In the short span of time that I have been with DLF, I've spent a certain amount of time thinking about the future of libraries; the direction that digital library programs should take; and the kind of organization that DLF should become.

Part of my thinking is motivated by a programmatic concern: where should DLF put its energies? Right now, DLF has a single dominant area of activity, aside from the small standards initiatives and explorations we are funding, called Aquifer. Aquifer is an ambitious Mellon-funded 2-3 year project that hopes to establish a multi-library pool of information assets and metadata that can be utilized both by institutions for collection building, and directly by users. Its lessons and direct benefits will have a long term impact on the accessbility of the riches held digitally by libraries.

It has also informed how best to develop organizational models of how libraries should cooperate and develop initiatives. Aquifer has demonstrated that - although the benefits can be great - getting libraries to work together is really quite hard. Libraries are institutionally-bound, and already face huge hurdles in confronting, accepting, and responding to the changes in their landscape. They inevitably find it difficult to repeatedly release sufficient resources to engage in inter-peer commitments, particularly when they suggest or mandate the establishment of independent organizational frameworks.

Perhaps the longer term solution to organizational engagement lies in a different type of collaboration.

Recently, through a personal/professional connection at UC Berkeley, I was able to make an entrée to a fascinating new cyberinfrastructure project called Neon. As Neon's website states,

The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) is a continental-scale research platform for discovering and understanding the impacts of climate change, land-use change, and invasive species on ecology. NEON will gather long-term data on ecological responses of the biosphere to changes in land use and climate, and on feedbacks with the geosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere. NEON is a national observatory, not a collection of regional observatories. It will consist of distributed sensor networks and experiments, linked by advanced cyberinfrastructure to record and archive ecological data for at least 30 years. Using standardized protocols and an open data policy, NEON will gather essential data for developing the scientific understanding and theory required to manage the nation’s ecological challenges.

I think this is very interesting, and I've been having some (very) early conversations with the CEO of the project, discussing some of the data organizing, accessing, and control challenges, and the ways in which DLF member institutions might possibly help. Strategically, this takes us far beyond the concerns we so often find ourselves enmeshed in today, so thoroughly infiltrated by Google and other commercial entrants in the information discovery space. Organizationally, this brings us new models for how we might see ourselves, and serve our institutions.

This might be one future for libraries. Libraries cannot transform themselves structurally through magic. But through an open and deep application of their immense expertise, libraries can beneficially impact significant and important projects, and through the act of changing others, they will change themselves.

The future for libraries is not merely in their working together, but also, perhaps primarily, in working with others. The future resides in the creation of inter-institutional partnerships that marry libraries' wisdom in the organization, presentation, and accessibility of information to projects seeking to generate, deliver, and manipulate data in the service of science, learning, and education. Through these hybrid partnerships, libraries will enter a new territory of ideas, enriching their own experience while they bring insight to the work of others. Working beyond ourselves, libraries will chart a future into new lands.