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Much is written in the library press about the many challenges we face today. Less is written about how to address these challenges, or at least less than makes sense to this reader. To deal with this situation, I asked our panel to consider the following questions. As a way of getting the reader “warmed up,” I have appended the brief but incisive responses from Loriene Roy, followed by the comments of the rest of this month’s gang.
Now that we’re warmed up, let’s hear from Gary Strong, a member of the LLN Advisory Board: I am always struck by this question, “What is the one thing that concerns you?” As I reflect just on this morning, I could answer that in several ways--and that is perhaps the most relevant answer. Faced with resource reductions, commercial pressures, rebalancing, repurposing, rethinking, re-whatever, my head spins. The affect on the UCLA Library is daunting indeed. Many are asking, “What should the 21st Century Research Library be like.” I am ready to say, “Walk over and stand in the middle of it, we are in the 21st Century, and we will remain relevant to the academy.” We have always believed in our mission to bring people and ideas together. When we can demonstrate and speak to how effectively we do that, we meet that challenge. It isn’t enough to say that “libraries change people’s lives.” We have to demonstrate it with very real life examples about “how.” Over the past three years we have focused our annual progress reports first on undergraduate impact, then graduate student stories, and last year on how we have impacted the lives of selected faculty. People say to me that they get it; that the stories are relevant and meaningful. When there is that level of understanding by those who make funding and priority decisions, the library can benefit. Now we will see just how much! Our questions reached Jamie LaRue fresh from his OCLC Members Council experience: I just came back from an OCLC meeting, and heard a preview of their latest report: "From Awareness to Funding." This one is going to make a big splash, and OCLC deserves major kudos for tackling it. Its official release is about a month from now. But there are a couple of major themes that I think are powerful and important enough to talk about now. They're not surprises, but here's what is surprising: we don't use the things we know. This summary is not official, and is in my own words, mostly. 1. The greatest single predictor of library success at the ballot box (or by action of elected officials) is the public perception of the librarian. If the librarian is seen as a passionate advocate for lifelong learning, if the librarian is seen as knowledgeable about the world of learning AND THE COMMUNITY (my emphasis), this translates to actual fiscal support. 2. People do NOT respond to the message of the library as a source of "purposeful information." Homework assignments. The recipe for roast duck. Even a big consumer purchase. We have lots of competition for that role, and there's little that we can do to suddenly rise above Google in the popular mind as a source of reliable information. What people do respond to is the idea of the library as a transformative force: both personal ttransformation, and the bringing together of community. We all hit these messages at various times. But I don't think libraries -- of all kinds -- put these powerful and fundamental messages at the heart of their PR and marketing. We should. Last year, my library lost a funding election. We're going back again this year. This information from OCLC could not be more timely or useful. So there's my answer: the big challenge isn't knowing what to do, it's doing it. There is more than enough information out there to clearly indicate how to be a successful library. And guess what: It takes money. To get money, we have to learn how to gather and tell the stories that matter: about how those 500 storytimes Johnny went to jumped him past an early learning disorder and brought him to first grade ready to learn with the best of them. How the reference librarians helped Mrs. Jones write a business plan, get a loan, that let her leave behind a dreary, pointless career and start the business she dreamed of all her life. We need to learn to manifest the message that we are absolutely indispensable to the lives of our communities. Because we ARE. Interwoven with Jamie’s comments is Mike Crandall’s response from the academy: I can't pass up an opportunity to comment on this one, since it directly relates to a major research study I'm working on with IMLS related to measuring the impact of public access computing in public libraries across the nation (found here: http://depts.washington.edu/imlspac ). In January of this year, IMLS announced a major cooperative agreement with the University of Washington and the Urban Institute funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to study the impacts of public access computing offered by public libraries across the country (http://www.imls.gov/news/2008/011108.shtm) . The purpose of the study is to examine the individual, family and community impacts of this core service provided by public libraries, from the perspective of public policy. As Jamie Larue so eloquently points out in his summary of the OCLC study, it is this impact that is important in showing why libraries matter, and that will be so important in the future support and growth of library services. The University of Washington is working closely with an expert committee drawn from agencies and organizations that work with policy decisions at the city, state and federal level, as well as leaders in the library community, to help collect information that can be used to effectively demonstrate impact, and that will be heard by policy makers when they make funding decisions and legislation affecting libraries. The UW will conduct a nationwide telephone and online survey over the coming months, and simultaneously visit 5 communities across the country to conduct in-depth interviews with library users, staff and administration, funding agency staff and other public access computing providers to determine what kinds of impact can be measured, how the results can be most effectively communicated, and what matters most to those policy makers when they are making decisions. 1. The impact measures being explored are tied directly to existing indicators used by national and international agencies to understand how programs in many areas affect the domains of 1.Employment Services, 2.E-commerce/Financial Services, 3.Education/Life-long Learning, 4.Social Inclusion, 5.Civic Engagement, 6.e-Government, and Health/Social Services. These domains have been identified as critical to the success of individuals, as well as their families and communities, and are commonly used to evaluate the value of services and agencies working in the areas in public policy discussions. As the results of the study are analyzed, we will be disseminating them both to the library community and the policy community, so that the conversation can continue. We expect that not only the results of the study, but also the methods and the indicators that drive the survey questions will be useful for libraries in the future when engaging in discussions with funding agencies. This bridge between the impacts we all know libraries are making, and the agencies that fund them, is probably the most critical issue facing public libraries for the short and long term, and this study should help provide some tools and data to help make that a more effective conversation. You can read more about the study as it develops and track results on the study website at http://depts.washington.edu/imlspac. And watch for the online survey in your local library!!! George Needham, with a bit of help from unofficial panelists Thoreau and Einstein, closes this month’s discussion with a call for simplicity: "Our life is frittered away by detail...simplify, simplify." Henry David Thoreau Libraries can't all move out to the pond and recuse themselves from the distractions of the day-to-day world as Friend Thoreau did in the 19th century. But I do think that the one critical issue facing libraries today is how to simplify. Google and Amazon and its ilk have thrown libraries the most wicked curve ball since Sandy Koufax: they offer the promise of simplicity. A search box, a few supporting graphics, and the world of information seems to be at your fingertips. These sites seem to deliver what libraries have been promising for decades. And they do it without resorting to visible classification schemes or fancy-schmancy metadata. (Note I said "visible" here; I am not such a Luddite as to believe these schemes are not operating in the background.) No one ever needed a user’s manual or a tutorial or a bookmark telling them how to use Google. I believe that the biggest challenge facing libraries right now is how to bring that sort of simplicity to what we do. How can we truly move the backroom operations of the library to the backroom, and focus completely on getting the customer the stuff she needs? Without this kind of simplicity, we run the risk of being made less and less useful. Think for a moment about the Stanley Steamer automobile. The Stanley Steamer was an amazing vehicle in many ways. It was the bestselling automobile in the United States in 1898 and 1899. The company held the land speed record for an automobile (a mile in 28.2 seconds in 1906) for several years, and had a terrific safety record, despite the boiler. But as Henry Ford and Ransom Olds and other inventor/manufacturers developed easier to use vehicles with simpler starting procedures and less complicated drive trains, the Stanley fell from favor. Throughout the 1910s, the company fought back against what their ads called "internal explosion machines" and tried to woo motorists back to their more "correct" vehicles. By the end of the 1910s the Stanleys had sold their company and by the late 1920s, the marque was gone forever. Oh, and a Steamer cost about eight times as much as a new Ford Model T. If we're not striving to move toward the sort of simplicity our users have come to expect in the rest of their lives, we could be like the Stanley Brothers, trying to get people to use our expensive and complicated services in the face of competition from cheaper and simpler alternatives. A couple of years ago, I was doing a presentation at the Pasadena Public Library in California and had made this point. During the Q & A session, a woman in the audience stood up, identified herself as a public library trustee, and accused me of "dumbing down" the library. To me, simplification isn't about dumbing down. To me, this is about equity of access for all users. But to an even greater degree, this is a fight for survival, about making sure that the transformational opportunities which comprise our collections and services aren't obscured by a patina of procedures, rules and "members only" code that keeps the average user out of the mix. Does this mean we abandon all the systems we've been using in libraries for a 125 years or more and just put keyword searching and folksonomies out there? I don't think so, but I do think this is a world that calls for both simple and advanced searching. We don't live in a binary world, there are and there must be many options. For researchers who need very detailed or obscure information, the systems we have devised and that they have taken the time to learn may be vital. But to most users, they are seen as a barrier. "Everything should be made as simple as possible. But not simpler." Attributed to Albert Einstein. Thanks you, George, and thank you all panelists, for a very useful discussion. The Peer Panel is on their summer schedule now, which means one panel for May/June and one for July/August. If any of you readers have a question or two that you would like to pose to the panel, please send it to frank@libraryleadership.net. © 2005-2008, Library Leadership Network, LLC |
