The prescription is likely correct, if in using the slightly passé "collaboration" Bell in fact means the more mundane, less edgy "communication." Yes, faculty and librarians should maintain clear avenues of discussion, and even work together on course sites if need be. But the diagnosis is wrongheaded. The lament that we're "doing business as usual" is itself business as usual, as are the calls against bad marketing; boring, uninviting web sites; failure to change; and so forth.

Bell can't have it both ways. Nobody can make all information equally easily accessible to everybody at once, while continuing to serve the researchers whose explorations aim to pursue libraries' "mysterious bowels." (I wish he'd come up with a better figure.) Libraries can't maintain our enduring focus on "the long tail" component of our collections (as we've done since well before Chris Anderson marketed the concept), and also "create greater...awareness" by putting all that potentially useful material where seekers can quickly find it. If LibGuides is Bell's idea of a solution to the conundrum, I fail to see how it's so. It appears to me to require from researchers exactly what any ordinary library web site requires: a pause, a minute or two to become familiar with the site, some sustained reading, the development of a more or less methodical research strategy, and then digging in.

I'm willing to bet, though, that the effort spent working with faculty on the development of LibGuides was productive of collaborative relationships and fruitful information transfer.

Johanna Drucker calls for faculty (in particular, humanities scholars) to collaboration with library and technology staff in designing the "library of the future" in a Chronicle of Higher Education article (3 April 2009). It's an interesting read and perhaps adds nuance to the discussion.

Many people, including myself, have been advocating for years, that the Library website needs dramatic transformation. E.g., the Subject Web Page TF 2007-08, the recommendations from many library reorg meetings over the years, to mention a few. I laud Stephen Bell's article as one more alarm to nudge us in this direction. Why is it taking us so long to implement these ideas? Maybe if we answer that question, we can start to make some progress. Meanwhile, Bell is right on the money when he says we need to 1) make it possible for faculty to customize and personalize the Library website for their research/teaching needs 2) "devote the most eye-catching space to information that promotes the people who work at the library, the services they provide and the community activities that anchor the library's place as the social, cultural and intellectual center of campus" and 3) communicate more effectively with the faculty to accomplish these goals. Software to create customized research guides -- we are working on that now -- is one way. However, there is a lot more we can be doing to create other ways to interact with faculty on more personal and social levels. Right now we invest a lot in big donor dinners. Why not invest some money in investigating other ways to interact with faculty and students in more social settings? One-on-one interaction still is a very powerful and informative way to connect with your primary clientele. E.g., the ISchool has informal teas ONCE A WEEK and I have found this a great way to interact, learn, transfer information and support. However, customized research guides, integrating library resources in course websites, are just one small piece of the puzzle. To get more collaboration with faculty, we need to find ways to overcome the major barriers which are still political, motivational and temporal.