My coworker Sharon sent me this video just before Thanksgiving, and I thought it was pretty neat - Simon Demosthene at Harvard's Gutman Library talks about repairing books:
I'm at the NELA 2010 annual conference Monday and Tuesday this week, albeit without wifi or open power outlets in the rooms. As a result, my postings will be few and far between, but this session was a good one:
Trends, Trends, Trends: Innovations in Technical Services, Collections and More
What is going on that is leading us to change the way we work “behind the scenes” in our libraries? The Academic Librarians Section (ALS) and the Association of College and Research Libraries/New England chapter (ACRL/NEC) sponsor Consultants Margaret Lourie and Stephen Spohn to examine issues and trends in technical services, cataloging, and the acquisition and maintenance of physical and virtual collections, e-resources and e-books. Explore the larger issues at work that bring new opportunities to provide more resources to users, make it easier for them to find information they need and do all this more effectively and efficiently.
The Past Environment
Libraries are warehouses of information (books/serials)
Monopoly on search - they have to come to us and do it our way
Information in discrete packaging - silos do not overlap
Low user expectation - they get what they needed, maybe, and go away
Big building, print collection owned, repository of physical artifacts, you have to come to us
Catalog is inventory of what you own (later also what we have access to, or lease)
All cataloging and reference work done in-house (sense that it was our duty to catalog the internet)
Plenty of staff to do the work
Sense of "we know what the patrons need" - relates to what was selected, how it was cataloged, where it was shelved
Work flow was like assembly line
must follow the rules in all aspects (TS, reference, circ, etc)
patron needs take backseat to process (fear of "doing it wrong" prevents "just doing it right" [according to patron's point of view])
We don't need to throw everything out, but we do need to question the rules to see what is holding us back.
Today's world
Information and tools are created on the fly by millions of people and is available instantly (gone is the idea of librarians cataloging the internet)
Mix of owned and leased, digital and physical, common and unique, print-on-demand (feeds into instant-info idea - don't need things on the shelf, just print when people want it), ebooks - libraries are going to own less and less of their materials (this is being driven by vendors and shifting business models) - focus must shift to community space
Others do search better than us, our job is to help filter, not find (search results are not good enough) - we try to compete, but we're losing
High user expectation - patrons want simple, complex choices24x7, personalized, all electronic, and easy
Disaggregation of discrete information packages - full-text articles available, aggregated databases and journal sources becoming less important (can buy individual articles, not just entire journal or entire database)
Buying books is easier for patrons, because they don't need to keep track of due dates and have library staff make them feel like bad people over $0.25 late fees (use Netflix model - patrons pay a few dollars a month and can keep things as long as they want)
Catalog should be directory of what you have access to (not inventory of owned materials)
Environmental factors
People are mobile and want to be social
Different devices have different capabilities and requirements
New role for libraries: foster learning and knowledge, collaboration with community and community service
We must constantly respond to changes and trends in technology
Bad economy means
we need to justify all spending (inherent value is no longer a given - we always try to shield patrons from budget cuts, so how do they know we're in trouble if they never see the blood?)
less money for resources
we have fewer staff with more work, so we need to maximize staff resources
we need to be more efficient
eliminate unnecessary tasks (ask yourself, "do anyone care about what I'm doing" for ever task you do)
accept "good enough" cataloging (only what patrons need to find information, not exhaustively complete records (for example, patrons/parents want books in a series, and MARC does not do series well - then we should bend the rules so we can provide this service)
move work out of the library
automate (self-check)
accept that we may have to DO LESS
How does all this affect TS
Avalanche of new content to deal with - not just owned print anymore, streaming, unique
Focus needs to be on user needs
multiple metadata schemes
Collaborating and contribution
What to call patrons?
users, patrons, clients, customers, members?
ask them, see what they say - it's all about the relationship
How would we organize libraries from scratch starting today?
we collect things - collection development, preservation, resource sharing
allow patrons to discover them - metadata (it's not just about us anymore) and discovery, reference and advisory, patron experience, borrowing
publish things - user-contributed content, local publications, digital repositories
transform - instruct patrons on how to move forward, recombining information
Look at what "summon" search can do (from Serial Solutions)- MARVEL does it. Its "preharvested" search results from designated sources - catalog, databases - better than federated search because it's fast and single search box ("Unified" search).
