John Kupersmith set forth a nice list of ideas for new initiatives that made me think about my own reference work.

As someone who has just begun to do reference on the cooperative Ask A UC Librarian project I find myself comparing the experience with the good old face-to-face reference interview.  The chat reference experience has some advantages, it seems to me.  Relying on textual communications, no matter how casual (plenty of 'OK', 'LOL', and smiley faces) forces the patron to get to the point, and to really 'listen' during the reference interview.  There are no "where's the bathroom" questions.  And I've found that people will ask chat reference questions even when they are sitting in a library.  It's surprising to them to find out they're chatting with a librarian at UC Berkeley, while they may be in Riverside or Irvine. But they'd rather chat or IM than walk over to that lonely person at the reference desk.

Today, while working with a student at Riverside, I realized it would have been so helpful if I could have been using VOIP while chatting with her.  As quick as chat is, it's not as quick as a conversation.  So, I wonder if we can ever imagine having Skype or similar software, plus built in microphones in our computers.  I hope so. 

 I find the process of trying new technologies and modes of communication exciting, even though I'm often fumbling around and making mistakes.  I encourage the "library family" (as Lisa Weber calls us :>)) to take the plunge into the unfamiliar.

In an earlier post, Brian Light asked "Who is the person or group, that we really need to cater to in the future?"

One such group consists of users who are outside the library: in campus offices or labs, in off-campus locations, or just walking around with mobile devices. This includes a large proportion of our users, often the same people who are helping us realize the vision of the electronic library when they use our licensed full-text article databases, e-journals, sound/image databases, etc. In business terms, such folks are prime customers of our most expensive resources.

When we call these people "remote users," it puts them immediately in the wrong frame. As Anne Lipow remarked, "rather than thinking of ourselves as remote, we should instead recognize that we are remote from our users. We need to change how we do business to link us back together - this time on their turf."

We already offer a number of services to users outside the library, but these are not unified organizationally or philosophically, and are implemented in various, sometimes offhand ways. What would "new directions" in this area look like?

Read more! »

In an online world of small pieces loosely joined, librarians are among the most well qualified and highly motivated joiners of those pieces. Library patrons, meanwhile, are in transition. Once mainly consumers of information, they are now, on the two-way web, becoming producers too. Can libraries function not only as centers of consumption, but also as centers of production?

Remixing the library, A talk given by Jon Udell at the Global Research Library summit, October 2007.

I've been a fan and reader of Jon Udell for a few years now. His LibraryLookup project -- a little bookmarklet that when run will scrape an ISBN off a page, from say Amazon, and perform a search in your local library catalog -- was revelatory in 2002 as one of the first cool examples of what one could do with browser based scripting and library services. The above quote comes from a recent speech given at the Global Research Library summit in Washington state where he talks about the benefits libraries gain when they have systems that are "open to lightweight, spontaneous, opportunistic integration." Countering the idea that a library's local activities will narrow as libraries become more global in scope, he offers an optimistic view that sees librarians as aggregators and organizers of combinations of locally and externally sourced information and as catalysts to patrons who are increasingly becoming active information producers on the web.

Well, maybe they aren't calling them new directions, but they sure are talking about the same issues. Lorcan Dempsey recently blogged about the presentations at the Sustaining the Digital Library Symposium. The powerpoints from the symposium are available online.

The speakers addressed many of the same issues we are raising. The keynote (pdf) by Rick Luce gives a good overview of the issues - and his "perfect is the enemy of the good" relates to my recent post on the spirit of experimentation. Peter Buneman's The New Curators (ppt) summarizes key issues related to Mary Ann's post on e-science. And Sheila Cannell's presentation on Reskilling the Library (ppt) gives us some ideas about where we might be headed. Watch especially for her graph showing "the relative importance of librarians' roles in 5 years time: the views of library directors, other library staff and researchers." It's a fascinating comparison.

The other speakers' presentations are equally good (and equally related to posts on this blog). I just wish that I could actually listen to the presentations!

But what do you think about these presentations? What do you agree with? Where do you disagree with the presenters?

Betsy Wilson relayed one finding from U of W's user survey, "the transaction cost from discovery to delivery is too high."

This echoed a presentation, at the annual meeting of the Society for Scholarly Publishing, by Anurag Acharya, Google Scholars founding engineer. Mr. Acharya talked about "time to task completion" being the most important metric on offer for an information environment. "Time to task completion" is the accumulated effort for

• learning the system
• formulating the question
• getting an intial answer
• refining the question
• repeating the loop until satisfied

While at the same time that we want more and more sophisticated search results, "complex interfaces take longer to learn"...and in an environment where technology changes as rapidly as we see today, no one is interested in putting in the time to be "expert" at any given system. Gone are the days of the c> prompt in DOS (and how many of you reading this even know what I'm talking about?)

As we move forward into new services and systems (we are considering a new ILS, right?, and perhaps revamping our concept of web pages?) I wonder if "time to task completion" is something we want to track? I don't think this just applies to search engines. Finding out open hours, or getting to a reference librarian could just as easily be subject to this same metric couldn't they?

I found this all fascinating, and share these tidbits as well...

Read more! »

I find it puzzling that the Library's involvement in the Google Book Project has not been accompanied by the task forcing and/or kvetching that usually accompanies perceived threats to "the ways we've always done it" here in Libraryland. True, we had a well-attended early bird (were we expecting pink slips to be handed out?), but apart from that, this comically brief page on the library web site is about the only formal acknowledgement of our complicity in helping spawn this googel pound gorilla. Please read Peter Brantley's Google and the books post for a more engaging meditation on this topic than I'm capable of writing.

In a world that is becoming more and more competitive for financial resources, organizations of all kinds are being asked to provide decision-makers and funding agencies with data that justifies their existence. Our Library has fallen way behind others in collecting and making available good data that supports our impact. We do not have a good picture of who our regular user's are, what they are using, what they cannot find on the shelves, etc. One of our new directions should focus on improving this data collection and analysis situation. Wouldn't it be great to have regular reports that consolidate data on:

- use of electronic resources (surely a very impressive figure to justify our role in the digital age)
- gate counts in individual units and sample room counts
- the top 50 books being used per week
- titles receiving extremely high use that need to have duplicate copies purchased
- which departments are the most frequent users of printed books
- where most photocopying is occurring
- book borrowing by subject field
- ILL impacts on our collections
- reference statistics/ chat and IM statistics
- book usage by student status (undergrad and graduate degrees)

Although some of this type of data is available here and there, it is not easily accessible and available for an overall picture of the impact of library services on the university community.

I did not hear Betsy Wilson's talk, but I attended the 1st meeting and I've been reading this Blog. I have a couple of observations and suggestions.

I am all for "new directions", but I have noticed that constant restructuring can also create chaos, and prevents the Library from have a clear vision and clear goals to accomplish.

In an era of rapidly advancing new information technologies (and libraries have been impacted dramatically by new ITs), the best thing to do is to improve communication up, down and across the organization, and to create multiple sources of support. The worst thing to do in such a time is to create little Academic silos which do not communicate with each other very well.

If the Library is going to meet the challenge presented by the Internet and Web 2.0, we need to create opportunities for multiple sources of support. We will need tons of technical support for keeping up with new tools and techniques, such as blogs, wikis, dynamic web pages, Second Life (for those who select to experiment) and even email. Since the new ITs advance more rapidly than the physical organization can keep up, one thing we could do is create small informal "user affinity groups" which can easily be formed across units, which would draw talent from different departments, and which can be joined by those who have a desire or a "need to know:. One person, one unit, is not enough, but would also be necessary to act in tandem. I realize this addresses just one aspect of the challenge ahead, but it's a start.

Submitted by Mari Miller

In order to really find a new direction for the library, I think there a number of tough questions that need to be answered.

While the Taiga Forum produced some good ones http://www.taigaforum.org/docs/ProvocativeStatements.pdf

(and dont worry, I will get back to some of those) I think we need to ask some very fundamental questions first.

So, here are my first two;

Who is the person or group, that we really need to cater to in the future?

It seems to me that this will fundamentally determine what direction we are taking. So, should the new direction focus more on student needs? Facutly needs? Library Employee needs? Something/someone else?

Obviously, I am not suggesting that we ignore all other groups at the expense of the primary focus group, but still, an answet to that question will lead us to an answer for my second question which is;

What is the Library mission of the future?

Depending on who we are focusing on, our mission will be different. Over the last century, the Library has made many drastic changes in terms of its mission...and it seems that the age of information is pushing us to re-assess yet again. Should we be a space provider for students? Should we focus on collection development in an age of quick access? Should we primarily be an access point for hard to find journals? Should we be competeing or championing Google? I think these all depend on who our primary focus is.

So, lets start off simple (ha!) and see what people think.These questions seem simple enough on the surface and yet...when you really think about them...there is a lot to ponder. So lets hear what you have to say!

I was really intrigued by Mary Ann Mahoney's E-Science post--very interesting. I think Mary Ann's comments about new directions in scientific research, and the resulting challenge of data stewardship, speak very directly to the opportunities that lie ahead. More later--I'm going to the Blogger lunch now...

I've never blogged before so bear with me...

Until just this morning I have been doing a lot of listening, asking questions of my operations peers and trying to hash out the reticence to jump into the bloggin fray. I have spoken with CSG members, DMCS workers, and even some students at the Privileges Desk. I will focus predominantly on the students today, but will discuss other feedback in later blogs.

The students, and I will go out on a limb and even say undergraduates, who as Ms. Wilson's data suggested, remain a constantly growing presence in the Library may ultimately be the future of funding for the next New Directions initiative.

It is naive at this point in California's fiscal history to assume that the U.C.'s will be receiving vastly increased funding in the future, the budget is pressured from all sides. In fact, it is the student body, the Alumni, and the research which will fund the future of the Library, and to acknowledge this now, and provide a positive responsive space for undergraduates (future Alumni and researchers) is to invest in the future of the Library.

What does this mean?

Student spaces within the Library need to be increased, in some cases decoupled from the physical collection, and adapted to their educational needs (i.e increasingly group oriented work, wireless access, previously physical items in digital formats, etc.) The spaces need to reflect current desires of the student body, this means making spaces where foods and drinks are available, and encouraged as part of the collaborative process. We should be not only observing how the Library's are being used currently, but also asking the freshest incoming students what they would like from the library, and what changes are being made in forward-thinking high school "media center" libraries which are integrating all aspects of media into an experience...

WHAMMO! You have yourself a student body experience that will remain present in the mind later on, when the ideas click communally and creatively in the Library, they are "Library" memories and last beyond the four-years they are on campus.

In keeping with investment of the student body, instead of farming out solicitations for designs for collaborative work spaces we should involve the space designing schools here on campus to cost save and provide an educational nexus with/for the library. All parts of the New Direction process regarding student spaces should be examined to maximize their utility, but also their inclusivity with the larger campus community and student body; personalized and potentially nostalgic for each student.

An active reaching out to the student body population is going to be crucial. We should aim to interact within student domains (e.g. dorms, student academic groups/clubs, etc.), asking them what they don't like and would prefer the Library space to be for them, involving them in the process of making/creating these New Directions initiatives that effect their enduser experience.

Again the future lies in positive Library experiences students leave campus with and return to support. I think it is perilous to forsake the least squeaky wheels on campus, just because they may not feel comfortable (or frankly have time) to invest in the future of the library, does not mean they aren't watching what we do...

How many Alumni parents did I meet during homecoming week showing off "their" Library to the kids? Lots…

Let's shoot for lots more in the future.

The latest edition of "Bear in Mind", conversations with Chancellor Birgeneau, has just been released
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/chancellor/bim/ .

The Chancellor talks here of the Hewlett Challenge Grant, the Energy Biosciences Institute, and the new VC for Equity and Inclusion.

What struck me as being pertinent to our New Directions initiative were his comments about UC's "public obligation."

I found myself replacing some of his projects with those spearheaded by the library, and finding our goals sounding very much in line with his notion of public service.

Here are a few quotations for us to ponder as we reconsider The Library's local, national and global roles:

"...we have a commitment to working on problems which are important for society, which have huge implications for society..."

"...the crisis that we're facing...the people who will suffer the most overwhelmingly are the poor..."

"there's an extraordinary pool of talent ...which never get tapped because barriers get set up..."

These statements were made with reference to global climate change, and finding ways to fund undergraduates whose family incomes don't allow them to meet minimum co-pay requirements for financial aid.

It seems to me, that current issues of scholarly communication, intellectual property rights, and the Library's historical value of freely sharing information plug into these statements just as easily.

Just as global warming is a topic that affects people around the globe, so does the free flow of information -- the current model of high-priced subscriptions limited to the elite largely located in the developed world, is a huge "barrier" that puts severe limitations on the worldwide "extraordinary pool of talent". As study becomes more interdisciplinary, and as problems in the rain forest affect our own health, I don't believe that information dare be held so close to the vest.

The Library is here to serve and support the research and needs of faculty and students.

Don't we also have a role, as librarians, to preserve, protect and further the dissemination of information to all who need it?

Certainly we would benefit our own authors by increasing how many minds could connect with their material.

I believe it's quite likely that the people of California will benefit directly from discoveries made by people in perhaps small, perhaps far away countries who solve problems for themselves that in fact may already be washing up on our coast, or showing up on the alert lines at the Center for Disease Control.

As part of a public instituiton, what obligation does The Library have to California to ensure that information we have been able to aggregate gets to all those worldwide who are working to solve the same problems we face at home?

Based on presentations, readings, and informal discussions, I have been thinking a lot lately about the need to foster a Spirit of Experimentation (or a Culture of Risk-Taking) within the library. Users are becoming used to "perpetual beta" on the web, so we lose no credibility by simply trying out low-risk pilot projects. When projects are not successful, we can discontinue them - when they are successful, it moves the library forward.

Government Information has been at the forefront of new services in the library lately (and maybe one of the GovInfo staff will blog about their experiences too). Their experiments with blogs, wikis, and IM reference have encouraged other units to pursue these possibilities. WorldCat Local implementations are another example of risk-taking in a "perpetual beta" environment. But other academic libraries have taken it farther, creating "safe spaces" in which to experiment:

• MIT Libraries' Betas
• University of Pennsylvania Libraries' PennLabs
• Vanderbilt University Library's Test Pilot
• ...and others.

If this is a new value for the library, we need policies that allow and encourage experimentation. We need to cultivate a culture of risk-taking. How do we get there?

A few people have expressed to me their confusion as to what a new direction(s) for the Library might look like.   Is it something specific, or is it broad or theoretical in nature?  Is it something we can achieve in a short period of time, or is it a medium/long range activity?  Well, to be perfectly honest, as a member of the NDCC I have the same kind of confused feelings.    What on earth are we talking about -- new directions!  I have been using the following as guidelines to help me start to think about some possibilities for new directions for the Library (so far not much progress).  These may not work for everyone, but here they are.   Please feel free to discuss, criticize, or add your own ideas.

A new direction should:

- be broad reaching and not a specific project.

- offer new opportunities for staff to develop skills and to continue to contribute to the university in a meaningful way.

- focus library services on new and exciting information opportunities needed by a changing teaching and research community.

- encourage us to question how we currently operate and to think about new and perhaps better approaches.

- cause the library organization to move from a fragmented/niche operation to a community of talented staff eager to work together toward goals that continue to assure us a real impact on the campus community.

- respect the Library's work of the past and its contributions to over 160 years of the university's mission, but at the same time look toward the demands and needs of the 21st century.

Betsy Wilson's recent presentation and the postings on the New Directions blog have given me plenty to think about. In fact, Terry Huwe's recent post, But Is It 'Library Work?' Thoughts on Betsy Wilson's Presentation inspired this post.

Terry writes compellingly of his positive experience with developing web and desktop publishing services for his constituents. He advocates that by going beyond what many believe is traditional 'library work' we can use our core competencies in research support, taxonomy and preservation to move into new areas where there are great unmet needs, and in doing so, garner a reputation within the University as a vibrant and relevant entity.

Betsy Wilson had a similar message. In her presentation she alluded to the question, How do libraries say relevant once they have made the transition from print to electronic? For the University of Washington, one answer seems to be e-science. Should we follow UW's lead and embrace e-science? What exactly is e-science anyway?

According to Wikipedia(!), e-science is a term used to describe computationally intensive science that is carried out in highly distributed network environments, or science that uses immense data sets that require grid computing. This is the kind of research in fields like particle physics, earth sciences and bioinformatics that can generate huge amounts of data, up into the terabyte and petabyte ranges.

If you are not familiar with the term, you might be surprise to learn that ARL has a Joint Task Force on Library Support for E-Science whose work should be completed by the end of the year. One item in the charge to the Task Force includes Engaging ARL members in the development of new roles for libraries as e-science infrastructure and service needs emerge at research institutions and promoting the contributions of research libraries in this arena.

E-science involves data stewardship (curation and preservation) on an extremely large scale. E-science discussions often lead to talk of opportunities for text mining and endorsements of open access/open data, issues in which we have vested interests. On a more local level, there is institutional interest in seeing that data generated by faculty is preserved, analogous to the interest in institutional repositories for faculty publications. Even NIH is an advocate of data archiving and sharing. Since October 2003, investigators submitting a research application requesting $500,000 or more are expected to include a plan for sharing final research data for research purposes, or state why data sharing is not possible.

But is it 'library work'? I believe it is. Why not? We are the best positioned, in terms of a central campus role, and have experience with data curation and preservation and institutional repositories. We also have a long history of professional advocacy for the sharing of resources for the common good. I certainly don't have the requisite expertise, but I bet some of my library colleagues do. And if not, the library could hire the right people.

E-science data stewardship represents a huge unmet need and the library could be a key player in addressing the issue. I encourage you to explore the ARL site and to keep e-science in mind as we explore our new directions.

I didn't go to Betsy Wilson's talk, so these are some general suggestions for possible future changes to our on-line catalog. Comments about books could also apply to all other media for which we keep records in the catalog.

Our on-line library catalog might be more useful to students, faculty members and the general public if it included the following:

• Reviews of each book, with 1 to 5 stars ratings, with a link in each book's record to a ratings form. See Amazon.com for examples.
• Links to full text of books that have full text in any on-line database. E.g., Baen Free Library, Bartleby.com, Focus Collection, Oxford World's Classics, Questia, etc.
• Links to web sites that can translate foreign language text into English provided they can interact with other web sites to translate the texts of books on those web sites.
• Subject approach as one available option. For example, if I want a book on how to repair my house, I want to be able to find it under "House repair" and under "Home repair," with further break-downs by type of repair and part of the house.
• Author and/or title approach also, in case the catalog user already knows that John Doe wrote a great book on how to repair screen doors.
• Key word search of titles and contents notes as another way the user can find the most useful books. The more ways people can find information, the better.

Submitted by Camille Holser

New Directions is a big topic and invites us to look beyond the daily mysteries of moving projects forward and paying for stuff.

Betsy's talk ranged from how we might recreate local spaces, to how we might collaborate on a global scale. I guess the idea that caught my attention most deeply was her wish to collaborate in order to support (foster? create?) an information-smart global community -- what she believes is the prerequisite for creating a saner and more secure world.

I too would like to create a saner and more secure world. I was reassured, relieved, and inspired to hear her say that libraries can make a difference. I propose that perhaps we not only can make a difference, but that we want to make a difference. That doing so would make our daily lives more meaningful, and would make our everyday small actions significant when seen inside this larger context.

Betsy commented that libraries have in the past, and continue in the present, to engender a culture based on a "circle of gifts". Her first example was Interlibrary Lending. This goes back to the beginning days of intellectual institutions who loaned manuscripts, and in so doing shared ideas and sparked further progress in human thought and culture and our ability to improve our material and non-material lives. Research libraries are particularly well placed in this circle, since it was scholars who started this free exchange of information, and scholars who want to continue to do so. Libraries and faculty can build on this shared value system based on free exchange.

Betsy intimated what might be the basic elements of a global library. Here are just a few points I brought away:

• No single library is a global library. Libraries (all sorts of libraries, in all sorts of places) need to work together to create a ...something (network/ web/ starcluster/ fuzzy) ... then figure how each local library contributes. This requires a lot of joint dreaming and talk; commitment and trust.
• Local research communities - Berkeley in our case - benefit. In order to do their work, our campus researchers need their research partners throughout the world to have timely, relevant, findable, and affordable access to the same information we can access.
• Building a global library will take more than libraries. We'll need technological infrastructures; changes in publishing structures and in limited licensing agreements; laws that foster global access to intellectual property.
• Library staff will [continue to] need new and changing skill sets.

Above all, I think, building a circle of libraries to share a circle of gifts, will require generosity of spirit, optimism, energy, trust, and just plain grit.

On Tuesday, I got the opportunity to hear Betsy Wilson talk about the library's future. Or more specifically, the path that her Library at the University of Washington is on, and some of the factors that she sees as going into creating the library of the future.

While she touched on many worth while issues, some of the previous posters have done a better job than I could of encapsulating her entire presentation.

So, I will look at the 2 things that she mentioned which really intrigued me. Namely;

• The Culture of Assessment
• We must look to our past to see our future

 First off I will tackle the "Culture of Assessment".

Besty pointed out that we, as members of a library community, have many cultres, the Culture of the book, the culture of control,  the culture of quiet etc. And that the culture we need to adopt is a culture of assessment.

Her basic argument here was that  we need to be able to assess what our patrons and users need in order to be able to adapt to the future. While we are good at talking with our current faculty and listening to their needs, Betsy made an argument that we may be behind when assessing the needs of our incoming students and faculty. 

She pointed out that while use statsistics at libraries and reference desks are going down, the numbers of patrons are generally going up. She also showed us some snippets from a comprhensive look at the needs of Bioscientists, and what they told us about the library. However, the bottom line in my opinion was the overall concept that we are not assessing our changing environment, or anticipating the future as effectively as we need to in order to respond and anticipate the needs of the future.

But how do we create a culture of assessment? Well, thats something we will need to determine for ourselves.

Looking into the past to determine the future. 

The other thing that she touched on that fascinated me was the idea that we need to look to our past to determine our future. While this wasnt a big part of her talk, it was the starting premise. She started by talking about the man at UW who had a vision to create a giant library and was eventually fired for it, but that vision was key to creating a 20th century library at UW.

Now that we are trying to creat a 21st century library, perhaps our past can tell us some things. So, while this next line of thought was inspired by Betsy Wilson, I am going off the map from her talk a bit.

In the past, Libraries were very focused on control. Librarians dictated what books were worthy to be in a library, and many chose to just have "quality" books. In early librarianship, there was a concept of "they will come to us" that was very pervasive.

As we know, that focus on control in collections has changed somewhat, and while librarians still need to make decisions about quality, there is also a good deal of buying what the populace wants. Thus, we have "Harry Potter" and Tolkien in our libraries along with the most recent Science journals. So, in collections, a more patron/user oriented focus developed over time.

Along with this change in focus for collections, we have changed our focus on access. There was a time where many of our library buildings were designed to have the stacks only be accessible only to  Librarians and Staff. Patrons had to request the items they wanted and we would page them. While this was great for collection security and maintenance, it meant that our collections were more isolated from our users. Browsing was impossible, and patrons had to know what they wanted in order to get it...I can only imagine starting research on ones own was impossible! Eventually, we opened a majority of our stacks, and gave the patrons more control over their own search.

The exact same can be said for computer searching. At one time (in part due to expense)  Librarians guided all patrons on their searches. Over time, technology, and a focus by the computer industry on user interfaces created an environment where we are no longer involved in every search. In fact, patrons are more in control of their own research than ever before, and able to answer many of the questions that we used to help them with.

So, what does this brief look at the past tell us? In short, it tells me that we have been on a course of adapting to the needs of our users since the very beginning. As hard as each change has been, we have had to adapt to the needs of our patrons.

In the end, the reason I am writing about these two things together is this...it is inevitable that we will adjust to the needs of our patrons. We will adjust, or we will perish as an institution on this campus. However, we can either adjust after the fact, or with a working culture of assessment, we can change with, or perhaps even anticipate change, and remain a viable, cutting edge institution.

With all of this in mind, I will leave you with one more comment that Betsy made that really struck me. She stated that at UW they are already looking at ways to do away with an Integrated Library System. Considering that we are just making the real push to get one, I couldnt help but worry about what this may mean...are we that far behind? Is UW that far ahead? Im not sure what the answer is, but as long as we are making changes, we should be sure to move ahead of the curve, and not just play catch up.

Along with a few others, I've been asked to blog the content of Betsy Wilson's talk this morning.  I expect that there'll be some duplication in our notes, so I won't post my extensive (exhaustive?) version here in its entirety. If you weren't able to attend and would like more detail, or links to some of the projects Betsy mentioned, you can find a faithful-as-possible-to-the-words-Betsy-spoke version here.

And for a summary version and some thoughts...

Betsy offered four strategic areas for investment for academic libraries heading into the uncertain 21st century.  They are:

• collaborative and collective action
• building a culture of assessment
• creating a global research library
• people

Like many of us, Wilson foresees a fork in the road for academic libraries:  depending on how we respond to changes in the ways information is produced and consumed, we may atrophy or we may transform into vibrant, robust, trusted institutions with a very different profile from the "book cathedrals" of the past. 

Betsy's comments rang true for me.  As a librarian I'm only five and a half years old, but it's clear to me that great changes have taken place even within the space of my own career.  I no longer feel that there is any particularly assured future for academic libraries, the book, or professional librarians.

Within my career, I've seen Google Scholar overtake scholarly databases as a discovery tool for a huge proportion of the information our students need to find.  Google Book Search is digitizing our books at a stupendous rate.  Undergraduates now spend more time on the Internet than they do watching television --imagine how much less time they spend reading books.  (Or consult the NEA's Reading at Risk study, which is conveniently available online.)  It seems not impossible that within my professional career, academic libraries may have capitulated to campus demands for space and resources, that physical books may be located in remote storage, and that librarians may be a rare or very different-looking breed.  This is, in part at least, a strategy suggested by David Lewis in his recent piece in College & Research Libraries.  

Obviously, there's a great deal to be said here, and greater minds than mine are at work on the question of how academic libraries can adapt intelligently to this massive sea change.  (This is why it's a good thing we have people like Betsy dropping in to share their thoughts with us.)  I can say, however, that despite all this uncertainty I left today's session feeling upbeat and optimistic. 

Betsy's talk reminded me of an article I read recently in Dwell magazine (which is not conveniently available online.)  It was in an issue devoted to sustainability, and it posited that we are all poised at a fork in the road between the Unthinkable and the Unimaginable.  The Unthinkable is a future of chaotic scarcity, increasing inequity and poverty, pollution, natural disasters and, as Betsy mentioned, an ever-growing divide between developing and developed nations.  The Unimaginable is the alternative:  the creative, unconventional, optimistic ways we choose to change ourselves and our habits of thought, so that we can all survive.  

I appreciated that Betsy touched on the world outside of libraries several times in her talk this morning.  It's helpful to remember to look outside ourselves, outside of our love of process and our own particular fears about change, and to notice how others are coping with change.  It's also helpful to keep the fork in the road in mind, because the world doesn't often change in a cataclysmic way--it changes by degrees, over a period of weeks or months or even years, and it's easy to forget it or ignore it until it's too late. 

I'd love to see our library use those weeks and months and years to transform into the Unimaginable (or at least the currently Unimagined)--a robust, flexible, trusted hub for the dissemination of knowledge and information to our users.  Wherever (and whoever) they might be next.

Although I'm not one of the three sponsored Bloggers who "covered" Betsy Wilson's presentation this morning, I did attend, and have some thoughts to share in one particular area that she addressed. I was sitting next to Pat Maughan, another sponsored Blogger--and I bet she has some ideas to share as well, based on all those notes she got down...

Betsy referenced the need for 21st century libraries to take on new types of work. We've been saying this to ourselves for years, and rightly so; in the mid-1990s, former UL and i-School Professor Peter Lyman said to a similar gathering, "We need to completely reinvent what we are doing." At the time, his words carried different weight and meaning, because there was a fair amount of budgetary "pain" at work.

Betsy Wilson, in this morning's presentation, was true to her own word in painting a more optimistic take on that challenge. I agree with her. Moreover, Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 shine a light on all kinds of new work that surround knowledge building. In many ways, we're already living through "continuous change" and morphing ourselves on a regular basis.

New Directions is All About Combining "New" Work and "Legacy" Work

Working as I do in an Organized Research Unit with doctoral students and faculty, I've been lucky to have an opportunity to look at what a Library might try to do in order to be distinctive and valued. I've been able to take risks that are perhaps not so easy with in larger control units. Seems like the "2.0" part of "Library" has been going on, for a lot of us, long before that moniker popped up.

Well, here's a "2.0" story of a risk we took locally that has paid dividends for years, but may beg the question: "Is that Library work?" Read on, and decide for yourselves. Or better yet, hear more on November 2 at the LAUC conference and bring your debating cap.

From Library Services to Web Services to Desktop Services: "The Content Grab"

Many UCB Librarians have heard me talk about how the IRLE Library manages Web services for the entire IRLE, so I won't go into any more detail than to give you a few highlights:

• Our family of programs support our two programmers, so we're charging back with the greatest of ease;
• Our high quality Web site, Web page and graphic design service is regarded as one of the most crucial offered at IRLE, so much so that program staff have actually asked to pay more to have access;
• Our family of Web sites, taken together, serves more than six million downloads in an academic year, from a (faculty) content rich matrix of sites;
• Our success in Web oversight has enabled us to "double" as "Deskstop Publishers" --for what is "born digitally" as a PDF can be printed in a flash;
• Our success with desktop applications has led us into "curatorial roles" with noted photographers and artists;
• And in the past year, we have been increasingly tapped to create theme-oriented presentation graphics for high level symposia and colloquia
• As a result, all of the scholarly content that is developed at IRLE cycles through the Library

As anyone who knows me will tell ya: I could go on.

But let's get back to my self-imposed question: Is all this library work? Yes, and here's my self-imposed rationale for saying so.

All Information Work is Library Work--and Library 2.0 Proves It

First, a quick story: When I described all of these services to a friend who served with me on CAPA in 1997, his reply was, "But it's not library work." Hence my Blog entry heading.

But even in 1997, the line between publishing and repositories was blurring. The opportunities to recast libraries as proactive, archive-plus-publishing outfits are now even more tantalizing. My direct experience here at IRLE has been that we have proven to a skeptical community that the Library is "virtual," it is "digital" --but it also service-oriented, supports the faculty where they need it the most, and fills a service role that was lacking. This "2.0" viewpoint orginiated with a single awareness that we had: What was needed in our setting was the power to publish digitally. We've been doing that since 1994. On top of everything else we do...

Meme Freebie: We're Now Publishers, Wheher We Focus On It Or Not

I had an ongoing debate with former LSO Head Ralph Moon that went lilke this: Me: "Libraries are publishers in the Internet age." Ralph: "We don't need to do that, we already have publishers." Me: "But many of the best publishers don't "get" the digital paradigm." Ralph: "They'll get it with time." And on.

Before the CDL and before eScholarship, we tried, and it worked. What we did locally was to bring the concept of publishing together with library skills--adding a new responsibility to continue to have the privilege of doing reference, research and all that other great stuff. We have seen support for the Library grow, culminating in a new Commons which I'll talk about on November 2. We regarded Web and desktop services "value points" that increaed our ability to continue all library services, creating digital documents and Web resources that go beyond scholarship as needed.

We have more work to do, we need to constantly remind our community that we are heavily commited, we need to "market", and more.

Is this really Library work? Yes.

The silver lining: We're no longer spending much time justifying our existence--because everybody, all of the programs we support--are consumers of our services. We're the "Go-to" folks.

This local story dovetails with what Betsy was saying about new roles for libraries. It's a bite-sized story from a campus unit that has been described by some as "small." But the Library's footprint at IREL is large, and most academics here are not reached by other campus libraries as much as they might be. Which is understandable on a campus this immense.

New Memes for New Directions

My "Libraries are Publishers" story speaks to New Directions' stated goal of rethinking what we need to do--and to try new things. But my point is not necessarily, "Hey, let's all develop Web and desktop services to the campus!" That wouldn't work at the micro or the macro level. The bottom line to my story is that we can benefit by discovering what needs are not being met--now. And starting to fill those needs. Many are obvious; some are not.

Our core competencies in research support, taxonomy and preservation open doors in the faculty's consciousness of what's possible. Locally, being the "Webbies" extended our ability to stay relevant as reference providers. In another setting, preservation knowledge might play a similar role.

I think the potential of New Directions for "unveiling" locally tested "best new practices" is enormous. I can think of many others on campus who have tried things that are unorthodox--but suspiciously reeking of a creeping "2.0" meme-buster...

But hey: Is that library work?

Yes.

--Terry Huwe, IRLE Library

I see at least one new direction emerging from our early blog discussions:

The Library might seriously consider the pros and cons of restructuring its services and collections to address the changing approaches to scholarship and teaching on the campus. Subject/niche approaches may not hold much future for our organization. Sharing a variety of staff expertise across academic disciplines may be the key to a bright and exciting new role for us. I envision teams of librarians, library assistants, computing experts, teaching experts, acquisitions and cataloging experts, etc. focusing their efforts on providing content and service delivery to the research and teaching teams growing in number on this campus. A dynamic team approach offers opportunities for interesting staff development, cooperation, and constant renewal. Operating study halls becomes less of a key library function and is perhaps outsourced to some other campus unit.

This week's Berkeleyan features an article on the opening of Berkeley's new 285,000 square foot Stanley Hall, described as the first step in a large scale effort to modernize teaching and research on the campus (focusing on biotechonology, genome research, nanotechnology, computational biology and bioengineering). Speakers at the dedication ceremony repeatedly drew attention to the fact that Stanley was intentionally designed to facilitate a new paradigm in interdisciplinary research.

According to the Berkeleyan, "The building is divided into several 'neighborhoods,' each with a few labs and offices clustered around a common area featuring journals and coffee -- a structure designed to encourage interactions among professors and graduate student researchers from different disciplines."

I understand from talking with Jean McKenzie (Engineering Library) that the idea of building a library or library service point within Stanley was not part of the formal building planning. Instead, in Spring 2007 a group of science librarians proposed providing reference services to the building occupants. Currently, six of our colleagues are staffing a Stanley Library Services Desk in the building atrium, Tuesdays-Thursdays, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

When reading about Stanley in last week's SF Chronicle, I was struck by Berkeley faculty member Susan Marqusee's statement, "This is the first bulding on campus where the decisions about space allocation are not controlled by an individual department or college." (The italics are mine.) Having worked on campus for 25 years, I was utterly shocked by her statement.

The Berkeleyan goes on to explain "decisions about space allocation will be made on the basis of how such decisions will support a multidisciplinary program." (Again, italics are mine.) This suggests to me that monumental shifts are underway in why and how campus faculty are re-organizing themselves. For years, we have been hearing about the emerging importance of interdisciplinary research. What's different here is the traditional disciplinary and departmental boundaries (or "silos") and attendant governing structures are breaking down not just theoretically, but in very concrete, practical, and "operationalized" ways. It is happening not only in the sciences, but in the humanities and social sciences as well.

In February 2007 the Graduate Division approved the new graduate Designated Emphasis on Critical Theory. Critical theory has had a programmatic presence on several UC campuses, but Berkeley's Designated Emphasis is distinguished by its interdisciplinary faculty and global emphasis. Courses in Critical Theory will be taught by faculty from Policital Science, History of Art, Ethnic Studies, Comparative Literature, Spanish, Rhetoric, German and Dutch, International and Area Studies, Anthropology, and Philosophy.

But back to Stanley Hall ... it is important in another significant way. Stanley involves a partnering of faculty and graduate programs from three UC campuses: Berkeley, USCF, and Santa Cruz who together form one of four California Institutes of Science & Innovation receiving state (and private) sponsorship to "foster 21st century research and development ... to boost the economy and improve the lives of Californians." (SF Chronicle, Friday, September 28, 2007) The literature of Higher Education suggests that the demand for accountability on the part of universities by various stakeholders (governments, accrediting bodies, parents, students, tax payers ...) can only be expected to grow.

Why is this important to the library? It suggests a number of areas worthy of further exploration, discussion, and most importantly decision making on our parts. Among them:

• In what ways can librarians collaborate directly with and within these new multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary programs and entities?
• What are the relationships between library services and the activities conducted by cross disciplinary teams within these new types of facilities? How might we redefine them?
• Should the library be building tools for scholarship that are less subject-based and more interdisciplinary? Should we reorganize library staffing around interdiscipliary groups instead of academic departments?
• What types of collaborative tools might we envision and build that will allow interdisciplinary faculty and graduate students to discover, gather, create, and share information?
• Should the library play a role in connecting faculty and research groups across their traditional disciplinary boundaries?
• Does it make sense to continue to work locally, or should we be aiming to build regional or national interdisciplinary collections and services? Can we do a better job this way overall, and at lower costs?
• As more of our students, faculty and researchers' daily work involves collaboration, how might this affect the decisions we make in the library regarding allocation and occupancy our own physical spaces?

Engaging faculty in the New Directions Initiative process:  what are your suggestions?

Input and reactions from the UCB faculty to our new directions thinking is an important aspect of the process being designed and implemented by the NDCC. Finding the most appropriate and effective way to do this, and at what stage in the process, is a big challenge the committee faces.

Faculty are busy teaching, doing research, and publishing, and thus do not have much time left to consult with the Library. Often their library experience is limited and they do not have a broad understanding of the services the Library offers, nor do they have much knowledge of the larger challenges and opportunities of the library organization. In more recent times, many faculty have little experience with, or interest in,  services or collections beyond what they can access at their desktop.

The Library has tried various efforts in the past to engage faculty in conversations and to have them present their thoughts on issues. These efforts have included discussions with faculty committees, selected faculty have been invited to participate in panel discussions for the library staff, the subject councils have engaged faculty speakers at their meetings, and individual subject selectors have had conversations and reported their findings. These faculty interactions have most often resulted in useful input regarding specific experiences with the collections and catalogs, but have not provided us with visionary thinking about how the Library needs to position itself for the future.

The NDCC is requesting some assistance from the Library staff in helping us to design one or more effective strategies for getting significant and forward thinking input from our faculty. In particular, we need younger faculty who can address how traditional uses of the Library's collections and services may be changing and how the Library needs to respond to remain relevant to them. What are your ideas?

For example, we need the faculty to tell us:

- their preferred means of accessing and utilizing information resources and what they see as the library's role in this.

- if there are better methods for integrating library content, resources, and services into their classroom teaching.

- their thoughts on whether or not a major change in journal publishing channels is really going to occur, of if we should be preparing for the status quo.

- if the Library is dealing effectively with new and changing academic trends (new subject fields, integration of existing fields, fields no longer served by traditional resources the library offers, new types of information content, etc.).

- their thoughts on the need for print collections in their departments/buildings, or close to their departments/offices.

- how services might be improved or changed and what kinds of new services should be made available to the campus community.

- their greatest problems in finding and accessing the intellectual resources required to keep UCB on the cutting edge of research in their fields.

The NDCC looks forward to your suggestions. Please send them to the ND blog.