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.