Okay, I'll bite. As a foreword, I read this list with great relish, but I agree that some fresh views are greatly welcomed. I also have to admit my own reticence in posting due to many of the reasons already mentioned — but mostly because I'm a young librarian, and have been scolded many times for being too brash. You'd think I'd learn.
Here are some of my thoughts around what a "NGC", roughly speaking, should be:
1) Open source. There are so many benefits to FOSS and analogues in library philosophy I don't know where to start. Both open source and open access were radical ideas less than a decade ago, and now we can clearly see the positive things they've produced. Faulting FOSS for being immature is naive. Those who lobby against open source, especially those wearing a MLS, should have it stripped and replaced with an MBA so you can be seen for what you really are. Shame on you.
2) Evolutionary. I suspect much of the vehement adherence to MARC actually comes from an inability to (or fear of) change. Library tools, including catalogues, have to be in perpetual beta and iteratively improved[1]. Ranganathan knew this — do we not believe him, or have we simply forgotten?
Concordant to this: ditch the insistence on perfecting an idea before implementing it. It's counter-productive and reveals retrograde thinking. Don't design for special cases, design for the majority and manage the exceptions. If your model is flexible, it'll be able to handle them. If not, time to develop a new model (see "evolutionary", above). MARC took decades to handle all the variety it does today.
3) Highly modular. Many open source technologies, including Linux and the foundation of the Internet (and web) are built on the premise of many small, highly specialized components that can be re-assembled in myriad ways to achieve specific purposes[2]. Monolithic tools are overly complex and inflexible, just look at your current ILS for a good example. We must be able to readily swap out components of our system for others that are newer, better, more appropriate, etc.
4) Standards-agnostic. Maybe this is a derivation of "evolutionary", but in order to interoperate with the non-library world, our systems need to speak multiple languages (data languages, not human ones). Especially if the library world comes up with new models for information, our systems have to be able to adapt rapidly, or it'll take decades to implement them, if ever (<cough> FRBR <cough> RDA). This is certainly not trivial, but standards should not be hard-coded into the tools.
Thinking more broadly for a moment...
5) Competition is good. Libraries *are* in competition with Google, if only for the eyeball-time of our users. And yet, competition doesn't preclude wanting the same goal: the ideal of free, universal access to the sum of human knowledge is roughly shared by both. Libraries have been complacent for far, far too long because they have been monopolies. The monopoly on information brokering is over. Become motivated. Don't pine about Google or denigrate them — emulate the things they do well, and build upon that with the things you're good (or better) at.
6) Sharing is good. Libraries were built on the premise of freedom and sharing [3] (see "universal access", above). Locking things up is counter-productive, especially if they're digital. Metadata is a public good. There is a whole generation younger than me who simply ignore copyright because it makes no sense in the world they know. They *expect* things to be shared openly, especially if they come from a public institution. Get to know and love open data. Use Creative Commons licenses.
(Bonus thought: what would happen if, instead of using acquisitions budgets to buy/lease copies of materials, libraries bought the *copyright* for those materials in a coordinated way and then released them into the public domain. Madness, I know.)
7) Don't spite your friends. OCLC and the ILS vendors are trying to protect their old way of business by fettering and deceiving their customers [4,5]. Holding libraries hostage in a time when they're struggling is a great way to haemorrhage goodwill and trust, and no way to build a sustainable business relationship. There is a whole generation of librarians coming up who simply won't stand for this kind of nonsense, and we don't care *how long* you've been in business. As soon as there's a marginally viable alternative, we're gone. Many of us are actively looking already.
8) Prove your worth. Stop trying to make libraries "cool" with Lady Gaga videos. You're embarrassing yourself. Show how libraries are *useful*. Learn about the day-to-day problems that your users have and show how you're trying to solve them [6] (shameless plug, but illustrative). Just because we have decades of public goodwill to draw upon doesn't mean we don't have to constantly work hard to maintain it.
With apologies for being young, idealistic, and brash,
MJ
1. http://thinkexist.com/quotation/i-say-never-be-complete-i-say-stop-being-perfect/411223.html
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy
3. http://twitter.com/Hadro/status/16493943954
4. http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6726631.html
5. http://www.oclc.org/worldcat/recorduse/policy/default.htm
6. http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/2947
Received on Tue Jun 29 2010 - 10:15:39 EDT