guy, applies equations, etc., from all over. "There are
finite numbers of methods that have been discovered in the history of
science." There are 5-6 millions lines of Mathematica code at work,
all linked into the ontology of what the data is, how it can be
applied, typified and ready for parsing and application.
Point: There's 27 years of really hard mathematical work at play in
the background. This is not an indexer, this is not competing with
Google. It's a mathematical engine for parsing inputs and doing
calculations over them. Divide the magnitude of that tremendous task
with the number of enquiries to the reference desk that either Google
or Wolfram can handle. "How many people died in WWII?" and so on. The
dent in reference librarianship *will* be large.
4. Automated presentation. What do yo show people so they can
cognitively grasp it? "Algorithmic presentation technology ... tries to
pick out what is important." Mathematica has worked on "computational
aesthetics" for years. (Pinched from
http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/2009/04/28/berkman-stephen-wolfram-wolfr
amalphacom/
DW live-blogging during the presentation)
Point: Add the 27 years in point 3 with 1 part semantic contextually
aware widgets and 1 part enabling technology, and you get an advance
in user experience few can match, even Google. This highly
contextualized platform will make a lot of librarians without a job if
it works, and to be frank, I see no evidence to the contrary. Also,
the future goes in only one direction, and the system won't get worse
over time.
Wolfram|Alpha has a framework in place that solves every big problem
the library world has technologically struggled with. People shouldn't
dismiss this as "how is this relevant?" when they should be sitting
upright and taking notes, and *learn* from this. Ignoring these kind
of things is exactly what got library systems to where they are today;
below par and becoming more or less irellevant.
I didn't post this in a "doom and gloom" way; I posted it because this
will have implications, and the more you ignore the more larger those
implications will be. They're doing things highly relevant to a big
swathe of librarianship (if not the referencing, then the actual
answers in books that won't be written, and so forth). This is why I
was saying people will become data producers, not book producers,
because it's cheaper and probably is easier to profit from. But don't
worry, you'll have your hardcore fans still.
(Written in haste)
Regards,
Alex
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
Project Wrangler, SOA, Information Alchemist, UX, RESTafarian, Topic
Maps
------------------------------------------ http://shelter.nu/blog/
--------
Received on Tue May 05 2009 - 16:00:12 EDT