97Selfservice

Self-service - is it the

future or is it a fallacy?

Derek Law

Director of Information Services & Systems

Kings College, London,

In his talk, Peter Brophy said that it was difficult not to say things that had been said

before, while Andrew McDonald has asked me to produce a comprehensive paper -

so I'm not entirely sure what is left for me to say in summing up a conference with

such a wealth and range of interest and topicality. But I do want to try and develop

or continue this final morning’s therne of expanding beyond the narrow issue of self-

issue and to talk about more general themes of self-service.

The history of self-service

- The great library of Ashurbanipal

- The daughter library of Serapis

- Multiple copy provision

- Open access monasteries

- The chained library

- The industrial revolution

- The banking revolution

It seemed appropriate to begin with a potted history of self-service in libraries, just

to remind us that while the specifics we have been considering are novel, the

generalities are exceedingly venerable.

I was interested in the wish of one or two speakers to claim that they were the

first in various aspects of self-service - but in fact

none of the people here was first. Four thousand years ago the great library of

Ashurbanipal consisted entirely of tablets of stone. No self-respecting librarian was

capable of carrying tablets of stone and it became a reference library where

customers had to help themselves. So I suspect that self-service prize probably goes

back there. Joan Day mentioned the difficulty of problems being in one building and

the staff to solve them being in another building. Again this is not a new issue. The

second little bit of history that I wanted to mention comes from ancient Egypt. You

will all know of the great library of Alexandria. The great library of Alexandria

invented the concept of the branch library which was in the Temple of Serapis and

was known as the Daughter Library. It created the first great library excuse ("I'm

sorry you can't have it, it's in the other branch '') and that tradition of smug

unhelpfulness is, as Joan Day implied, still alive and well today.

The third great historical example of self-service lies in copying. Multiple copy provision

was already familiar in the Middle Ages. Those of you who read Terry

Pratchett will be familiar with the imps who substitute for photocopiers in his

Discworld novels and they have a sort of historical basis in the Paris scriptorium. Of

course they didn't have photocopiers in the Middle Ages but students could go and

get multiple copies of texts in high demand. There was a scriptorium which ran in

the University of Paris in the thirteenth century, where the monks would make

students a copy of the particular item required. So breach of copyright was actually

invented in the thirteenth century, and by people who actually wanted to get their

own personal copies due to lack of multiple copies in the library.

The fourth great era of self-help came with the open access monasteries of the

English Reformation, when Henry VIII just moved straight in to them and took what

he wanted. Peter Brophy did touch on the key point about this which is that possibly

the longest standing self-service activity is theft. I have always been much taken by a

comment made about twenty years ago by the then librarian of Orange County

Public Library, who said that if a book hasn't been stolen after twenty years you

should throw it out because it is clearly of no interest. But the points about security

which Peter Brophy made were interesting, particularly the manufacturer's

insistence that the system was not at fault and that such problems had not occurred

elsewhere. This seemed dreadfully reminiscent of the stories we read in the press

about the banks denying that anybody could possibly abuse ATM systems. The fact

that the customer was actually in Japan when the money was withdrawn is of course

a lie, even if the customer can prove it. So some interesting resonances there.

The monastic answer to theft was the chained library and it seems very fitting to find

that we have come full circle. We have completed this nice circle and gone right

back to the chained library. Only instead of the chained book it is the chained

computer which seems to be our current obsession.

The next significant contribution to self-service came with the industrial revolution.

There's been some mention of food and drink throughout the conference and the tin

can was of course the great invention of the industrial revolution. Libraries are now

littered with self-service tin cans, Coca-Cola, Fanta, whatever. But more recently

new bits of technology have begun to invade like the cell phone. This led to an

interesting example of self-service which I came across in my library just a few

weeks ago. I was walking through the library and found a student, sitting in front of

a terminal using a cell phone. I was ready to give him a hard time for this but

eavesdropping on the conversation proved much more interesting. The student was

doing a BIDS search and not having a great deal of success. Rather than ask library

staff for help, he had phoned up a friend in the halls of residence. I found that quite

interesting, I'm not sure what the point of the anecdote is but I found it quite telling

in the way that the user's preference was to interact with a colleague rather than

library staff.

Then of course, and finally, libraries have had the banking revolution and the

attempt to instil in us all the theory and practice of customer care, which the banks

would have us believe they invented. You might then wonder why there is a banking

ombudsman but not a library ombudsman. Nobody has really seriously suggested

there should be something like Oflib which actually sets standards for libraries

dealing with customer complaints. So I'm not sure that we would want to look to the

banks for instruction on customer care. Customer care is interesting of course. It

seems to me that there are some very interesting tensions created by customer care

which were nicely brought into focus in Joan Day's paper: the concept of sharing

our professional secrets; the concept that students and staff should have information

skills; that information management is the most important personal transferable skill

provided by a university and yet "you shouldn't need a librarianship degree". So

what do the library schools teach in librarianship if it's not information management,

information skills and our trade secrets?

I also find quite some tension between the concept of the self-explanatory library and

the notion that we are working in higher education, where we are providing access

to the records of the finest human minds throughout the course of history. Do we

really want the "Janet and John Guide to Einstein"? There seems to be quite some

tension in there between making things usable, making things hospitable but not

having the dumbing of higher education. Usability and simplicity are not synonyms.

Broadening the context

• the learning environment:

courseware

distance learning

network learning

remote access to collections

• the library environment:

CD-ROM

JISC Services

electronic journals

The learning environment

So perhaps I can move on a little to broadening the concept as well as the age of

self-service. Some of these broader themes have been touched on, the way in which

the learning environment is changing and we now have things like courseware,

computer based learning, TLTP software, all of it mounted on the Net, all of it

directly accessible by students with no real need for intervention, very much a

self- service culture. If I can highlight just one area of this huge growth it would be

distance learning - where again there is very little need for interaction - where many

courses are available on networks already. I'm also really fascinated by the lack of

congruity in many university policies where there is this great Gadarene rush to wire

up halls of residence. Most universities will have a policy of saying that first year

undergraduates should be given preference in occupying halls of residence. As a

result we are all rushing in to creating an environment where the people who are not

equipped to use the networks are being given access to the networks, then all of the

second year and third year undergraduates, who move out to flats, and other

salubrious accommodation where they're actually capable of using the networks

don't have any access to it. Why are we wiring up hall of residence rather than

increasing modem provision to private houses? The lack of concurrence between the

way in which universities operate and think about these things, and how they are

actually providing the self-service facilities, is interesting.

The library environment

And how is the library reacting to all of this? What is the library doing to the library

environment? We are conniving at this distancing of the user from real people and

have done so for some time. Some years ago I co-wrote an article, all about the lack

of future which CD-ROM had, and yet it's still there despite not being great

technology. What Tony McSean and I had in part underestimated was the

willingness of both librarians and users to spend a lot of time developing poor

technology in order to avoid each other.

Some mention has also been made of JISC services. Some of the thrust of JISC

services is all about bypassing libraries. One of the reasons that such a programme

started was because it was felt that librarians couldn't be trusted to move into an

electronic environment and that they had to be bypassed and access had to be given

straight to the end user. Librarians have reacted magnificently to that threat of being

bypassed, much of the response being through things like the Netlib programme and

also through the Access to Network Resources Programme. I agree absolutely about

the importance, about the centrality of librarians being involved there. ADAM and

SOSIG were mentioned as examples of such services, but my preference is the

Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library, EEVL, simply because I love to say that the

Funding Council is funding evil.

1500 electronic journals will be available on the network to all of our end users in

September. How many of you are ready to handle the problems that will flow from

that particular self-service activity? You can be sure that they will all have the

wrong software on their PCs. Then there's the problem that what publishers think

are user friendly systems aren't - and I know who'll finish up picking up the pieces

of self-service there. But I suspect that most libraries are not actually ready for the

consequences of that particular element of self-service.

Three key concepts

The whole point about self-service is that it releases staff to do more productive

things and different things. Three keys are identified in the European Commission

report "The Future of Libraries" which suggest that what we should be releasing

staff for what are really traditional skills but with a new focus. These three key

concepts are selection, storage and support.

Selection

Even in an electronic environment one has to determine the components of the

particular virtual library or electronic library and it will vary from institution to

institution. That process of selection and implicitly of quality assurance of the data is

a fundamental professional skill.

Storage

The second key element is storage. I am told that this means books on shelves, but I

believe that perhaps the hottest topic for the next decade is the future of the

preservation and archiving and long term storage of the products of higher

education. These are not and have not been historically all secondary commercial

products. The issue is as much about how we record primary research data and

primary research results. There is no structure in place; there is no structure

envisaged. ~There are some modern scientific disciplines where the copyright of the

knowledge of those disciplines exists entirely with publishers. Publishers have no

interests in archiving, they have no interest beyond making a buck. That's their job

and this cannot be a cause for complaint, but it does mean that the records of some

academic disciplines are entirely at risk.

Support

The final key concept is support, which covers everything from getting the right

software on to the PC's, through user instruction to user education in all of its

aspects. These are the key areas and the key competencies that we must focus on as

a profession. With no more resource in sight we must redirect resource and where

can we redirect it away from? We can redirect it away through rather more self-service.

Advantages and disadvantages of self-service

Advantages

• new choices for customers

• new options for managers

• new support structures for staff

• reduced unit costs

• freedom to concentrate on core skills

There will be many new choices for the customers. I think that's been made quite

clear by all speakers, particularly with reference to network activities and network

access. A wider range of materials is available without actually having to leave the

home institution. Users can look at the Aberdeen Bestiary without having to go to

Aberdeen; they can look at early mediaeval manuscripts without having to go to

Oxford and they can conduct productive research without necessarily having to visit

collaborators at another site or even in another country. The library's services can

be made available at the hours when the users want them, not at the hours when

library staff choose to turn up to work. I was interested in Malcolm Stevenson's

comment that his turnstile figures had been going down as a result of self-service. At

King's College our turnstile figures continue to go up, partly because we insist on

the most original form of self-service being outside the library. That's the toilets,

which means that all of our users have on a regular basis to leave and re-enter the

library. You may of course consider that this is not perhaps as obvious an area of

self-service as it seems, but there are large parts of continental Europe and some

very old hotels and some very expensive hotels in London where mediated toilets

remain as some kind of facility.

Self-service offers new options for management. This is very much about the

possibility of redirecting the skills or the focus of library staff onto the things that we

have to be doing for the next ten or fifteen years. It is incumbent on senior managers

within universities, within libraries, to have some vision of where they want to be in

ten or fifteen years and therefore to start directing resource to building towards that

future. I believe quite strongly then that it’s not a fallacy and that self-service is one

of the ways of allowing managers to begin to release resource to do the things which

encompass our vision. Whether that's as particular as manipulating opening hours to

suit user needs or as general as being able to react quickly to change. Quick in

universities is of course a relative concept. In my institution we are still struggling to

get to grips with new staffing patterns for the introduction of the semester system.

After all it only happened last year. There is also the whole question of re-skilling

staff and providing new ways of doing things. We need new ways of training staff

and I hope to work with library schools and departments of information studies to

talk about the new skills base that we need in the future. As Joan Day said much of

the eLib programme is aimed in that direction. It would be nice to think that it

provided support for existing staff, that it took some of the pressure off staff , that it

allowed redirection to more satisfying work and to come away from unproductive

labour. I won't expand on these for they have been recurring themes over the last

two days. These would certainly be the ambitions and aspirations.

What it's not about is getting rid of staff. What self-service does do, what it should

do, is to reduce unit costs . Mention was made of performance indicators and I have

a passing interest in the ones that interest me rather than the sort of large sets that

SCONUL tend to produce. I found it quite instructive to be able to go to meetings

and talk about the way in which the staff/student ratio has changed for the library.

Our staff/student ratio has changed from something like 103 students to one member

of staff for every 156 students over the last six or seven years. Academic staff find it

a startling concept that we can even think of staff/student ratios but it does carry

implications about the volume of activity which we have had to undertake. We have

also as part of the process of retrospective catalogue conversion seen huge growth in

the circulation of books, as have most libraries. Annual growth figures of 15% and

20 % in circulation over and above the growth in student numbers are not uncommon

when going through a retrospective conversion project. Finance directors, certainly

the ones I know, love it when you can go and talk to them in slightly more sophisticated

terms, like reducing unit costs, rather than just reducing costs because

they like the sort of argument which says I am reducing unit costs but I want more

money. They find that a little more intellectually stimulating than the usual cut and

thrust of the chemistry department making a mess of its chemicals bill again.

Just to re-emphasise the point, it is the freedom to concentrate on core skills which

has driven the whole notion of a variety of self-service activities from the great

library of Ashurbanipal all the way through to today. The reason we do these things,

the reason we make these changes from closed to open access, introducing

photocopying and so on is to allow staff to concentrate on those things which we

believe at that point in time are the important things to be doing. It’s no different now

from what it has been. That does not mean that things have been done wrongly in

the past, it simply means that things move on and we continually need to re-focus on

where we're trying to go.

Disadvantages

There are disadvantages of course. There are, I think particularly when self-service

is introduced under pressure, expectations of savings, particularly staff savings, and

there are understandable staff fears that this is the sole objective. These fears have to

be countered and I'm a great believer in getting one's retaliation in first. It is better

to move into this field before the pressure hits from external managers to do it.

The other great disadvantage of any form of self-service is that (in medical

terminology) it presents as increased shelving. In the case of self-issue, this can

prove a substantial problem. I was visiting a university last week which had just

gone through a TQA visit where some very vociferous and political students had

insisted on seeing the TQA team because they wanted to talk about the library. And

when they actually saw the TQA team they said "We don't want to talk to you at all,

we want to show you the library". The students took the TQA team to this very large

research library and showed them 16,000 volumes awaiting shelving. And all that

they said to the TQA team was that the value of the books awaiting shelving

exceeded the annual acquisitions budget. It's not enough just to get involved in self-issue.

One has to look at the whole structure and how self-issue fits into the larger

whole. We may have to implement progress step by step but there has to be some

programmatic view of what we're actually trying to get to. Simply building up a

backlog of shelving through a successful issue policy actually doesn't benefit

anybody. Self-renewals are an interesting concept too. I've discussed it with our

theology department and found there was not a great meeting of minds.

The final disadvantage is best encapsulated in a quotation. It comes from Laurie

Taylor's after-dinner talk of last night. "Simplify procedures - but don't lose

contact", he said. I found in amongst all the humour that the points he made about

the decline of oral skills and the impoverishment of interpersonal communication

very telling. It may be that floor walking by library staff is not the answer, but the

need to not lose contact is very important. We lose contact at our peril; we lose sight

of what users want at our peril. And we find that from user contact.

The very last point of which I'd like to remind you is why users respond so well to

self-service options. Its not undertaken just for the convenience of management.

Users do like it very much. This quotation comes from a cafe in Museum Street in

London, just outside the British Museum and it has had for many years a sign

outside which promises "courteous and efficient self-service." Think about it.