Hi all,
I'm a bit late to this party, but I wanted to pick up on a few things
that has been said ;
1. Trust. Yes, it is true; the library world has some of the most
impressive trust that humans would ever give to any government or
private institution (and the ideals have rubbed off onto private
libraries for the most part, as well), and it should be harnessed,
used to the library worlds' benefit (ie. survival) before the trust is
lost in a sea of irrelevance. Not sure you need a slogan, but there
are things to say about the contents of such a slogan, fictional or
not ;
2. Slogan. Most of the slogans earlier suggested focus quite a bit on
the trust aspect. And I guess that is ok, but it is also very wrong.
It's akin to a seductive "trust us" which in our very human brains
translates into "they're up to something." I'd focus more on what it
is that people can expect from you. Like "better results" or "informed
whimsy" or "serendipitously delicious answers", and even if these
examples are only half-serious I think it very important not to anchor
it in something that might change. Try focusing on goals that either
you or the patrons have.
3. And speaking of such. I need to point to something I wrote not that
long ago but I feel is more important now than ever (and, like Jim,
sorry for the self reference) ;
http://shelterit.blogspot.com/2010/06/can-you-just-stop-this-obsession-with.html
You need to focus on the *purpose* of all those books; information
and, heaven help us, knowledge. You're in the knowledge management
space, like it or not. The conservational part is of course exciting
and important, but it is not for the objects themselves, but for the
history, knowledge and context they bring. All museums do the same,
but you're not a really a museum of things, if not a museum of
information or, heaven help us, knowledge. Access used to be a big
thing, but will be less and less (but never gone).
So, here's the thing. Why aren't you mapping knowledge? This space has
been left to Google and similar, and they are the ones that will be
interesting in the future. There is no future (well, I should say
"little") in bibliography as formats change, and not just the
container that contains the knowledge, but the format of the knowledge
itself, blogs being the prime example but new ways of creating ebooks
as a follow-up worth taking note of (structured meta data is coming
more and more, with a heavy emphasis on "structured", and I'll add
"typed"). Concepts and references will be mapped directly into future
knowledge by authors and publishers themselves, and I suppose the
basic premise of FRBR / RDA has got *some* of these things sorted, but
by and large the structured hyperlink is completely neglected. But the
future is all about those hyperlinks, probably caught up in an
ontological web of sorts.
The slogan *should* be; "Mapping knowledge for all humanity."
4. The future of the bureaucratic library. I think we can all agree
that it needs to go, or, at least, trim down dramatically. Not because
the rigidness it provides isn't helpful, but because the unknowns of
the future are now so scattered that you need the flexibility in order
to stay relevant / on top of things. You need more rogue developer
teams trying out new ideas. You need leaders who have or can gather
good ideas. You need people who's willing to take more risk within the
constraints of your funding. And, of course, you need politicians who
speak the political language to get that funding, not just library
funding, but all sorts of digitally funded money. (This part you've
been pretty good at, though) Are people who thrive in a rigid
bureaucracy going to be comfortable in a more flexible one? Because
right now you need *both* kinds of people. You need the flexibility
and crazy people on *top* of the rigidness you've built up over the
centuries. Both are equally important (and I know I might have said
otherwise in the past. I was, I guess, only looking at it from a
digital directional angle), both are exactly what is needed. You need
a few high-tech entrepreneurs to be given almost free reign with
library resources, and find ways to make all the goodness (which we
all know is in there) stand out and become an important part of the
future.
5. On a similar note, I've said it before and I'll scream it again;
why aren't you the champions of persistent identification? The whole
SemWeb world is dying for someone with your tremendous amount of trust
to step forward and provide a solid framework for knowledge
management. I've seen a few baby-steps here and there, but that's just
not good enough; the library *world* needs to come together and do
this, to pinpoint entities and provide links and identifiers for them.
(I've whined about the lack of PSIs before, the dual state of
resolvable persistent URIs before, so won't go into that again, but I
talk about it here;
http://shelterit.blogspot.com/2009/09/library-pontifications.html)
When the whole world will use http://library.org/person/samuel_clemens
and http://library.org/person/mark_twain as persistent identifiers
within a mergable identifier framework, there will be bliss, singing
and dancing in the streets, and both librarians and normal folks
looking for a semantic crutch in a world so complex will hug and drink
mulled wined together, and all shall be well.*
* Oh, and extend (or refine) FRBR to take serious identification (like
a canonical set of rules for merging and culling) into account while
you're at it, and you've got exactly what the world needs.
Ok, done my late ramble. And happy holidays.
Kind regards,
Alex
--
Project Wrangler, SOA, Information Alchemist, UX, RESTafarian, Topic Maps
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Received on Thu Dec 23 2010 - 17:41:00 EST