Tom’s Thoughts

[Session at ALA Annual Meeting, Anaheim, CA June 28, 2008]
Joan Frye Williams:

We’re in the idea business.
Relationship management business, more about relationships than transactions.

• “Members” preferred term for what we call users, patrons, customers.
• Thinking about what they will want next.

Not just a place to go, a place to do things

• not the grocery store, but a kitchen
• trust us enough to be a co-creater

Rise in idea of wellness, library is a way to keep your mind alive.

Stephen Abrams:

To survive libraries and librarians must:

• Sustain the progress of building a better generation. Millennials
• Drop the anonymity of librarians–use NAME tags professionals have names.
• Permit and support differentiating by specialization. Nancy Pearl on steroids.
• Get rid of the “cowboy” librarian. Change is necessary.
• Preserve the expertise developed by librarians over years.
• Measure/track top ref questions.
• Share program ideas.
• Collaboratively make each other look good.
• Insist on leadership that calls us on our faults, our failures.
• Stop shallow conversations…”oh, they started with Google.”
• Recognize that everything is mobile, don’t need a physical library for the data…perhaps do for services, collaborative research.
• Allow other adults to decide what level of privacy they desire.

José-Marie Griffiths:

The future of librarians, rather than the future of libraries.

Positive: amount of use is up in many cases, librarians working outside of libraries,

What is fundamental?

• notion of “collection” underpins what a library has been, cannot lose the notion, but no longer physically limited to one location
• “organization” from multiple perspectives and communities, work collaboratively with others, not just ourselves, create more opportunities for discovery
• “discovery and access” where do we play and where do we let others play. what areas in which others may do a better job then we would
• “library as place” increasingly important, physically visits are up, growing evolving, interactions among users (member communities), library a place where communities come together to develop the community, have to have a good understanding of user evolving needs and desires as far as services are concerned, but have to maintain services across generations.

What is important?

• LAM (libraries, archives, museums) engender a huge amount of public trust. More than internet, corporations, gov agencies, individuals developing their own web sites. Must maintain and build trust.
• Workforce study: more librarians are needed, fastest growing sector outside libraries, have focused on technical skills, need to balance with humanistic values
• Biggest threat lack of understanding of libraries and what librarians do. Stop talking just to ourselves. Got milk? Milk was pretty routine, boring, but ad made milk hip again, we need that for libraries/librarians
• Currently organize material at a sub-optimal level, need to think bigger than ownership and accountability
• Biggest opportunity: libraries are drivers of development: personal, community, economic. Need to make this known.

Comments:

• need to collaborate more on shared technology, skills push shared options to regain resources
• need new models of organization
• consolidate delivery of support for efficiency
• member services: we have credit cards that can be used anywhere, why not library cards that can be used anywhere
• How do we help remove barriers?
• How do we get people unstuck?
• Stephen: “Language of libraries is close to language of s&m…control, discipline, etc.”
• Reintroduce play.
• Proactively seek the kinds of people we want to have working in libraries. Recruit younger, earlier-career entrants.
• infonation.ca Canadian workforce study
• We are not saving the world from bibliographic ignorance, connecting people with information and expertise.

David Lankes:
What “should” the future of libraries and librarians in a democracy be?

Participatory Librarianship

• knowledge is created through conversation
• libraries are in the knowledge business
• therefore, libraries are in the conversation business

games: now learn by playing the game, need to approach our systems that way, instruction manuals are old-tech
participatory approach:

• user is in control
• user constructs the system
• it is all about learning; it is not about access
• learning is a collaborative conversation
• librarians serve as facilitators of conversations
• true facilitation with the community means shared ownership
• invest in tools for creation over the collections of artifacts, users make their own artifacts

Dewey-level shift: technical systems, physical spaces, services

changes needed in LIS education

• distributed throughout practice and other industries
• model co-learning in the classroom
• recognize and enhance the participatory network that is a school
• include communication and political skills
• teach the obligation of leadership
• innovative for core principles
• question tradition
• hold the visionaries to account
• where’s the data, where’s the theory

YOU are the future of the library

This past week I attended my first (and probably last) EndUser conference, the user group for what used to be Endeavor products. Quick historical summary: Francisco Partners, a technology venture capital firm, last year bought out both Ex Libris and Endeavor and selected the Ex Libris management and name to continue. So, it is not clear at this time whether or not there will be another EndUser conference. It’s not likely, however.

A major issue for this conference was to make public the plans for conjoining the various user groups for Ex Libris and Endeavor products and discussing future plans for organization and product development. At the same time the conference provided an opportunity to mark the passing of one company and family of products and a particular user group culture as well. That having been said, however, I believe that both the Endeavor Users Group (EUG) and the Ex Libris Users of North America (ELUNA) can strengthen each other. I hope that something new and important is given the time and space to grow.

On the one hand, it is clear to me that ELUNA could benefit from a bit of the spirit and enthusiasm of EUG, along with a spot of informality. ELUNA leaders should also take a few conference planning notes from the EUG play book: Meet in a hotel, select locations that can support a conference of approximately 1,000 people and that are easy to get to,

On the other hand, EUG folks need to relax on the issue of annual dues, as this option provides more independence from the vendor, and $150 is not that much. It will also help the membership to move the conference around the country.

Both groups need to understand that the enhancement processes of both groups are broken; one is no better than the other. On one level, a process that is based on simple voting will lead to the identification of the lowest common denominator solutions that ultimately miss strategic opportunities and tend to focus endlessly on picayune details. No one is served well in the long term by this type of process. On another level, it is important to recognize that neither deans or directors nor board or steering committee members have an exclusive corner on strategic issues or efficient operations. So, I earnestly hope that the combined organization can work out a more streamlined technique that serves small and large libraries alike.

The conference did include a plentiful opportunity to learn about existing and new products, to discover how users have solved specific problems, and to engage in that all-important networking.