Yet, information technology has proliferated and become “humanized” over the last dozen years to the extent that we are now in the midst of revolutionary change. Some even see that change as a threat to the existence of libraries.

As information professionals, we occupy a significant amount of space at the epicenter of that change–but how are we really doing? Are we helping to direct that change or merely responding to it? Are we leveraging change, or simply managing it? As the world of information production and consumption undergoes a complete transformation, how is our place in society affected and what are our responsibilities? How do we justify our existence?

Please join us on Thursday, March 26th at the Darien Library for a conversation with John Berry (Editor-at-large, Library Journal, New York, NY) and Kathryn Greenhill (Emerging Technologies Specialist, Murdoch University Library, Perth Western Australia) about revolutionary change, youth, service, and civic responsibility, and the future of libraries.

Come prepared to participate in group discussion following both speakers. In fact, come prepared to help sketch out the role librarians should play in defining the future of libraries.

Coffee and bagels will be served at 9:00 and we will begin the program at 9:30. Lunch will also be served and we will go until we’ve exhausted the topic (around 5:00). This event is co-sponsored by Darien Library and Connecticut Library Consortium. Attendance is free but please sign-up in advance on the futurelibs09 event wiki: http://futurelibs09.wikispaces.com/Attendee+List

I’m really proud of the people I work with. If it were possible to capture in a single word the confluence of physical space, library science, technology, focus on service, hospitality, and user experience that our new building embodies, it would be something akin to “masterpiece”.

But we’ve got miles to go before …

But without any further ado, here are my trends:

Keep an eye on DRM

Last year, we saw Steve Jobs come out in favor of DRM-free music. Shortly thereafter, EMI began releasing music on iTunes sans-DRM. And only a couple weeks ago Warner Bros. announced that it would abandon DRM for all sales on Amazon.

While I think this particular trend is encouraging, we ought not throw a ticker-tape parade just yet. It seems that in place of DRM, studios are opting for digital watermarks. What that means is that every music download will have, embedded in it, a unique serial number that ties that file with the original purchaser. Obviously, this carries with it some significant privacy concern.

Furthermore, there doesn’t seem to be any indication that DRM is being dropped from popular audiobook formats.

Converged Digital Media Hubs

PVRs were really the vanguard of this particular technological revolution and they have been incredibly disruptive to the television advertisement industry. The Apple iPhone was sort of a watershed moment last year in this area because it really is a device that allows users to take advantage of a convergence of media types–music, video, text, and two-way voice communication. There is no question as to how beneficial these types of devices are to the consumer and the market for them is only going to get bigger. Many interesting possibilities for libraries there too.

Location Awareness

If you’re in a room with a hundred cell-phone owners, you can be sure that at least eighty of them are Lo-Jacked. Quietly rolled out under the guide of “Location Services”, most cell phones are equipped with a GPS locater chip. We’re going to start seeing this technology couple with online social networking sites like Dodgeball so that friends and contacts can triangulate on your physical position at any given time. Interesting and very cool from a techie point of view, but also incredibly invasive and potentially scary.

Surface Computing

During the Iowa Caucus and New Hampshire primary, I noticed that CNN’s election center was using a vertically-placed Microsoft Surface. I see this type of tactile computing becoming much more widespread as notions of what ‘computing’ actually means begin to broaden and extend into non-traditional types of devices (think Chumby). Maybe someday, when we have sane APIs into our ILSs, we’ll be able to use surface computing platforms in a convergence of reference, circulation, research, and instruction.

Fat PAN Pipes

Personal Area Networks are sort of luke-warm. I think adoption has been slow because of bandwidth restrictions. That will probably change once we see devices begin to take advantage of Ultra Wideband (UWB)–an extremely high-bandwidth, short-range radio specification. Think USB or Firewire without cables. Couple that with moderate-range wireless energy transfer, and I think we’ll see some very interesting gadgetry indeed.

Privacy is Dead

Yep, no such thing if you’re a netizen. We basically have the choice to connect or live out our lives in quiet and total obscurity. This merits an entire write-up on its own, but needless to say, our approach to individual privacy needs to be dragged into the twenty-first century. Almost all of the trends I mentioned this time around have profound privacy implications.

It’s easy to become enamored of social networking sites and Web 2.0 toys to the point where they seem like a panacea for everything that’s wrong with your library or your job. Slap a wiki on it and call me in the morning. The most successful uses of the newest tech tools have recognized that they’re just that: tools.

I’ve been feeling, for awhile now, that the term Library 2.0 has been co-opted by a growing group of libraries, librarians, and particularly vendors to push an agenda of “change” that deflects attention from some very real issues and concerns without really changing anything. It’s very evident in the profusity of L2-centric workshops and conferences that there is a significant snake-oil market in the bibliosphere. We’re blindly casting about for a panacea and it’s making us look like fools.

Ignoring the information ecology

Perhaps the most significant area of neglect is our failure to recognize that Library 2.0 is a delicate ecology. Like Web 2.0, it represents technology that is inherently disruptive on many levels. Not only does Web 2.0 undermine notions of authority and control, but its economic and human costs are very real. There is, indeed, something very exciting about the fact that Google bought YouTube for $1.65 Billion–especially since it was only a company of sixty-odd employees. But at the same time, I’m a little alarmed that sixty-odd people could dominate such a large piece of that market-share. Not for the same reason that we have (soon to have had) the FCC’s media ownership rule, but because the force of that type of change has to be felt somewhere. Think of it in terms of a bag of nitrate dumped in a stream–the algae does really well, but the fish suffocate.

Luckily, Web 2.0 as a whole exists in a large, rather well-insulated economy that will adjust over time. Libraries, on the other hand, are significantly more delicate ecosystems that require more care and discretion. Specifically, we need to understand how our internal information ecology works and how to tend to it. How and where we interface with our users is where the rubber meets the road and should merit a little more thought then simply thrusting a MySpace page in their face or building a new library in Second Life–a service our users overwhelmingly do not use and, which seems to me, like a creepy post-apocalyptic wasteland. I’ll even turn the tables on myself and admit that I was wrong about local tagging in the OPAC. SOPAC was by-and-large a success, but its use of user-contributed tags is a failure. For the past nine months, the top ten tags have included “fantasy”, “manga”, “anime”, “time travel”, “shonen”, “shonen jump”, and “shape-changing”. As a one-time resident of Ann Arbor, I can assure you that these are not topics that dominated the collective hive mind. Well, maybe time travel, if hash-bash was going on.

So we need to understand that, while it’s alright to tip the balance and fail occasionally, we’re more likely to do so if we’re arbitrarily introducing technology that isn’t properly integrated into our overarching information framework. Of course, that means we have to have a working framework to begin with that compliments and adheres to our tradition of solid, proven librarianship. In other words, when we use technology, it should be transparent, intuitive, and a natural extension of the patron experience. If it can’t be transparent, then it should be so overwhelmingly beneficial to the user that it is canonized not by the techies, but the users themselves.

You can’t buy Library 2.0

…And vendors, you can’t sell it. But that doesn’t mean it won’t be attempted. I think perhaps there is an expectation that real-life should somehow mimic the success of the software plug-in model. There may be something to be said for the “object-oriented” library, but that is a far cry from stuffing a new product into an already-awkward, malformed, and ill-suited portfolio. For example, third-party OPACs, as they are currently being sold to us, are likely to fail. Not because they are inherently bad products–some are, some aren’t, but because the companies producing them are only mimicking the Web 2.0 widget–the deliverable. What they are not doing is reevaluating their business and development processes with the goal of realigning them with the interests of libraries. I discussed the pressing need for significant development partnerships back in the July 2007 issue of LJ’s NetConnect and I still believe that that particular model for collaboration is the only way to significantly improve our ability to embed technology in the library. It’s not a long-term viable solution to sell the concept of development partnership when all it really is is just the opportunity to report bugs on software that is not quite ready for prime time.

As libraries, we need to realize that the answers to our larger questions cannot be found out on the exhibitor’s floor. That’s where we find solutions to specific needs that have been identified by a thorough self-examination.

Meeting technology half-way

Don’t hold your breath waiting for technology to adapt to the library environment. Web 2.0 did not evolve with libraries in mind, and there’s no reason to think that it ever will. I realize that, at first glance, that statement seems to run counter to what I’ve been saying with regards to not forcing a square peg into a round hole. What I mean is that we cannot expect to retrofit our libraries with tomorrow’s technology. The true pursuit of Library 2.0 involves a thorough recalibration of process, policy, physical spaces, staffing, and technology so that any hand-offs in the patron’s library experience are truly seamless. We can learn a lot about collaboration and individual empowerment from Web 2.0, but we cannot be subsumed by it because we have a mission that eclipses “don’t be evil” which is the closest thing to a conscience the Web will ever have.

Overall, my stay was fantastic. It was close to the conference (couldn’t really be much closer), I was upgraded to an executive suite, had a great view, and felt that my needs, as modest as they are, were well taken care of. With the exception of the sausages. The sausages they brought to my room for breakfast were in rough shape. I can easily overlook that, however, and I did. Except that I marked down the food in the survey.

And I would have completely forgotten about those bad bangers, if it were not for an email I received last week:

After taking the time to review your response, I was concerned by the rating which you gave to breakfast overall that you had at Three Flags Cafe. Please accept my sincere apology for our failure to provide you with the overall quality to which you were expecting while dining with us.

I would certainly appreciate hearing from you personally, Mr. Blyberg, so that we can gain more insight into your dissatisfaction with the overall quality of service that you received. We had always taken great pride in providing the highest quality of service to our guests and we regret this was not your experience.

We value your feedback and appreciate your loyalty and I certainly hope that I will have the opportunity to speak with you soon. You may contact me personally at [snip] or by e-mail at [snip]. It is our pleasure to serve you and the next time you visit in Monterey please feel free to contact me prior to your visit as we want your next visit to be a 10!

Not bad. They turned something that was really not a big deal into an opportunity to show they care about me as their guest. Granted, I’ll just skip the room service in the future and head across the street to Pinos, but of course I’ll continue to stay there.

This underscored, for me, the fact that our ILS, in addition to everything else it does, needs to function as a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system.  This anecdote is exactly the type of story I’d want told about MPOW.  Where are the most complaints lodged?  At the circulation and reference desks, of course.  And what tools, other than social grace and Job’s patience, do librarians have when taking them?  Email?  email who, what, and why?  Or better yet, the old, “let me write your name down on this piece of reference scrap and never get back to you” trick?

No, we need practical ways of tracking complains–who is making them, what they’re complaining about, how often, time of day, and so on.  Then, most importantly, we need to follow-up with the patron and let them know that we still love them.

I was in Monterey for Darien Library’s annual meeting this year and, unfortunately, missed the official unveiling of our new logo. It was very well received, as we all expected it to be.

The logo was part of a branding exercise led by Steff Geissbuhler of C & G Partners (whose clients range from NBC and Time Warner to New York Public Library). Of all the final options presented by C & G, the one settled upon was by far my favorite. It’s supposed be reminiscent of pages in a book while recalling the fluid movement of a cresting wave–a recognition of Darien as a waterfront community (I also see it as a sailboat) and an acknowledgment of Darien Library as a dynamic and agile organization. Several days ago, Alan Gray commented that it looked a little like a “2″ — love it!

I joined Darien Library during the final phase of the logo commission, but it was a fascinating process to be a part of. Steff Geissbuhler is an incredibly creative and inspiring person who really took the time to understand us and consider our own unique cultural fingerprint.

It occurred to me that a branding exercise is not just about a logo as a deliverable, but also a rare opportunity to examine who you are as an institution, your place in the community, and your vision for the future. The result, in our case, is a graphic that is not only visually pleasing, but one that encourages meditation on the significance of “library”. Like the logo itself, different people will see different things in their hometown library.

The need for branding in libraries may not be readily apparent, yet is critical nonetheless. Branding serves a number of critical purposes.

Branding instills a clarity of purpose.

I think that, for the reasons I previously mentioned, a strong brand can serve as a constant and gentle reminder to your staff of who you are as an institution and the qualities you represent. It helps ensure that your organization continues to deliver on the promises is makes to its community and that it adheres to its core mission.

Branding creates familiarity and comfort.

Consumers are comforted by brands. Brands become part of our daily narrative and, by virtue of the fact that they are so recognizable, we implicitly begin to trust the organizations behind them. We want our users to trust us and feel comfortable using our services and interacting with our people.

Branding indicates quality and consistency.

When you brand yourself, you are holding yourself to a standard of service. The stronger the brand, the higher the standard (and vice-versa). In that sense, you are letting your patrons know that you’ve made a commitment to them and intend to stick to it. After all, a brand can just as easily become a liability if you don’t live up to your end of the bargain.

Branding facilitates communication.

Over time, a brand begins to convey the things that an institution stands for. It then only needs to be invoked in order to recall everything that is associated with it. This can be very useful in, say, fund-raising situations where sometimes you simply want your library to speak for itself.

Darien Library’s new logo is just one step in an ongoing transformation process, as will be the opening of our new library in 2009. We will always exist in a state of transformation, however, and I’m encouraged to see that represented in our young icon.

Attendance at Library Camp NYC was quite large (100+ people!) which certainly tested the open spaces concept. The 14th floor of Baruch’s vertical campus building was well equipped to handle the crowd, however, and a number of really great sessions were spawned. The only drawback of the unconference format, I’ve found, is that I always find myself wanting to be in two or three places at once. You can take a look at how the final program evolved on the event wiki.

During the first session, I attended ‘Library 2.0 show and tell‘ which focused a lot on wikis and some other specific technologies. The group also touched on topics such as how to get staff/patrons to buy-in to new services. I also attended a session led by OCLC’s Eric Hellman on their grid services concept (xISBN, etc). I think I enjoyed the final session the most, however, which was a discussion about cataloging and Weinberger‘s Everything is Miscellaneous.

A great day, and I’m sure we’ll see more library camps in the future.

For one thing, asking “how 2.0 are you?” suggests that there is some metric by which 2.0-ness can be established. That, in turn, would assume that Library 2.0 is a defined and measurable corporeality with quantifiable properties. Reading David’s post, I recalled a conversation I had with Stephen Abram quite some time ago where he said he was once asked, “is [so-and-so] Library 2.0-compliant?” Sure, and there is ISO certification for it too. Remember Mr. Ramsay’s relentless (and ultimately absurd) obsession with completing his philosophical treatises from A to Z? (Bonus points if you do, indeed, remember that) There is no Yardstick 2.0, simply a gradual emergence through a particularly interesting paradigm shift.

Steve Lawson is the closest to touching on this in his response:

I object when people treat “2.0” as if it were something that exists in some platonic sense. If you want to talk about 2.0 as a group of tools or techniques or ideas, I’m ready to talk. If you want to talk about it as if it were a state of nirvana that we are all striving toward–as something that one either “gets” or doesn’t “get”–I’m out. I don’t “get it.”

Except that David did not suggest, in any way, that L2 = Nirvana. In fact, his original post was a relatively heuristic glance at ‘L2ness’. The problem with it was that it landed in the no-mans-land between the abstract and the practical. There is, indeed, an existential component to Library 2.0, but it’s the same aesthetic that drives all librarians into the profession–chances are, if you’re reading this, it’s in you regardless of your thoughts on L2. What makes Library 2.0 different is that we can manifest that passion to share and broker knowledge in a fantastically new egalitarian space. We’re also more comfortable with the idea of non-authoritative information being valuable, which is a very important distinction because it means we’re willing to let the information itself be the experience. The 2.0 librarian is willing to reconcile the traditional instinct to provide certified information with the desire to swim in the ocean of transient data. The ability to do that is what, I think, distinguishes the 2.0 librarian from the 1.0. The Michael Gormans and Andrew Keens of the world have very valid points that nobody should dismiss–quite the opposite, we ought to be listening to them carefully so that we don’t bounce off the atmosphere and tumble off into space–but they are unable to, or haven’t been open to processing that concept. When David writes, ‘The Lightbulb – This is a major point on the Library 2.0 spectrum. Something “clicks” – The library/librarian realizes that the organization/librarian needs to change to meet emerging customer needs,’ I think he’s talking about this–sort of like the moment when a stereogram springs to life.

Additionally, the spectrum is not a very good way to represent Library 2.0-ness. I think Kathryn Greenhill hit the nail on the head on her Flickr comment when she asked, “Nice image…Is it more an evolution than a spectrum? I don’t think librarians would be going back to the left once they moved further toward the right…” and this gem as well, “Getting really abstract..I think it’s probably linear until that “click” moment, and then it should be fluid and experimental and maybe stop being linear at all.” In lieu of my recent post about the role of technology in the growth of L2, I found myself doodling this:

My thought here is that this is, indeed, a one way progression and, at some point, technology diverges from the essence of Library 2.0, though I think we’ll find that technology will always serve to further those principles and without it, Library 2.0 will flounder. That’s why we need to be vigilant for those opportunities where technology can re-converge to support and help grow the core library services that we hold so dear.

One more thing, I think, is worth mentioning here. I often see the comment, “well, this is the same discussion we were having [10-20] years ago.” Yes it is the same discussion with one seriously important difference. We’re now at a point where our hand is being forced. We need to make these decisions now because the parallel world of information that now accompanies us through our lives is evolving with or without us. Discussion is a tool that is far too often used to draw complacency out of the ground–and we’ve peaked in our ability to sustain ourselves on inaction. And this is where we should all be playing close attention to David–his tinkering is the type of action that is going to save our asses.

I know all of ours deserve a good long rest. Great job guys, you’ve helped remind more than a few kids (and parents too) that the library is way cooler than Barnes and Noble.

Louise Berry (hands-down the most flickeringest library director in the known universe) has already put together a set on Flickr documenting the Darien Library’s Deathly Hallows launch. Some of these pictures should be ALA marketing posters.