Coffman redux

[Karen G. Schneider]

Ultimately, what makes me think the Coffman proposal wouldn't work is that
it is fifteen years too late.  The idea that the OPAC is a gateway to all
kinds of wonderful library services hasn't happened.  Maybe I've been
working with the wrong OPACs--mostly DRA, with one Dynix interlude and a
couple of funky home-cooked tools--but I just don't see it.  What HAS
happened is that the OPAC has become a little better at doing what it was
first designed to do--be a book database--while (in part due in part to our
bookcentric ethos) a plethora of library services have grown up without
requiring or even being able to use the OPAC as a finding aid.  Meanwhile,
the book is rapidly becoming just one more format among formats, just one
more information service among information services, and its relative
importance in the information universe has dwindled.  

Many of the best library services are still very local and specific--and
these services are either enhanced or not diminished by the advent of the
digital age.  In the analog realm, we have children's
services--particularly story times and summer reading, services to the
disabled, book groups, literacy and youth tutoring, informational programs,
and simply the notion of the library as a place to plotz and read or study
for a little while.  In the digital realm, we have computer training,
computer access, online magazine databases, other value-added databases,
remote services, and more.  In addition, the library has a terrific
potential role as an incubator of interesting new services--the "place of
first resort" McClure and Bertot talked about two years ago in one of their
documents.  When a patron talks about preferring to use library computers
because they are faster, or is excited because the library is offering an
electronic service not yet readily available, or tells a friend how great
it was to retrieve magazine articles from home, then the library is
fulfilling this role as a library of first resort.  Too many libraries are
still places of "last resort," where digital services are scant and
rudimentary, and the only patrons who use these services are those who
absolutely have no other choice and are thus willing to wait in line for an
hour to spend thirty minutes searching the Internet over a slow connection
on some funky old computer.  If that doesn't say "eat your
vegetables"--i.e., we're offering this for your good, not because we want
to or because we think you will like it--I don't know what does.  (The book
equivalent would be going on to a six-month reserve list for a title you
really wanted to read, and then receiving a smudged, dirty, torn copy of
the book.)  

Instead of trying to make the OPAC something it isn't, I'd be much more
inclined to put a dual emphasis on a) ensuring that traditional book
services plod along as they have done--and the intralibrary sharing tools
have had a wonderful impact on book use in many consortia--and b) ensuring
that our "other" services are not simply adequate, but really shine.  I
don't think traditional book-sharing is as flawed or "broke" as Coffman
would indicate, and I don't think it's an appropriate place to sink new
dollars or efforts.  It is wrong to assume that lack of interest in a
global book catalog indicates apathy or obtuseness.  It may simply mean
that directors, trustees and communities do not want to concentrate their
resources in so specific an area of library services, particularly when it
is obvious that we are in the midst of massive and unpredictable change.    

Libraries have a wonderful opportunity to be seen as lead-the-fleet
agencies that anticipate, predict and even lead in the area of providing
traditional and new information services.  The book is just one of them.
Yes, we should do a good job putting books in folks' hands.  But when new
genres emerge, will we have so over-invested in book-oriented tools that we
have the same problem we had introducing Internet services?   

As for the cost model, I don't think it was a trivial comment.  Many grand
schemes have just one little catch or two--oh, say, abandoning our
commitment to public service and embracing a commercial model.  But
libraries are not run to make a profit; libraries, as Pat Schuman has said
many times, operate at a loss.  What makes us so special is that we are
willing and in many cases eager to offer a service that no right-minded
business would dream of providing.  We build libraries in poor communities,
offer services to people we know have no income--including children, buy
books that are never going to be best-sellers, provide hands-on training to
anyone who wants it, and devote time, energy and TLC to patrons who
sometimes come in simply to make contact with another human being.  We tell
people that whatever they want to read or view or listen to is good; we
sing the body Electric every time we tell children that *they* can decide
what they will or will not read--a radically different message than what
they get in school.  It's not a good Malthusian model--which makes what we
do special and wonderful, and so very delightfully subversive.  

________________________________________________
Karen G. Schneider kgs at bluehighways.com 
http://www.bluehighways.com 
Assistant Director of Technology, Shenendehowa Public Library, NY
Author: A Practical Guide to Internet Filters, Neal Schuman, 1997