On Tue, 8 Sep 2009 16:43:46 -0400, Tim Spalding <tim_at_LIBRARYTHING.COM> wrote:
>Libraries had a chance with the web, but bad technology, bad thinking
>and discouragement from OCLC and others stymied engagement, and more
>than a decade we almost NEVER get a library in a search result.
>Libraries had a chance with the open data, social networking and
>mashups, and they dropped the ball. No top 1,000 website uses library
>data, except Google Books (sort of), and even in social cataloging, of
>the five sites, only one (LT) uses library data�and that's been a
>constant struggle.
>
>Now we're moving past the web and metadata into the stuff itself�and
>the Kindle may well be the coup de grace.
>
>Sorry to be a pessimist.
I can imagine that I would agree completely *if* I were not a librarian, so
I fully confess that I have a personal stake in this discussion. It's tough
when others consider that you and your career should be consigned to the
waste-basket of history, and it's even worse when you secretly think it may
be true, yourself.
Of course, I do not want us to go silently into that great goodnight, and
from the larger point of view, I don't think that librarians should
disappear. When I work with people, it turns out that they don't have the
slightest idea how to go about finding useful information on the web, other
than typing words into a Google box and watching what does and does not pop
up. It's all a complete mystery to them; they don't understand how Google
works any better than how the library catalog works. It's all rather like
people watching a magician onstage, producing rabbits, cards and flowers out
of their coat sleeves, hats, and from behind someone's ear!
But libraries are threatened as they perhaps, have never been before. They
demand a lot of money, which has been short for a long time and getting
shorter as we speak, while libraries often have some of the most attractive
spaces and buildings on a campus or in a community--space that others would
prefer to have for themselves.
This is the climate why I believe librarians must sit down and deeply
reconsider what it is that they are *really* doing, doing something the
horse-and-buggy folks did *not* do when automobiles were introduced. Those
people thought they were in the horse-and-buggy business, but it turned out
they were not. They were in the transportation business, but they
couldn't--or wouldn't--see that at the time and everything passed them by. I
think journalists are in the same dilemma today. They must reconsider what
they are *really* doing, and it is not writing for a newspaper on a topic
assigned by an editor to get some filler for the local section. I don't know
what they are really doing, but that is their problem, not mine.
I have spent some time at this, and I think that the business that libraries
are really in is *not* maintaining and organizing collections; it's not
selection, acquisition, description, organization, circulation, reference,
preservation. I think the business that libraries are really in is:
facilitating scholarly communication. But I use the term "scholarly
communication" in a different way than what is commonly understood, but I
can't find better term(s). In the sense that I am using the terms, a
"scholar" is not just some dude with a PhD. It means anyone who is fairly
serious and who wants to learn something. This can mean a 4-year old child
to an emeritus professor. So, the emphasis is on helping people to learn,
not so much for sheer entertainment, although they can certainly use our
tools as well.
I also see "Communication" differently: not just simply emails or hyperlinks
between people and text, but communication that goes beyond time and space.
In this sense, someone from today can "communicate" with Plutarch or
Confucius, although it is rather one-way communication, but an 18th century
scholar on Plutarch can also be included in this communication, as well as
those today.
So, once this idea of "scholarly communication" is seen, our task is to
"help" in all kinds of ways. That's what libraries and librarians have
always done. We *help* in determining useful vs. non-useful information,
reliable sources, providing reliable search results, and so on. In the past,
we controlled a lot of this process because of the intricacies of the book
market and through our cataloging rules, but the new information environment
means that a lot of the controls we have always enjoyed in selection,
acquisition, description and so on have already disappeared. We must accept
that--in some cases, gratefully!--and move on.
There's still a place for librarians, their skills and I think perhaps most
important is their ethical stance. But we've got to carve it out somehow.
Jim Weinheimer
Received on Wed Sep 09 2009 - 03:17:01 EDT