NLW2014

The world is our lobster: rethinking traditional attitudes

Derek Law

University of Strathclyde

Abstract

It is easy to paint a doom laden picture of the future of libraries against a background of library cuts, professional deskilling and the relentless advance of ever more powerful digital information systems.

However these self same threats offer new challenges for information management. The article explores the changing skill sets, operating environments and community engagement activities which can create a robust and valued future for libraries and librarians.

Background

The future of libraries is a topic possibly as old as libraries themselves. However it is a particularly pertinent subject at the moment when so many libraries – and librarians – face the triple threats of digital obsolescence, undervaluing of professional skills and underinvestment in physical infrastructure. The simplest literature search quickly shows evidence of an apocalyptic vision of the end of libraries. It is very easy to paint an unremittingly bleak picture worldwide and across all library sectors, as a few randomly selected examples show. In England it is estimated that cuts to local authorities will force 100 public libraries to close by the end of 2015 with another 200-300 reliant on volunteers. Years of underinvestment have led to a steady decline in the quality of library buildings and services. (Godwin, 2014). In Philadelphia, out of 214 schools only 16 now have a qualified librarian, while of the 545 elementary and middle school libraries in the Los Angeles district, the country’s second-largest public school district, roughly half—316 schools—are staffed with [unqualified] library aides (Schou, 2014). In Canada, outrage was caused by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans decision to close seven of its 11 regional libraries housing decades of aquatic research, with the shelves cleared, the books and journals scooped up for free by private companies, and the scientific reports dumped as rubbish (Galloway, 2014). Nor have universities been exempt. The first example in the UK came in Wales as early as 2005 at the University of Wales Bangor, where a consultation paper (University of Wales, 2005) claimed that, librarians do not deliver ‘value for money’ when compared to the internet. It states: ‘the process of literature searches is substantially de-skilled by online bibliographic resources.’ The report dismisses the support that subject librarians bring to the academic and student communities as ‘hard to justify’. At London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) plans were proposed to shed library staff explicitly on the basis that the (so-called) easy availability of material on the web rendered the role of subject specialists redundant on the grounds that the services provided by librarians have become less important with the development of technology that allows students and staff to conduct research with relatively little guidance and that the process of literature searches is substantially deskilled by online bibliographical resources. Such overt reasons for cuts were ridiculed, but since then there has been a quiet erosion of the professional staffing base. Most recently the University of Virginia has removed the faculty status of librarians, while the hiring of Dan “not a librarian” Cohen as Founding Executive Director of the Digital Public Library of America has caused much professional angst. (Bourg, 2013). Utilitarian talk of GDP and financial return drives a culture in which professionally qualified librarians are increasingly seen as an unnecessary luxury.

At the same time a steady attrition in library schools continues. First there were fashionable name changes dropping the word “library”, usually in favour of information science. Matters have steadily worsened however with a steady and seemingly inexorable reduction in the number of schools. Sometimes merging with other departments ranging from Computing to Business Studies, sometimes closing altogether. These closures reflect a steady decline in recruitment and in the number of students interested in pursuing a professional career as librarians.

And there has been a flood of biblical proportions of information on to the internet through a jumble of formal and informal channels. Librarians have been overwhelmed by this and have often clung to the traditional or tried to use the library space in more appealing and user friendly ways – but still with collections of books and journals at their core. In turn universities, at least in the UK have moved the Library steadily down the ranks. At the turn of the millennium, the University Librarian was typically operating at pro vice-chancellor level, reporting directly to the Vice-Chancellor and often with responsibility for services as varied as computing or e-learning. It is now more typical for the Librarian to report to an administrator – and not always the senior administrator - often quite detached from the academic context which drives the institution. Relevance, budgets and power have steadily eroded for a decade.

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Foreground

But against this gloomy background can be set a more positive foreground. At this time of library closures there has been a flourish of investment in library buildings. Whether new build or multi-million refurbishment, from Aberdeen University to Worcester University; from Birmingham Public Library to Seattle, from Manchester to Marylebone, there has been a huge capital investment which is as much an act of faith as a spending of taxpayers money. Clearly the public agencies which fund libraries are confident that they have a future. We can also see publishers investing in and developing the literature of information science, a sure sign that they believe there is a market and an audience for it. For example, Taylor and Francis have just taken on three new information science titles (CILIP, 2014)

And that present and future is defined in a number of studies. Some key ones are used here to as straws in the wind, pointing to the direction of change.

A recent Gartner horizon scan shows Digital Archivists as one of the four growth areas for IT staff and suggests librarians can be (re)trained) to fill the role. “Organisations typically have vast quantities of records, which require specialist expertise to access, appraise and preserve,” said Ms Logan [Gartner vice-president]. “This isn't a job for conscientious users to perform if they have time; it requires training and expertise. If you have never heard of persistent uniform resource locators (PURLs), don't know what Preservation Metadata: Implementation Strategies (PREMIS) is and are unaware that there are reasons why Portable Document Format (PDF) is not a suitable preservation format for e-mail, you need a digital curator.” (Gartner, 2010). Portsmouth University – not a university with a library studies department - will offer precisely such a course from 2014/15, an MA in the Preservation of Digital Cultural Heritage, for which it will seek CILIP accreditation.

Secondly, in the area of learning technologies, EDUCAUSE also undertakes a regular horizon scan. This scan pithily determines trends in three groups categorized by time to adoption: One Year or Less; Two to Three Years; Four to Five Years. Combining the two most recent scans (EDUCAUSE, 2013; EDUCAUSE, 2014) into three groupings gives:

Near Term. Massively Open Online Courses; Tablet Computing; Flipped Classroom

Medium Term. Games and Gamification; Learning Analytics; 3D Printing

Longer Term. Wearable Technology; Quantified Self; Virtual Assistants

It then takes little in the way of a literature scan of the professional library literature to show that librarians are already grappling with the consequences of these developments and how they can best rethink services to support these new environments.

Thirdly, the Association of College and Research Libraries Planning and Review Committee (ACRL, 2012) offers an interesting view of the major issues which exercise higher education librarians. The ten issues which described the most mentioned and discussed trends in the then current literature, at conferences, and raised by experts were:

Communicating value

Data Curation

Digital Preservation

Higher Education in flux

Information technology as a driver

Mobile environments

Patron driven e-book acquisition

Scholarly communication models changing

Staff development

User behaviours and expectations

While none of these may seem very surprising, perhaps somewhat reactive and fairly generic, the list does at least show an ambition to understand and map a rapidly changing environment and to address the issues raised.

Finally Lorcan Dempsey. If not quite an organisation, he is Vice-President and Chief Strategist of OCLC and one of the most fluent and perceptive commentators on the changing library scene. In a recent horizon scanning paper (Dempsey, 2012) he describes four areas of change which libraries must tackle.

1. An informational future: a processing perspective

We are moving from a relatively static ‘document’ based world to a more dynamic informational one.

2. From transaction costs to the network level: An organizational perspective

The reduction of transaction costs in a network environment has meant that whole industries have been reshaped. Libraries will be no

exception

3. The power of pull: a social perspective

The library has to actively position itself to engage with the research, learning and civiccommunities which they serve

4.The importance of customer focus: a strategic perspective

This is essential as libraries position themselves as important partners within their home institutions. They cannot continue to spend a lot of time on activities that replicate what is being done elsewhere and do not create real value for their institutions. Strategy is about making choices that increase impact. It is about moving resources to where there is most benefit, and finding the right level in the network at which things should be done.

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Taking these reports together as disparate threads one can weave a backcloth for librarians, offering guidance on how to reshape and rebuild the future over the next decade. It is easy to paint a picture of a profession comfortable with change. Since the 1960’s, libraries have been at the forefront of IT driven change within their organisations. They have harnessed technology to describe content and enhance its availability through improved navigation. They have built international co-operative systems which made content universally accessible. They have devised new models of dealing with content creators and suppliers. They have ruthlessly outsourced non-core services ranging from binding to cataloguing. They have supported the rapid developments in learning technology and generally helped to drive forward change. But all of this has been based on the assumption that the library remains a place and a vehicle for delivering change. New approaches are needed now. The traditional measures of worth for libraries such as footfall and book issues are less relevant and the importance of defining new and visible measures of success for new roles cannot be overstated.

As one commentator (Mackenzie, 2014) eloquently summarises the environment in which she operates, “Librarians need to consider how they can best thrive in this environment of exponential change. By maintaining close contact not only with their communities, but also with other professional groups both inside and beyond their own institution, they will be in a better position to deliver the best of their professional expertise…. Libraries need to structure their services and identify their priorities around their communities, finding out through discourse and conversation what is expected. These conversations need to be embedded in daily practice and as this practice evolves, what is currently regarded as perhaps innovative, or novel, will over time become the expected, not the exceptional. New services may emerge from these conversations and flourish or fall victim to the transient nature of digital fashions and rapidly fade. This is indicative of the transient nature of technologies.”

Future proofing: the next ten years

From this chaotic and turbulent background it can be argued that a number of themes or areas emerge consistently, where libraries and librarians should be positioning themselves strategically. The technology and skills may change very quickly, but the positioning should be a constant.

Community building

A fashionable and appropriate concept is that of working with the library community to identify and then meet its needs. This is undeniably a good thing. However as a statement it does lack any sense of shade. Libraries tend to have multiple communities rather than a single one. And individuals have different needs of the same library at different times. This then is a much more complicated and nuanced activity than it might seem.

Library users are rarely if ever a single homogeneous group. It is then important to know ones users and keep close to them, to understand how their work patterns are changing and understand their digital lifestyles. There needs to be a conscious effort to make this a collective shared set of information which can be used to develop strategy and not just the stock in trade of a single member of staff working with a specific group. The 1960’s concept of the subject librarian has been developed and rebranded. Sometimes this is referred to as embedded librarianship and sometimes by the more exotic and loaded phrase of feral librarianship. But whatever the terminology, the key role is that of staying close to the community. “Academic libraries need to continue to adapt their roles and develop stronger relationships across the university in order to maintain and promote their relevancy to all stakeholders. Embedded roles in research and teaching, and an embedded existence through collaboration and outreach will strengthen the academic library's presence within its parent institution.” (Delaney, 2014). And this concept applies to all libraries where those library staff directly serving communities must be not only visible but also valued.

It might also be noted that little thought or practice seems to go into the identification of non-users and lost users. The latter group in particular should offer valuable insights into where and how the library is getting it wrong. One of the few recent studies to do this is a Pew Report (Pew, 2014). Perhaps unsurprisingly it finds that 69% of Americans like and/or use public libraries to some degree. More interestingly it then looks at the 31% and examines the reasons for non- or limited use. This varies from those with a negative view of public services to a surprisingly large group who do not use the library for practical reasons – age, infirmity, remoteness, poverty/low income and another group who have simply never felt the need to use a library. Once the causes of non-use are identified it is then possible to devise tactics to bring such users back to the library (Ferguson, 2014).

The Funding Community

One community is almost entirely neglected in the literature and in discussions about engagement with user communities – in part because they are now rarely library users. One of the paradoxes of the digital world in universities, for example, is that the Deans, pro vice-chancellors and Directors of Finance who allocate the library budget are now very unlikely to visit the library for academic reasons.

A further paradox is that because libraries are almost uniformly well managed and run, and because they form a relatively insignificant part of the corporate budget, they rarely feature on senior management agendas, which tend to be problem driven. It then becomes a significant issue to address the needs of the paymasters, a quite distinct group from the library users. In the end the answer to this apparent conundrum has a relatively simple solution and that lies in aligning closely with institutional priorities. Whether alone or in partnership with other parts of the organisation information management skills can be shown to be of value. In a world increasingly driven by league tables the skills of the information manager can help deliver institutional visibility. A range of activities can positively enhance institutional visibility and brand. Search engine optimisation; positive images on everything from Wikipedia to Youtube; a comprehensive and well managed institutional repository; active management of league table drivers; enhancing corporate website metadata; feedback from Google analytics; and a host of other tweaks can ensure that the library staff are seen as being fully aligned with and relevant to enhancing institutional status. As a rule of thumb, institutional websites are designed for and driven by the 10% of traffic which is external. Little thought is usually given to managing the 90% of traffic – and content – which is internal. Ensuring that works well and effectively ensures a positive and visible and valued asset.

Collections

Collecting has rather fallen into disfavour with a growing assumption that if it’s not on the internet it doesn’t exist. Others disapprove on philosophical grounds “too many librarians see their collections, not the community, as their jobs” (Lankes, 2012). There is also a very facile assumption that the ease with which the Internet allows full text searching makes collection management redundant. In the 1960s and 1970s library schools still taught the even then unfashionable regimens of KWIC (key words in context) and KWOC (key words out of context) indexing. It is perhaps at last becoming apparent why this distinction is becoming important. Full text searching relies entirely on KWIC searching. If the key words do not appear in the text the item will be missed. On the other hand if cataloguers have applied metadata tags to an item it becomes visible. And there is significant scope for adding value. GPS data, translations, sub titles for foreign language videos, metadata tags enrich the data which is there.

One obvious role for libraries to adopt is that of information manager for the organisation. It is a rare organisation which has any idea of how much information it and its staff create, far less collecting and curating it. Information does not appear on the internet by magic or put there by the tooth fairy. It has to be managed, organised and curated.

At an apparently trivial level, any individual with five or ten years of personal mail, files, word documents, powerpoints images, blog pages etc. etc, with two or three changes of computer and/or software as well as document formats, knows how difficult and frustrating it can be to retrieve documents known to be there but badly named and incoherently organised. This author has found it a sobering and frustrating and ultimately impossible task simply to assemble copies of the two hundred conference papers delivered and book chapters written during his career. Multiply that a thousand fold and collection management remains an important if under-regarded activity which requires significant input of professional information management skills. Preserving the digital heritage of our personal archive is developing as a significant challenge (Hawkins, 2013). Quite apart from issues of managing and naming content we have entered a minefield of ownership and access issues, of copyright and IPR, of cloud versus local storage, relationships between the individual and the institution. And we are only just entering a period when the transfer of digital material to libraries and archives on the death of the owner/author will become a significant legal issue. This managing of the content of the organisation is set to become critical. Hardly any organisation in public, private or third sector has a comprehensive knowledge of its outputs and this situation has worsened in digital environments. This management of what Dempsey (Dempsey, 2012) calls “inside-out” is set to become much more important than the management of bought in content “outside-in”.

To this can be added the opening up legacy collections through digitisation. Information does not appear on the internet by magic nor is it put there by the tooth fairy. It has to be managed, organised and curated. Projects as specific as the recreation of the Codex Sinaiticus or as large as the Europeana Newspapers Project depend on the knowledge, skills and ambition of librarians. These are public good projects which are predicated on public funding to make content accessible. When carefully marketed they can have a huge public impact. The Berlin State Library cleverly linked its Europeana newspaper digitisation project to the centenary of the start of World War and received valuable media coverage. More importantly a huge number of individuals was prompted to bring family documents, papers and letters to the library for advice on their future curation.

Again the answer with collections is not either/or, e-book or dead tree format, black or white, but several shades of grey. Every library needs to have a spectrum of resources to match the spectrum of community needs. It needs to be recognised that there is much more to the library than the commercial purchase of published material. Every library needs to develop a collections policy based on what best serves the needs of the organisation and then build collections to match that policy seeing internally created resources as having at least as much value as externally purchased material.

Marketing

A further key need is to Integrate marketing with every element of library activity. There is a need to link curatorial staff to marketing staff, or better still for curatorial staff to recognise marketing as a key responsibility. There is a wealth of opportunities to enliven and enrich the library. Exhibitions can be linked to seminars, speakers and even sales items that bring things to life in a way a search engine cannot. In his analysis Dempsey (2012) emphasises the importance of visibility to the success of the library and that marketing, networking and communication have to be afforded the appropriate levels of attention and investment.

There is a natural role here for librarians who espouse and promote the use of social media, mobile technologies and emerging technologies to connect with users, create virtual library branches and even run competitions to promote library use. It is quite evident that the passive use of the internet is not enough. Static and dated web-pages, old-fashioned apps, and a reluctance to scrap investment in dated technologies after perhaps two years are sure signs of a library in trouble.

On the other hand, by channelling thinking into making the library relevant to users and their needs – and recognising that these needs are complex and varied.

Library Space

Uplifting spaces are desirable to be in. The Library is one of the few remaining public spaces which organisations make available to groups and individuals. Or consider retail space models such as Apple stores or the new generation of bookshops which incorporate welcoming sofas and coffee bars, as well as freely accessible wifi.

This description of the proposed new library at the University of Aberdeen is a good example of this ambition:

“A glittering building with resonances of the North. An inviting, finely-landscaped public square, drawing the visitor in to a spacious, light and airy ground-floor plaza, with luminous views up through the open atrium, and connecting the lively public spaces of the café, exhibition and event area with the monumental foundation of our historical collections below and the flexible, functional, bookstacks and study areas of the floors above – the whole crowned by a roof terrace looking out over the campus and coastline, connecting the library with the community it serves.” (Aberdeen University, 2007). The prose may seem a little over the top, but it gives a clear vision of the proposed building and a clear sense of purpose in the last clause.

Most libraries have, if with ill grace, given up the battle to keep food and drink out of the building. It is a classic example of recognising what the community wants and meeting a need. And it can be turned into a positive virtue. The University of Stellenbosch lost the battle over allowing students to take bottles of water into the Library. This defeat was turned into a small triumph. With a degree of admirable brilliance they turned this to advantage and began to sell University Library branded bottled water which carried useful information on the label ranging from opening hours to loan periods.

Rethinking the library space as a working space and not a storage space should reflect the needs of library users and not the convenience of library staff. And rethinking the space can help to shape communities as well as respond to them. The new Hive Information Centre at Worcester in England brings a number of services together, so that the children’s library sits happily in a space between the university library collections and the county archives in one building. And a mature student with a young family, undertaking research based on archival sources may seem stereotypical but is not unusual and makes the point about users having multiple and complex needs.

Productivity

Libraries have tended to be reluctant to change the way they operate. However it seems safe to assume that there will be no new money for recurrent costs and so there is a need to free up resources in order to do new things. And it need not be assumed that this simply means retrenching on traditional library activities. For example, libraries can expend astonishing amounts of resource on heating, lighting and water. One Scottish university library discovered that its utility costs came to over half a million pounds a year (Law, 2009a) – a fact unnoticed since such costs were topsliced. Indeed , because so many library costs are topsliced, there is little professional understanding of total costs of ownership in a bricks and mortar world, never mind a digital one (Law, 2009b). Experts in business process re-engineering should be able to address how legacy costs can be reduced and productivity increased, rather than assuming that a standard management review can trim costs. Radical rethinking is a better route to reimagining how the library can operate more effectively.

Innovation

Libraries are ideally placed to be seen as organisational innovators, change partners and organisational mavens. They can be seen as leaders in effecting corporate change, as sources of sound and knowledgeable advice on the digital legal minefields and the evolving use and presentation of information, and as partners in making things happen. But such innovation implies change not stasis as the norm. Of course the strategic goals have a longer lifespan and value, but the delivery mechanisms will evolve very quickly. Librarians need to rethink their role to be not only the library of the organisation but also the information experts who help to deliver institutional goals. From league table management, to institutional repositories, from Wikipedia entries to blogs, from legal support to video management on Youtube, information scientists can offer powerful support to the organisation. And major projects from Europeana Newspapers to the Emory Slave Trade database show how powerful consortia can be created to add value to collections.

Developing our people

There is then a clear need to review and reconsider the range of skills needed by staff. Training and retraining should be seen as a natural cost component of any budget. Such training may be formal but may equally be informal. This author long ago developed a measure of the vibrancy of libraries by counting how many staff attended conferences. The best libraries had staff at almost every conference, sometimes speaking, sometimes learning, but always interacting with staff from other libraries and learning new things. The weak libraries – sometimes the largest and richest – did not attend conferences. As a result their staff learned nothing and so changed nothing. The library quickly fossilised. As budgets come under pressure cutting the training and travel budgets should be a last desperate measure, not an early one. If librarians want to be seen as experts, then their expertise has to be visible. (Dempsey, 2012)

Developing our people also means developing our users. Again the library has a potentially powerful role in helping users to deal with information and the systems which manage it. Digital Tattoo is a good example of a project which allows librarians to share skills across a wider set of social media training in issues rather than simply assisting in using the library. It aims to help students make informed choices about their online identities; what to share and with whom; and how to work across networks as consumer and creator. It helps with roles, rights and responsibilities (Mitchell, 2014). But in essence it is librarians showing users how to manage information.

Digital Futures

The library staff have a set of skills and knowledge which can be utilised and built on. They are a source of neutral advice – or can be - on everything from legal issues such as IPR and copyright to the use of analytics, the role of social media, the view of the university on Wikipedia and Youtube, trends in new social media, support for remote campuses, podcasting management, metadata for repositories etc etc. Library staff might, of course, prefer to adopt a position on digital futures, but they do have a clear option to be seen as a neutral but informed voice on the issues and how the organisation could or should be addressing them. For example, Becker (2013) offers some cautious advice on how libraries can support the new academic craze for massively open online courses (MOOCs). And they can offer robust advice on the public/private balance facing most organisations.

Conclusion

Libraries continue to enjoy popular support. Threats to cut publicly funded libraries frequently provoke vocal popular protest even if this rarely survives the realities of a harsh financial climate. Much of that support is steeped in nostalgia and a rose-tinted view of what libraries were perceived to stand for as much as what they actually delivered. “What if libraries simply provide pleasure, enlightenment, civilisation, respite? I can think of no better reason to save them.” Opines one typical commentator (Godwin, 2014).

But libraries can seize the day. A whole world of opportunities has opened up and only a narrow fixation with the past can prevent librarians from exploring new technologies, new opportunities, new approaches to meeting organisational objectives. As Marshal Foch famously telegraphed to Marshal Joffre during the First Battle of the Marne in 1914: My centre is giving way, my right is retreating, situation excellent, I am attacking (Wikiquote, 2014).

References

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http://www.oclc.org/content/dam/research/publications/library/2012/dempsey-informationalfutures.pdf

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Schou, Solvej (2014) How Cuts and Closures of Elementary School Libraries Are Hurting Our Kids From Los Angeles to New York City, budget cuts are affecting public school libraries

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Wikiquote (2014) http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Foch