Bernhard Eversberg wrote:[ev_at_BIBLIO.TU-BS.DE]
<snip>
That sounds a lot as if "informing", "teaching", and "learning"
are all closely related - or are they not?
Therefore:
Libraries are facilitators in the economy of scholarly and
scientific work, and they need catalogs to fill that role.
</snip>
I would like this to be true, but I don't know if it is. The Ithaka report is not very encouraging this way:
http://www.ithaka.org/ithaka-s-r/research/faculty-surveys-2000-2009/faculty-survey-2009, especially the graph on p. 4 (pdf p. 6) is just sad. Just from 2003-2009, the catalog as a starting point for humanties faculties dropped from almost 40% to just over 20%. Let's not even discuss non-humanities faculty where it is even worse, or what will happen when the Google-Publisher agreement is accepted (eventually).
So, concerning the statement that libraries are facilitators, I think this can only be in conjunction with the humanities (since scientists rarely use libraries and work primarily with digital materials that at most, may be available to them *through the library's budget*, but that's all), and even for the humanities it may be eroding fast. Still, there must be reasons for this, and I think it's clear and simple: our patrons find the newer tools to be better. That means we should change what we are doing, sooner rather than later.
But to be honest, I don't know if we can. I mean, *could we be* [important] facilitators in the economy of scholarly and scientific work? Absolutely, and I think others would sincerely welcome our input (but not if we want to control everything). I feel that they would welcome including catalogs into their tools, which will be made for their needs and will go far beyond what we believe are catalogs.
I think the direction we should be taking is to create a number of APIs that others can include easily into their tools and they can invoke our materials and help when they wish. In other words, libraries must become flexible and be able to adapt as circumstances require.
Can they? Librarianship has traditionally been quite inflexible, but when matters become serious, the field may be able to work things out. We'll see.
James L. Weinheimer j.weinheimer_at_aur.edu
Director of Library and Information Services
The American University of Rome
Rome, Italy
Received on Mon Jul 05 2010 - 10:45:37 EDT