How we can be here in 20 years

[Joe Schallan]

Millard F. Johnson wrote:
> 
> Joe Schallan wonders if libraries can survive if the
> Internet reaches its potential.
> 
> What librarians of Indiana are doing may be of interest.
> The highest legislative priority for INCOLSA . . . [snip]

Thanks for Millard's thoughtful and interesting response -- just
the kind of discussion I was hoping my call for comments would
produce.  Indiana librarians are taking an active role, not allowing
the web to just wash over them, and they are way ahead
of us in Arizona.  Their efforts to market the service and to
publicly tie that service to its support from the tax base is
commendable.

INCOLSA's plans raise an interesting issue -- at what point does the
library cease being a library and start being a vendor along the lines
of
AOL or CompuServe?  Should libraries be such vendors?  How will
vendors respond if libraries take business away from them?  Why
should vendors license information products to an institution that
is going to give them away, especially when the vendors can license
the same products to individual users who are quite willing to pay?

Libraries can serve as training venues; librarians can provide
a benefit to citizens by presenting "managed information"
(Millard's term, which I like a lot).

Behind my original remarks lies my own opinion that libraries
must do a much better job of demonstrating their value to
an increasingly tax-sensitive public, to a public that seems
quite willing to believe that the net is good reason to remove
us from their lives.  What we are good at is managing information,
but the public doesn't readily see that.

One poster noted that most people are intimidated by physical
libraries and, especially, librarians.  Before we can begin to
demonstrate our value, that perception must change.  Along
with improving electronic access, we have to improve
librarians.

INCOLSA shows one way to respond to the challenge.  Are
there others?

 

A contrarian view

What happens to traditional library services under an INCOLSA-
like approach?  (Particular note should be made here of the fate of
a certain technological visionary who until recently headed a
large city library.  His critics claim he neglected "library basics"
in pursuit of his vision.)  Can we have it both ways? 

An anecdote:  One day we had a long line, which is not unusual, at
our reference desk.  I and my coworker took each patron off the
front of the line in his or her turn, and by coincidence, each wanted
something that involved searching the net.  We have public access web-
browsing stations, but we have web access at the desk, too, and we
often just pivot the monitor toward our patron and have at
it, together.  So we were having a good time, banging keys
and mousing like crazy, pulling the information rabbit out
of the Internet hat, and we finally worked our way to the last
patron in line, who had been watching all this activity.
"I'm sorry," she sheepishly told us, "All I want is a book."

The contrarian in me makes me ask, Is the web to the 90s
what CB radio was to the 70s?  As you may recall, CB was
useful and fun until so many people crowded onto it
that it became unusable.  Could it be that in twenty years
we'll still be loaning books and answering reference questions,
while the older among us will wistfully look at one another
from time to time and say "Remember the web?"

Shoving aside my contrarian self, I do believe that the web
is here to stay, in some form or another, that it will get a lot
better in terms of search assistance, and that it presents a
challenge to our roles.  I'll stick to my prediction that we
will be marginalized if we don't answer that challenge.

But predictions involving technology have a funny way of
not panning out.  Remember bubble memory?  Wafer-scale
integration?  The paperless office?  The last one is my favorite.
Back in the late 60s computer pundits seriously predicted
that the spread of information technology would eliminate
the need for paper in our workplaces, schools, and libraries.
Sell your stock in International Paper and Crown Zellerbach
now, they said.

Checked your office recycling bin lately?

Cheers,

Joe


-- 
Joe Schallan
Reference Librarian and Web Page Editor
Glendale (Arizona) Public Library
jschall at glenpub.lib.az.us