virtually a librarian

David Lee King posts a closing thought for the year and asks us to ponder the physical library in the 21st century: is it’s demise looming? Prompted by comments on his post about Ignoring our digital community, DLK asks his readers to consider how we might bring people back into the physical library.

This is an important topic. We do need to provide programming and services that bring those people who like using the library in person, but have stopped doing so (for any number of reasons, including that we’re not offering them the things they want) back into the physical building.

How do we get people back into the physical library?

I think the answer is fairly obvious: we need to offer services and programming that are relevant and appealing to them, and promote them using the channels our users tune into. To do this, we need to consult with community members and groups and ask them what they want. We need to look at the communities around us and the activities that are happening in our areas and seek out synergies for service development and delivery. And then we need to be responsive - ready to tweak or redevelop services as the community demands it. And we need to evaluate, review, reshape, over and over again.

Not an easy task, but surely we can get the people who want to be in the library back into the library, with some careful planning and programming?

I know this is a tad simplistic and this is a a much bigger issue, deserving more attention than I’ve given it here… But what I’d like to focus on in this post is something a little different…

Should we really be so hung up on getting people back into the library?

There’s a proportion of our user base that doesn’t come into the library, and doesn’t ever want to. For those library users who only want to interact with us online (users like - I have to confess - myself), no amount of in-library programming or redefinition of in-library services is going to get them back into the library. And we need to accept that it’s perfectly fine if they never, ever walk into a library again - so long as we’re supplying them with what they want and need online.

We don’t want to neglect our physical library customers… because then we’ll end up with no physical libraries!

For the forseable future (always?), some people are going to want to visit the physical library in person, and we should absolutely cater for those people. We don’t want to get into the situation where usage is so low we’re forced to stop providing physical library facilities and services – at least not while there is a demand or a need for physical library services. But I don’t know that usage is going to drop to that degree any time soon. (Especially not if we offer the right services and programs.)

But all this talk about getting people through our physical doors makes me think we’re worried about the wrong issue. Is it really all about the number of people we get through the door?

DLK’s post was written in response to this comment on a previous post:

David, this is all great, but - really, I’m serious - what happens to the physical library? If Topeka Public mails the holds to patrons and they can drop the returned item at boxes, and the patrons need not come to the physical library, we may have crowds online and remote access and whatever, but an administrator comes in and sees the empty library and orders it closed, the librarians fired and a small studio in the country to be opened in the library’s stead that can be maintained by two technicians.

To my mind, we need to revisit the reason we do what we do. We provide physical libraries because people want or need physical libraries. We don’t provide physical libraries simply for the sake of providing physical libraries. We shouldn’t be hung up on getting people through the door for the sake of justifying our physical libraries. We should be hung up on providing the services people want and need. Right now, there’s a demand for physical library services. But if, at some point in the future, there’s a broadband connected computer in every household and a majority of people choose to use libraries online rather than in person, will we still be harping on about getting people back through our doors?

I don’t want to see our physical libraries closed because they’re underpopulated any more than the next person. But success in library service provision should not be measured by door counters and full car parks (or, for that matter, numbers through our digital doors). We should be measuring success by (at least in part) asking our users if we’re providing the services they want. The door count is not the be all and end all. If Topeka can make it easier for people to access library collections by mailing them their holds, then hallelujah for Topeka! Seriously, I’d love to see what this does for their circulation statistics and customer satisfaction levels.

Getting the people through the door… Are we asking the right question?

DLK asks how we get our customers to visit the physical library. The answer is pretty straightforward: provide the services and programs people want, deliver them the way they want them delivered, promote ourselves through the channels that reach our customers, and be prepared to evaluate, review and change constantly. Simple, right?! Ha! What a challenge!

But let’s not focus only on our physical buildings. I would suggest that we need to invest proportionate amounts of energy in both our user camps: those who want to come into the library, and those who want to interact with us in other ways. If we’re looking at ways to get our users back through our physical doors, we should also look at ways to entice our digital communities through our digital doors.

To my mind, DLK’s question is not the one I think I should be worrying about, because as I’ve said, I don’t see bums on seats as the one and only measure of successful service provision. If we’re looking to just increase numbers through the door, then we could just stick free wifi in all our libraries and forget about programming. But, I’m not looking for bums on seats as justification for our physical libraries (plus, where I work, we don’t have any lack of people coming through our doors - maybe this colours my POV on this issue a little).

So, as someone whose job is concerned predominantly with online library services, the questions I’ll be refocusing on as I head into 2008 are: What are the needs and wants of our in-library and online customers? How can technology assist us meet those needs? What suite of services should we offer, and how do our customers want to access them? With any luck, if we get the answers to these three questions right, the issue of getting people through the doors (both physical and digital) should take care of itself.

[Did I just talk round in a great big circle?]

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner has published a set of FAQs on privacy issues related to social networking sites. The FAQs include some commonsense advice on protecting your privacy on sites like MySpace, Facebook and Bebo. This is a good set of basic facts about privacy related issues that all social networking site users should be aware of.

In Australia, and elsewhere in the world, legal deposit laws have failed to keep pace with the rapid evolution of technology. Our national repositories therefore have no legislative mandate to assist them in their efforts to preserve the growing abundance of born digital published materials.

Without legal deposit provisions for digital and AV materials, those institutions that are tasked with preserving an archive of Australia’s history and culture are limited in their ability to do so comprehensively. Legal deposit libraries must receive a copy of each print publication published in their jurisdiction, but there is no legal requirement for publishers of audiovisual or digital material (either hard copy or online) to deposit publications with any repository. What this means is that those repositories (like, for example, the National Library of Australia) who had the foresight to recognise the need to collect born digital material have been required to seek permission from publishers to archive websites, to purchase hard copy digital materials for the national collections, or to rely on voluntary deposit.

A discussion paper, designed to “invite comment on the feasibility of extending the current legal deposit scheme to include audiovisual and electronic material” is now available on the Attorney General’s website, and indeed, has been for some months. Somehow this didn’t hit my radar until quite recently, although the paper has been out since October.

This is an issue of significant national importance. The ALIA Government Publications Advisory Committee is compiling a submission on behalf of ALIA members. Go comment, before 3 January if you want to be part of the ALIA response, or by 11 January for independent responses. The questions posed by the review paper are interesting and challenging ones that need some fresh, creative thinking, and which deserve the attention of the Australian library community.

Google has announced a new service, currently in private beta, called Google Knol. A frenzy has ensued. Go check out the original announcement on the Google blog, and have a look at the number of links back to the post. Try a Technorati search on the subject. Watch as the Wikipedia entry evolves. Everyone is talking about it.

Why? There’s widespread concern that Google is attempting to usurp Wikipedia’s prominence as the reference tool of choice for a majority of internet users, and to make some money out of it. The argument goes that this is perhaps a little out of sync with their “do no evil mantra”. But is this new project any more or less “evil” than anything Google have done in the past? Duncan Riley at TechCrunch, self-acknowledged follower of the Google religion, points out the difference between Google’s entrance into the knowledge hosting/creation domain, as opposed to some of it’s other recent forays:

Knol on the other hand brings the power of Google into a marketplace that is already rich with competition, and a marketplace where Google can use its might to crush that competition by favoring pages from Knol over others, on what is the worlds most popular search engine.

There are a lot of issues here, undeniably. I’m not going to get into the revenue debate or the “big bad Google” line of questioning. Lots of other people have done it really well already. What I do want to say it this: yes, this is clearly an attempt to gain some of the Wikipedia market share and to make some money out of it.

But if we set aside the ‘evilness’ (or ‘business’) aspect for a moment, I think the really interesting thing about this project is the departure Google is making from the basic tenets that underpin the Wikipedia model - tenets which some librarians have rallied against.

The return of the author; or, the masses may not be so wise
There seems to be something of a departure from the idea of the wisdom of the masses in this new venture from Google. From the official Google blog:

The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors. Books have authors’ names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors — but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted. We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content.

Now, I love Wikipedia, and I am decidedly not one of those “stick your head in the sand and decry the evils of user generated knowledge” type librarians. But, one of the key arguments against Wikipedia has been that the masses might not be so wise; that without knowing who authored an article, it’s impossible to verify its credibility. So, does this new project from Google not offer something that we’ve been lamenting the loss of? The return of the author. The ability to see who wrote an article, go off and Google them, use a citation tool to verify their credibility, check an OPAC to see what else they’ve written, head off to the website of their organisation to see what biases they might have… Interesting.

But is it anti two-point-oh? Maybe, but Google has indicated that community tools like reviews, rankings, submission of edits and questions will be prominently featured. So it seems like there’ll still be potential for debate, criticism and discourse. We’ll need to watch to see how this plays out.

Multiple articles on a single subject will present multiple points of view
Now this could be interesting. Knol will not present a single encyclopedic, be-all-and-end-all entry on each topic. Rather, following this idea of the return of the author, it will present multiple articles on a topic, authored by different people, and quite possibly providing differing viewpoints.

I read one blog post this morning that suggested the result might be an unusable web of confusion. And this might well be the case. But it might also lead to people being exposed to differing viewpoints and being forced to critically evaluate and analyse what they’re reading. This is a good thing, right? What kind of impact will this have on our customers, and on us? An increased need to assist our customers develop their information literacy?

I’m not sure that we should be so ready to poo-hoo this concept of multiple articles on a single topic before we see how it plays out. Who would’ve thought, ten years ago, that a free, collaboratively written and edited encyclopedia could be a useful reference tool? Wikipedia has seen us break away from the idea of leather bound volume published by a reputable company as centre of the reference universe. We’ve embraced the concept of a sea of words cobbled together by the masses as legitimate reference source.

It might end up a useless mess; it might end up a mess that we can use as a teaching tool, to illustrate the need to critically evaluate information; or it might end up as a valuable site for debate and discourse, where no single opinion or voice can be edited out by the loudest group, allowing for a presentation of opposing viewpoints. We’ll have to wait and see how it plays out.

The end of Wikipedia?
I really like the way Wikipedia works. I think the masses are essentially pretty wise. And I really don’t want to see it’s demise. But I don’t think that Google Knol signals the end for Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a strong brand, with a legion of loyal followers and contributors who believe in what it does. The Google Knol model is pretty significantly different, and I don’t think it’s going to do Wikipedia any real damage anytime soon.

Good vs evil: can we get past the revenue issue and see the potential?
Yeah, the whole revenue issue is quite shudder-some. Google is clearly trying to make some money out of something Wikipedia does “for the greater good”.

But if we put that aside for a second, I think this Google project has some interesting potential. I’ll be keenly watching to see how it plays out. For one thing, won’t it be nice to do a search for some basic reference material and not have the same Wikipedia article reappearing on five different websites in your top five results?

And you never know, perhaps the world of Knol authors will prove to be altruists who’ll opt out of the ad revenue stream.

At least the frenzy will keep us amused as we wait to see how this plays out.

A participant in a Learning 2.0 program recently posted on his course blog and to an ALIA elist about libraries’ use of free, commercial web 2.0 services. He analogises that libraries’ use of free web 2.o services like Blogger, del.icio.us, YouTube and the like is “privatisation by osmosis” and he is concerned by the lack of debate about this issue.

He’s right - there hasn’t been a great deal of debate in the biblioblogosphere, but I’m sure this is an issue that many libraries and librarians have grappled with on a local level.

There are a few points I’d like to make on this issue… But first, I should point out that I agree that (where possible) libraries should be developing infrastructure to support their 2.0 services. So, onto my stream-of-consciousness response…

Libraries as content producers

The author of “It’s the Queen of Darkness, Pal” suggests that libraries’ use of commercial providers might mean that they don’t see themselves as content producers to the same degree as they have historically:

It seems to me that libraries used to see themselves as content providers, actively providing tools for finding information. At the moment, it feels more like we have resigned ourselves to using the services of the private sector.

I’d like to suggest that libraries’ use of third party providers doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t producing content or don’t see themselves as content producers. In fact, in some ways, I think use of free third party providers can free us up to produce content, because we spend less time maintaining the back end of the systems that house the content. Indeed, libraries’ quick up-take of content-based technologies like blogs seems to me to indicate that we are very concerned with developing content.

Sure, we mightn’t want to rely on third party providers to maintain a record of our business transactions or our content for the purposes of records management. I would suggest that any library using a third party provider for any 2.0 (or 1.0) service should be exporting content for archiving in their local records repository. But I’d also suggest that a library with, for example, a blog hosted on their own server, should also be doing this.

Yes, libraries should build and host their own infrastructure for 2.0 services, but…

The author asks why libraries aren’t hosting their own web 2.0 technologies, and he also suggests an answer:

The superficial answer is, of course, that libraries don’t have the funds. The deeper underlying answer though is that, really, our society has decided that it’s information is best entrusted to and run by the private sector on an advertising funded basis.

Do we (as in society) really think our information is best entrusted to the private sector? I’m not so sure about this. I know that I personally am often a little nervous about entering or display personal information in/via web apps or tools. I think it’s more that it’s very easy to entrust our information to the private sector, and the private sector seems to be very good at providing tools that work for people. I think libraries have been so quick to use commercial web 2.0 services for exactly the same reasons as individuals have: they work and they’re easy to implement and use.

Should libraries be hosting their own 2.0 services? Absolutely! It would be awesome if, for example, a library offered a social bookmarking tool that their customers could use as an alternative to del.icio.us. But as the author of “It’s the Queen of Darkness, Pal” acknowledges, there are hurdles libraries need to jump in order to be able to do this sort of thing. It’s not just about money - we all know there are robust open source options for a lot of the technologies we’d like to implement. There are many other issues, too, which impede libraries in building 2.0 infrastructure, such as:

• lack of library staff with the technological expertise to allow for implementation and maintenance of the technologies
• the need to respond to new technologies and user demands quickly often dictates that we need to find fast solutions, and hosting the technologies locally can result in time lags between identification of demand or need and implementation - an externally hosted commercial service might be a great interim solution in instances like this
• the need to work with and within in-house enterprise architecture requirements
• cultural and organisational factors, including policy, procedures, history

Some libraries are in a position to independently develop their own Web 2.0 infrastructure. Some are in a position to work with their parent organisation’s IT services to work towards the development of such an infrastructure. But some do not fall into either of these categories.

As one response to the recent thread on this topic on the NewGrads elist pointed out, it’s technically possible to buy a domain name and host your library’s virtual services entirely separately from your parent organisation’s web presence and without any input from your local IT people. But many libraries are not in a position to do that, often for the same reasons as those listed above.

Is commercialism really an issue?

Consider the other commercial services libraries make use of every day - particularly those that involve data hosting and end-user service provision. We purchase subscriptions to online resources from third party vendors. Many libraries also use “software as a service” models for external hosting of their LMS or other systems. How do these two examples differ from, for example, delivering a blog via a free service such as WordPress? Other than the fact that the first two cost money while the latter is free, I’m not sure that there is a great deal of difference… Or is there? Is the fact that the Web 2.0 services are free an issue? Is the fact that they are mainstream (ie non-library) services an issue? How about a service like LibGuides? Where does that fit in?

Scattering the breadcrumbs

I think there’s one other very important reason that libraries use commercial Web 2.0 services rather than build our own infrastructure, and it’s a reason that means a lot of libraries will continue to use these commercial services: we’re attempting to meet our users in their own space. We’re “scattering the breadcrumbs” and placing our services where the users will see us - that is, in the spaces they inhabit. If we hosted our own services, would we be able to do this as effectively? If we created a social network space on the library’s website, we might create a space in which those users who actually come to our websites could interact with each other and the library, but we wouldn’t be reaching out to, for example, the users of Facebook who’ve never even contemplated visiting the library’s website.

Should libraries be using free, commercial Web 2.0 services?

The answer? I don’t know if there is one. Perhaps it’s that where possible, libraries should use a combination of local infrastructure or locally hosted services and commercial tools that can position us in the user’s space.

But I think what must be acknowledged is that, as it stands right now, there are some libraries for whom implementing their own locally hosted services or infrastructure is just not a possibility, or not a possibility that will be realised any time soon. For those libraries, free commercial services are their only option, if they’re to make use of Web 2.0 tools at all.

Finally…

I’m really glad that there is finally some debate happening on this topic. I hope it continues and some other people weigh in. This is something I’ve been pondering at length recently, and I’d really like to hear others’ thoughts.