virtually a librarian

Two posts on a similar theme popped into my feed reader today. Both centre on the concept that, for our users, the library website is not be the be-all and end-all of resource discovery.

While munching on my lunch today, I came across a post on Library Web Chic titled The future of web services isn’t the library website. I’m somewhat preoccupied with online services atm, given that my current priority at work is developing the concept of the online library, so this title grabbed my attention. The post talks about how for the author, the website redesign she’s recently been working on is not so much about ‘fixing’ the existing website as it is about

defining the types of content the library has to offer its users and getting that content into pieces that can be reused and repurposed elsewhere.

Interesting. I’ve been pondering the idea of content that can be dynamically pulled into various places in the library website, but this post started the cogs turning in a bigger picture context. What if libraries were to make their content and metadata mashable, repurposeable, RSSable, third-party-searchable… in a much larger setting than the library website? What a way to truly get ourselves into the line of vision of non-users. And what a way to make our services more relevant and accessible to our existing users. I made a note to do some more thinking about this idea.

And then… I just opened up my feed reader again on getting home from work and discovered a post from Lorcan Dempsey about the idea that “discovery happens elsewhere”. What exactly does this mean?

No single website is the sole focus of a user’s attention. Increasingly people discover websites, or encounter content from them, in a variety of places. These may be network level services (Google, …), or personal services (my RSS aggregator or ‘webtop’), or services which allow me to traverse from personal to network (Delicious, LibraryThing, …).

Hmmm, doubly interesting. Two posts in one day… I wonder if the universe is telling me something?

Certainly, libraries need to put some energy into making our content and metadata accessible from third party services. We’ve already seen some great examples of this (such as Libraries Australia seeding Google Scholar with data from the National Bibliographic Database). But there are so many more opportunities for all of us.

I sense I’ll be spending a lot more time thinking about this one… But no time for that right now! I’ve got a conference paper to finish that I’ve been seriously procrastinating about.