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

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Can you imagine plopping a CD or DVD down on this thing and getting an instant preview, then checking it out by simply placing your library card anywhere on the table?

How about letting the kids go nuts on it.

Or using it as a reference tool, “…have a seat while I blow your freakin’ mind.”

At about $10,000 a piece, these might just be a killer app for libraries.

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But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, is it? Insecurity? Severe cases can hinder and even cripple, but when you blend in other qualities, such as courage, vision, passion, and experimentation, the result can be something quite disruptive and impressive in its own right. What strikes me about the Library 2.0 movement is that it is born from, and exists in, a constant state of insecurity. The form it has taken, however, is far from insecure.

So what does that mean for Library 2.0, and why is it important? Insecurity is an indication of risk, which is something we should all tolerate a little of. There is no guarantee that the work we put in to adapting 2.0-related ideas will have a net positive effect on our organizations and so the willingness to experiment on our production environments becomes a necessary aspect of L2. That, of course, is terrifying.

So let’s take a look at exactly why L2 is so scary and try to deconstruct the rational from the irrational.

“Patron’s may complain” (see flickr complaints). Often times, we seem so afraid of risking a patron complaint that it keeps us from pursuing something potentially interesting. To some extent, I believe that patrons don’t have all the information to know what’s best for them. That’s what we’re there for–to create the services they never dreamed possible, right? At any rate, it’s impossible to please everyone, all the time. Yet, even if an experiment fails and ticks off a group of our patrons, isn’t that worth the right to experiment in the first place? I believe so. The government is not the only group of people who can inhibit innovation… our users can too. Keeping a vigilant eye on them may not be a bad idea (see Gwinnett CPL). I’m of the opinion that there is no moral equivalency between our mission and that of those groups that seek to ban “offensive material” and filter our Internet connections. They’re wrong, we’re right, period. Part of our mandate is to carry a community, even when a group of its citizens are acting like idiots.

“It may not work.” Well, of course it may not work, whatever it is. That’s the point of experimenting. And when it doesn’t work in a production environment, you may be embarrassed or even chastised–so what? Failures tend to tell us more about ourselves than our successes do. It’s quite possible that a miserable failure could lead to an even greater success. So analyze your failures, find out why you failed, where things went wrong, and what changes you can make. This is common sense, of course, but I think we tend to forget that the library environment is exactly the right place for experimenting because it is so forgiving. I think I’ve mentioned before that such an environment is our ace in the hole, as it were, with respect to our commercial competitors and our ILS partners/vendors. You will fail sometimes. Eventually, something you do will suck. Oh well. Get over it and try something else.

“Yikes, how do we keep up with our own growth?” If you have this problem, then you’re already the envy of other libraries and you’re finding little sympathy for this particular difficulty. Rapid growth of a service, while an indication of success, can be a major problem, especially if you’re not equipped to deal with it. Rapid growth can bite you in a number of unpleasant ways. First is the “victim-of-your-own-success” syndrome where you’ve created the impression in the minds of other departments that your department can create and deliver pretty much anything. As a result, the line, “Oh, we’ll just have [insert your department here] do it” becomes all-too-familiar. Of course you’re already up to your neck in projects.
Manage people’s expectations accordingly. The idea is to achieve superb customer service, but remember–that’s the journey, not where you are right now. If you allow people to expect a level of service you cannot reliably deliver, you are actually providing poor customer service and misrepresenting yourself in the process.
The other potential pitfall is that a service will outgrow the ability of its infrastructure to support it. You need to always think about extensibility–how to practically manage and accommodate growth. Don’t paint yourself into a corner. This could come in the form of outgrowing current server hardware, overwhelming staff with service requests, overtaxing existing collections, or something else equally vexing. Think about what success means to your organization in these practical terms.

Sustainability – Growth and sustainability go hand-in-hand. We ought to hone our soothsaying abilities enough to know what is sustainable and what is not. When we add a service, the worst thing we could do is to shut it off because we can no longer support it. That sets a bad precedence, and is not the type of expectation we want to foster in our users. How will they trust us enough to use new services if they’ve been burned in the past? Bear in mind, this is different from removing a service that doesn’t work well. I’m talking about removing a service because we can no longer support it, fiscally or otherwise. Evaluate your capacity to carry a new service indefinitely.

“What about outside factors?” Like.. well.. DOPA? There is no way to ensure that we’ll always have carte blanche to do what we want in the world. Take a moment, every now and then, to meditate on how blessed we are to live and operate in a free and open society. Then get real. There are certain things we cannot control, some things we can. DOPA is a great example of this because it’s clearly a highly political piece of poor legislation that is as unconstitutional as it is unenforceable. We’re also loosing the PR battle–I know this because I’ve heard, a number of talking heads on several different media outlets, complain about libraries supporting perverts and child porn. Yes, it made me angry, but pragmatically, it means we’re getting our hats handed to us. Clearly, this is an issue that our leadership is more equipped to handle on a federal level. Locally, however, are we doing anything to explain our position to our own users who may be hearing the same things? My point is that when outside pressure is applied against our organizations, we need to know our patrons will stand with us. Will yours?

FUD – Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. It’s subversive, passive, and crippling. Remember SCO’s lawsuit against IBM over Linux? Well, everyone with a clue in the open source community knew it was bogus, but enough FUD was generated by the lawsuit that the growth and adoption of Linux decelerated significantly. When it comes to technology, I see similarities in the library world. Not necessarily due to someones lobbying efforts, but because a large number of our colleagues are very unsure about the impact of technology in our organizations. As a result, they feel threatened. It’s a gulf we need to span. Those of us who are more comfortable with technology know that most of those fears are unfounded–it’s our job to reach out and reassure our peers, to help them understand that while their role in a 2.0 world may be different, it’s no less important.
FUD can come from almost everywhere. It’s one of those things we need to be able to identify and stop before it gets out of control. It’s stopped by the absence of ego and the presence of cooperation, education and understanding.

We should relinquish central coordination?? – In some cases, you bet. Especially when it comes to adding social-based services. The term “Radical Trust” has been tossed about in regard to this. In order for some things to be successful, we’re going to have to let the reins slip a little (sometimes a lot) and let our users take over. Given our profession’s obsession with authoritativeness, it’s hard, I know. Get over it, and remember, authority and social participation are by no means mutually exclusive. The two can exist quite nicely in parallel.

So what happens if we don’t experiment? Well, being a father of three young kids, I tend to think of it this way: It’s 3 AM and your newborn has woken up with a particularly nasty diaper. You are really not in the mood to change it, but you think, “What will happen if I don’t change it?” Besides being neglectful of someone you love viscerally, you know the alternatives are not good. In other words, changing the diaper is the only option. Let your mind go down the path of complacency. Let it go waaay down that path–five, ten, thirty years. If you care about the wonderful institution you work in, you don’t need an answer to this question.

Hinchcliffe has a wonderful post describing the idea of viral feedback and network effects. He explains that the “physics of the web” have changed and evolved to the point where the game has changed, whether we like it or not. Every day, a higher proportion of our population begins to lead a life that has one foot in the physical word and the other online. In fact, I believe that the online world often allows people to express their true persona with fewer inhibitions than “real life”. Online interaction often closes the gap between minds–a phenomenon that can be mutually beneficial to libraries and patrons. But timing is critical: we need to be gearing up to enter into this game during its disruptive phase–not after.

One of the questions posed to the panel was, where can Library 2.0 make a difference now? Where is the action?

I had mentioned four particular areas where I thought L2 could be a change agent: technology, policy, programming, physical spaces. It's important to note that these four areas of change are in no way inherently "library 2.0"--just a part of the conversation. I think it's also important for me to admit that beyond technology, I really cannot write with any authority about policy, programming, or physical spaces, but I can identify good elements in each and voice an my opinion as to what I believe is good practice in each realm.

It's difficult to have a conversation about what's new in librarianship these days without bumping into terms like RFID, blog, wiki, and IM. There's little doubt that technology is poised to play a defining role in the future of librarianship. The question is how, to what degree, and what will it look like? I certainly see perils--some of which have already manifested themselves, *cough* .. RFI .. *cough* D ... I think we run the risk of chasing our tails in a frenzied loop, driven by tech for tech's sake. Always remember that when considering new technology, be mindful of "the process"--your existing methods and how new technology will impact it. After all, we share a relationship with technology, we don't own it. If we're unrealistic about that relationship and where it's going to go, we run the risk of burning ourselves in a flash of limerent passion.

So, what is the good stuff? As always, my response is, "that depends". Lately I've been beating the OPAC drum because I believe it's a fundamental library tool that's being neglected and passed over for more interesting or hip technologies. I believe in the socialPAC--we'll see where that goes, though. Michael Stephens does an inordinate amount of work trying to get libraries to adopt blogging. We've realized some very positive returns from our blogging initiative at AADL. In less that a year, we've managed to accumulate a sizable archive of quality content that belongs to us and invites community involvement. The model works and it adds tremendous value to our organization.

APIs have become vogue and we're seeing both the term and the technology itself sink into the library vernacular--at least in the blogosphere among library techies. I think the fact that we've witnessed some real successes with technologies like mashups, metadata and microformat-based tools has given rise to a general acceptance that the API is a critical business tool. I'm keen to see what arises from projects like unAPI and OpenURL. The idea here is to get away from technology that no longer works well, or doesn't live up to today's computing standards.

I don't want to speak much on hardware, because that is a bit of a sticky wicket. The problem with hardware is that it's always there and I really don't believe that hardware provides as much ROI as the judicious use of software can. As long as you have the right hardware for the job and enough power to drive your applications, you're set. That's not to say that we shouldn't be experimenting and researching ways to use new hardware--we just need to be careful because hardware vendors often promise one thing while practicality demonstrates another--tablet PC, anyone?

I'm grateful to the administrators who toil over policy development. Well, I'm grateful to them when they produce policy that makes sense! I've always been of the opinion that if the majority of people ignore a particular policy, it's bad--I think there is a little bit of acknowledgement of that going on these days as we look around and see a number of institutions relaxing rules and taking the opportunity to foster environments that are more inviting and less punitive. AADL, for example, now allows patrons to enjoy a beverage anywhere in the library so long as it has a lid. The old stereotype of the cranky librarian shushing anyone who dares to converse above a whisper is slowly eroding. I'd like to see fines disappear--some libraries are adopting very lax fine policies. Fines do nothing but scare off potential users and disenfranchise those who have accrued a balance. Friendly phone calls ought to accompany invoices. Your facilities could have all the right components for an immersive library experience, but if the policies are suffocating, expect users to go elsewhere.

While we're at it, reconsidering organizational structure is not a bad idea. My guess is that a more Google-like approach to staffing in key areas may help foster innovation. In other words, libraries might benefit from flattening out the organization structure of its employees in areas where new ideas are being developed and tested. Staff members need to have a realistic sense that they can approach anyone else in the organization with ideas and proposals instead of scheming up ways of floating them through layers of bureaucracy with the fear that they may be trampling on someones toes. Bureaucracy is an innovation killer.

Good policy can also pave the way for radical transformation in programming. In addition to the regularly-scheduled programs like story times and computer classes, I'm continuously impressed with the quality of guest speakers and other events our community relations department puts together. Programming is such an important tool for reminding your community that the library is alive, full of hope and opportunity. Lately, with the addition of gaming juggernauts like AADL-GT, we're seeing an upsurge in the amount and quality of teen programming in libraries everywhere. Teen programming is tremendously vogue right now and is vital to the fiscal health of our libraries in the future. We ought to be hiring and encouraging the very best teen librarians we possibly can right now--they need to be courageous, energetic visionaries, much like our own Erin Hemlrich (who ought to be blogging!). Courageous, because aside from the perceived taboos that need to be broken in order to get teens excited about the library, getting teens excited is not easy--it takes guts to engage those hypercritical hormone-factories. Gaming programs have a huge potential for return, if done right. Eli Neiburger and Erin have put together a gaming initiative that would knock your head off if you saw it--it's so good that it actually impresses the kids who come to it. And come they do--well over a hundred participants often show up for events.

Programming is also receptive to the adaptation of new technologies. Creative and judicious use of streaming audio/video, VoIP, wifi, electronic signage, even our own existing databases can yield results that look highly produced and professional. Attention to detail and a mindset that demands quality will create a product that our users will respect, and in turn, they will feel respected by us. True, money plays into a lot of these programs, but not always, and not as much as one might expect by looking at the finished product--be wily and get it done right!

We've just successfully opened the new Pittsfield Branch Library--the latest addition to the AADL system. It's a beautiful library--my favorite so far. In addition to bright, airy, open stacks and a quiet reading room with a fire place that overlooks protected wetlands, it features a generous kids area replete with toys and game computers. Also, directly in the center of the building is an interactive Bernoulli machine exhibit--a joint venture between AADL and the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum. The exhibit allows visitors (mostly the children) to press a pneumatic button that launches balls up a 20 foot tube where they are shot out into a spiral funnel that winds the balls back down another tube into a collection chamber with a spinning disc that sends the balls careening over buttons that light up various panels. The balls then fall back into a pinball-like queue where they can be launched, once again. It's really quite impressive. I also think it was a courageous move to put it in there due to both it's size and the amount of activity that it garners. It's definitely a draw for the 2-8 year-old crowd!

The point here is that physical space plays a major role in defining both the mission and purpose of libraries. I'm glad to see that larger and larger areas are being devoted to youth and teens. Having those resources brings in the stay-at-home parents with their children and starts a process of acclimation that primes the pipeline with future (tax-paying) patrons. Clean, accessible and uncongested computer rooms are essential to providing connectivity to those who may not have it at home, or who may not even have a home (we ought to be thinking about programming for the homeless, as well). Book stores have coffee shops, libraries should too, with free wifi so that the Borders down the street doesn't steal our business.

Okay, so I've taken a few scribblings and turned them into a long-winded brain-dumpish post. What can I say, I love what I do, and I believe that libraries are an oasis. Like most everyone else, I think we can do better. If nothing else, "Library 2.0" reminds us that it's an exciting and challenging time to be a library.

[tags]library, libraries, Web 2.0, Library 2.0, SirsiDynix, OPAC, innovation, technology, policy[/tags]

technology, at least right now, is in an evolutionary phase, whereas only two or three years ago we were still in a revolutionary time period where new ideas were rocking the library boat on a regular basis.

I think he's correct here. If you look back at blog entries, seminar topics, and conference talks over the last few years, you'll definitely see their content trending from what technologies are available toward how do we use these technologies and now we're starting to see, look how we're using this technology. A natural progression, to be sure, but does it say anything about the nature of library innovation in 2006? I think the other side of the technology equation is, and always will be, the people.

Clearly we need to remove the expectation that technology will always offer sensational new tools that can be inserted into library operations and result in exceptional returns.

We cannot ignore the "people factor" -- that is, the librarian 2.0 element to all this. Without the dedicated front-line staff to whom we present these rapidly changing technologies, none of this would matter. We may provide the blogs, but it's our staff who are the bloggers. We may provide internet terminals and free wifi, but the desk staff always field the first questions about all of it. Communication, patience and gratitude are key elements in the synergy between IT and the librarians as they, more often than not, embrace these revolutionary technologies that are relentlessly foisted upon them.

And while the pace of change may sometimes seem insanely fast, the speed of progress may be infuriatingly slow--but bear in mind that it is progress. The construction of some of the worlds most magnificent cathedrals took lifetimes to complete.

[tags]Library 2.0, Librarian 2.0, Web 2.0, Libraries, Librarians, Technology[/tags]