Eric Lease Morgan wrote:
Comments at several points.
> Yes, I believe libraries need to continue to do the processes of
> collection, organization, preservation, and dissemination, but these
> are not the ends but rather the means. We do these things because they
> enable us to provide services against content. These processes enable
> us to put collections into context. They make it easier for our
> constituents to do the work they need to do, whether that be learning,
> teaching, research, decision-making, planning, justification,
> entertainment, self-fulfillment, etc.
While I agree that our tools *should* make it easier for our constituents to do their work, I don't know how many of them would agree that our tools succeed. See next comment:
> All libraries are a part of larger organizations. School libraries are
> a part of schools. Academic libraries are a part of colleges and
> universities. Special libraries are a part of businesses and
> governments. Public libraries are a member of municipalities. Because
> we work for these larger organizations we are expected to know and
> understand the "information needs" of these groups. We are expected to
> know them better than the Googles of the world.
But this I think is exactly the problem. I submit that we do not know the information needs, but no one else does, either. When I see the user tasks of FRBR, they are more or less of a joke today. In the past, what was listed as "user needs" in e.g. Cutter, were not so much the needs of the users (although he did provide some questions from users) but they were more on the lines of: this is the kind of access that we can provide. Naturally, things have changed in the last 100+ years, but FRBR still the "user tasks" in pretty much the same way as Cutter did.
Lots of people are studying what are the needs of users, and how people are using all of these new tools and the information it provides. In many ways, the traditional library community has sat so entranced, contemplating and studying its own navel, that they just haven't seen what is going on in the larger world.
Have you tried explaining to a person younger than 21 years old how the traditional library catalog works? They look at you like you just stepped out of a space craft. It's really strange to them today. For those who have been around awhile, like myself, Google searching is still "new" but for younger people, it's the norm and it is the library catalog that is weird. And a *lot harder* to use with results that make them less "happy."
> With this knowledge we
> collect certain things and not others. Moreover, we are expected to
> provide not only guidance in their use but the tools to do the work.
> We ought to be able to put these things into the context of our users
> easier than an outsourced institution. This is our niche. Whether it
> be facilitating scholarly communication, manipulating data sets,
> comparing & contrasting the use of colloquial terms in literature, or
> simply understanding the central thesis to a scientific article, all
> are possibilities for libraries.
This is another basic point: what is the "collection" today? I can add lots of things to the catalog, but I still must point people in the direction of Google and all kinds of other places for lots and lots of excellent materials. When Google Books is approved eventually, how will anybody "select" from that? You either get it or you won't It's just like "selection" of journals has gone out of the control of librarians once the aggregators came around; with Google Books, the same thing will happen. I won't be able to "select" or "deselect" anything at all. I can only provide access.
So, we've already outsourced a lot of our work with the journal aggregators, and when we buy entire sets of ebooks. Selection of websites is something that is only done on an ad hoc basis, since it goes outside our normal venues of publisher --> book jobber --> library profile --> selector.
Also, are you suggesting that we will be the ones manipulating data sets, comparing terms in literature and so on? If so, I think we will no longer be librarians but research assistants.
> So what if Google's metadata describing books is not 100 percent
> accurate. Their indexing technologies will make the discovery of
> "their" content good enough. Their goal is to attract a lot of
> attention in order to generate revenue. Full text books are a great
> way to do that because the totality of books (more or less) reflect
> the totality of humanity. Google has (more or less) solved the
> discovery problem. It is time to move on to the more challenging
> aspects of library service -- putting the information to use.
Well, that's what was hopeful in the blog post. It was clear that it *wasn't* good enough either for the scholar or for Google.
Jim Weinheimer
Received on Wed Sep 09 2009 - 09:47:01 EDT