Brophy
The Library in the Twenty-first Century, by Peter Brophy. 2nd edition. Facet 2007 ISBN 978-1-85604-606-0 £39.95
Peter Brophy is in some danger of turning into a living national treasure. He possesses a number of rare attributes which arguably meet the UNESCO definition of such people and, as his book argues, he occupies a cultural space which is under threat. Firstly – as he would be the first to acknowledge – he occupies a privileged position. Having worked for many years as a distinguished practitioner, he has moved on to occupy a chair in Information Management, which not only allows but arguably requires him to reflect on that practice. That coupled with an inveterate curiosity has led to a wide international research portfolio. Secondly, and almost as importantly he is perhaps the best current exponent of the art of good monograph writing. In amongst the welter of conference proceedings. edited collections of essays on a theme, and more or less multiply authored works, churned out each year, he is one of literally a handful of our profession capable of writing the sustained prose required for a two hundred page volume. Indeed, over the last thirty years perhaps only Jimmy Thompson and Bob Usherwood have matched this estimable skill.
So a new volume from Brophy is something to look forward to, and a second edition, as in this case, implies some confidence that there are worthwhile things to be said. Six years on from the first edition, the external world has changed dramatically, but Brophy starts by repeating the preface from the first edition boldly asserting that his analysis still holds good; that libraries remain under threat but that if they are bold in their vision of meeting the needs of their user groups they can continue to flourish.
The book falls neatly into two parts. Brophy first reviews their current state. An overview of their role and position in society today is followed by a series of short brisk sectoral accounts, then by a review of cross-cutting themes such as collections, access and resource sharing. He then examines the concerns of a variety of national professional bodies as a way of illustrating how the profession is responding to the challenges he has described. Interestingly, neither BAILER nor IFLA is included in the list of five bodies examined. It is interesting if fruitless to speculate why. He next continues with an overview of digital libraries and in a final section tries to assess what is a “good” library, much of this section being concerned with forms of measurement of performance and quality.
The second part and fully half of the text looks at future libraries. It considers both resources and users in some depth. There is then an interesting semi-technical section on the information universe, which looks at some of the parts of the future library from document formats to metadata. Then finally there is a so-called Envoi summarising his views and recommendations on how we should respond to the challenges.
There is a substantial twenty page bibliography at the end of the book. It is heterogeneous in its selection of material and Brophy cites the comments of its authors regularly and judiciously. Whether consciously or unconsciously this leads to the one irritating feature of the book. Many, if not most, of the authors he quotes live in a world of powerpoint-itis and the pages are littered with the irritating bullet-points of those who can construct a list but not a sentence. This stands in stark contrast to Brophy’s own style which is displayed best in the first chapter where a sustained description of Libraries in the Modern World is mercifully, but not totally, free of these constructs.
As always there are nits to be picked, mainly the sins of omission rather than commission perhaps inevitable in a book covering such a broad canvas. While there is some analysis of Web 2.0 there is no real judgement on whether we might share Prensky’s view that we are in the middle of a quite fundamental shift to an alliterate society, where libraries are a luxury of choice rather than a staple requirement of any well educated or rounded individual. There is good analysis of teaching and learning but no real consideration of the implications for the conduct of research, where quite seismic shifts in library use have happened in a single generation. Perhaps most interestingly of all there is no discussion of either vision or leadership. Arguably the greatest failure of the authors peer group over the last decade has been in those areas. But the fact that such items are highlighted is prompted by the book itself. This is a book which can be thoroughly recommended.