PVLD Director's Blog

The future of libraries - what if it's not about delivering content?

PVLD is in the process of developing a new strategic plan which is forcing us to both take a hard look at what we currently do and how we do it, and to think about what we want the library to be in the future.  As we've looked at what we currently do and how it fits with our future aspirations, one of the questions floating around in my mind is how important/relevent our content (i.e. our library collection - whether physical or electronic) will be.

We currently focus a lot of time, attention, and energy on maintaining that content - choosing what to buy, processing the orders and paying the bills, deciding how to organize the collection both in the libraries and online, cataloging the various items, weeding things from the collection, and handling the books, movies, cds, etc. as we check them in and out, shelve them, and move them between branches.  In many respects this management of content dominates what we do.

If the recent growth in our circulation statistics is any indicator access to our content is still very important to the people we serve, particularly in these difficult economic times, and yet I've had this little niggling thought bouncing around in my head for a while - In a world of myriad cheap (or even free), easy, and convenient ways to access content electronically, what if our future isn't about content management and delivery? What then?

In one of those curious bits of synchronicity that seems to happen as I surf the web and read various blogs it turns out I'm not the only one with this thought on my mind.  Over the weekend I came across this post from Aaron Schmidt's Walking Paper blog.  It's a great articulation of the competition faced by libraries in a world of "content anywhere/anytime."  Aaron uses the example of Netflix and how it is partnering with the New York Times and others to allow people to download Netflix content via widgets at online locations (like movie reviews) where it is most relevent.  Not only do most libraries lack the technology to do something like this, we are also constrained by digital rights management laws and technologies that prevent us from making the best online content available to our customers.

Today I read on the O'reilly radar blog  (thanks to a tip-off from Stephen Abram)  that the fastest growing category of applications for the IPhone is downloadable e-books - most of which cost 99 cents or less, and one in twenty of which are free.  Couple that with the ability to get everything from bestsellers to classics anytime, anywhere and without the hurdle of shared collections and limited checkout periods and you can see that the downloadable books offered by libraries are a poor alternative.

And if this post on Ross Dawson's Trends in the Living Networks blog is any indication, libraries aren't alone in thinking about the extent to which content management and delivery is their future. 

So if our future is not about delivering content, what is it about?  I'm not sure anyone knows for sure.  I think Ross Dawson's phrase "the shift from expert curators to facilitators of participation" is as good a description of what the future might hold as any I've seen. And Aaron Schmidt was pursuing the same idea when he wrote about creating "excellent programs and experiences based around content and conversation" and "providing shared experiences by gathering people together at hosted events." 

What I like most about this concept is that the role of the library is really enhanced, not diminished.  If we can take all of the time and energy we spend managing content and redirect it to finding ways to enrich peoples lives by helping them make richer connections with both the content and one another, the future is bright.

That said, I still think providing access to content will be a role for libraries in the future.  The question will be how we do that.  We don't want to become the poor cousin to commercial content delivery services like Netflix, Amazon, and Itunes - there primarily for people who can't afford or otherwise can't access the commercial services, but with inferior content and delivery mechanisms. 

One thought is that we need to step outside our traditional models and partner with the Netflixes of the world to make content available anytime, anywhere.  For example, what if when people search our catalog and an item is either checked out or not in our collection they could just click on a button to buy it on Amazon or download it from Netflix (with a commission for us of course)?  PVLD's upcoming trial of a Redbox DVD dispenser is another example of how we can work with commercial services to deliver content - in this case physical DVDs.  The Redbox machine will not only allow us to offer a wider selection of titles and more copies of the popular ones, it will also allow customers to obtain them outside of library hours, request specific titles online, keep them as long as they want, and return them to any Redbox location...with no investment of library staff time once the machine has been installed.

Of course, these are just my thoughts.  I'd love to know yours...     

The library website as virtual branch....really?

We've invested a lot of time and effort (and a not insignificant amount of money), developing the PVLD website as a "virtual branch" of the library with library services available 24/7 from home or office.  I'm really proud of what our Digital Services team have accomplished in terms of the look and feel of the site, the shift from traditional "databases" to online services such as Value Line, Mango Languages, and Brainfuse, the use of tools like Wordpress blogs and Flickr to both deliver content and make it available via the wider web and not just the library website, and the inclusion of social networking concepts like user reviews and ratings and instant messaging.

And then today I read two blog posts by David Lee King that made me realize how far we still have to go!  The first post asks whether our online question-answering services discriminate against "a growing, younger, web-savvy customer base. Customers who *almost* have all the tools in place to simply ignore you and your grad-degreed, professional information-retrieval services. Especially if they are treated like second class customers when they ask a question using their preferred, and handy, means of communication." when we don't have easy fast ways for them to communicate with us and get timely responses via the web.

David lays out some terrific, but painful (because they hit close to home!) examples of how libraries do this - e.g. by allowing people to email in reference questions, but only committing to answer within 48 hours; by only providing online reference during "normal business hours", etc.  Ouch!  PVLD is guilty as charged -

We don't offer any email reference/question answering service other than via a generic "contact us" web form on our "Contact Us" page that goes to our webmaster regardless of the type of question...and we don't give any indication of how quickly questions submitted via that form will be answered.  My guess is it could be days given that the staff who check the page work mostly Monday to Friday!

In addition to the generic web form the "Contact Us" page gives people the option of emailing the Library Director, or emailing the "website".  Otherwise people can contact various library departments by telephone - definitely not the best option for a generation used to email and text-messaging.  Reviewing this page also made me realize why I get so many questions about overdue books emailed directly to me....I'm pretty much the only option for someone who wants to email a question!

We do offer a "Chat Service" on our home page, but its only available Monday-Thursday from  1-4PM (exactly the hours when our tech-savvy younger customers are in school), and when it's offline there is no obvious alternative way to contact the library.  No wonder it isn't used very much!


That bit of reflection was painful enough, and then I read this companion post on "Doin Stuff At the Library's Website" in which David lists some of the things you can do at the physical library and asks if you can also do them at the library website.  PVLD's website capabilities are noted in italics.

• check out a book  - yes, a limited selection of audio and e-books are available for online checkout, but the process is cumbersome and requires installation of special software
  
• read a book or magazine - books no, magazine articles yes via databases that aren't very easy to use
   
• take notes and do research - no notetaking capability via the website, you can do research using the library databases but it isn't intuitive or easy
  
• put a public PC on reserve for later - no - our software is capable but we only allow reservations to be made from kiosks within the library. Something to revisit.
  
• pester the reference librarian with questions  - see my comments above
  
• check stuff out when I’m done - apart from the downloadable audio and e-books, not really.  You can put things on hold, but you need to come to the library to get them.
   
• attend a training session or a fun program - again, not really.  You can learn a language using Mango Languages or get live homework help from Brainfuse but these aren't really "programs" in the sense David is talking about...we've talked about online video tutorials, webcasting story times, etc. but these remain future dreams

Again, Ouch!  Is our website a great resource - absolutely.  And we actually do offer some of the things David mentions further in his blog post -  you can browse large parts of our collection online, and we do offer RSS feeds - but to call the website a true "virtual branch" is an overstatement.

As I thought about this I realized that the problem is not with our Digital Services team - two guys who have way more on their plate than is reasonable, and who really get what it means to compete in the web 2.0 world.  The real issue is an entire library organization that (understandably given the roots of our profession) is built around delivering services within our buildings.  Interacting with customers online is treated as an "extra" ...something to do after we've made sure the reference desk is staffed, the physical collection is maintained, and the in-library programs are developed. 

While I absolutely believe that the physical library is both important and in no danger of becoming irrelevent any time soon, like David Lee King I also worry that if we don't find a way to stretch our resources to serve people as effectively using the Internet as we do in the library itself we run the risk of becoming irrelevant to new generations of potential customers.  I'd hate for the library to be having trouble like Borders is having at the same time its online competitor Amazon.com had its best holiday season ever.

This year PVLD will be creating a new 3-year strategic plan, and I can see that figuring out how to truly make our website a virtual branch without diminishing our physical library services is not only going to be essential, it's going to force us to rethink how we do almost everything we do.  Now there's a challenge for 2009!

A new role for librarians?

Yesterday I had the privilege of spending the day in San Jose at a workshop for participants in the inaugural Eureka Leadership Institute and their mentors.  The workshop marked the halfway point in a twelve-month journey that started with a residential institute last May and demands completion of a significant, year-long project as a means of building participants' leadership abilities.  It has been my pleasure to serve as a mentor and to get to know an outstanding group of current and future library leaders (and to watch PVLD participants Jennifer Addington and Eve Wittenmyer grow as leaders along with their colleagues from across the State).  To paraphrase fellow mentor Joan Frye Williams - they give me hope for the future of our profession and our libraries.

Apart from the burst of energy that I always get when in the company of a group of people who care passionately about what they do and are prepared to commit time and personal energy to improve themselves and their organizations, a highlight of the Eureka program has been the opportunity to hear from "urban cultural anthropologist" Jennifer James, who was a speaker at the initial Institute back in May, and our lunchtime speaker yesterday.

Jennifer's description of how people and cultures adapt to change is thought-provoking and energizing.  Yesterday, while praising libraries as "one of the wisdom traditions" and a trusted source of information, she laid down what I think is an exciting but difficult challenge.

In essence (and I am both summarising/paraphrasing extensively here so apologies to Jennifer if I misrepresent what she said!) I heard Jennifer say that chaos is an inevitable feature of cultural/societal change;  information is a key pathway out of chaos; and librarians are a trusted source of information.  She went on to say that librarians can play a key role in helping people determine "what is true" but do that we need to overcome both our fear of controversy and our tendency to want to provide people with "raw" information rather than synthesizing it.  Regarding the latter she spoke of using Wikipedia not because it is necessarily a trustworthy source of information in itself, but because it provides both synthesized information and relevent links to enable one to explore more deeply and then form one's own conclusions.  Contrast this to our "pathfinders", that provide the links without the synthesis.

What hit home for me was her description of visiting many public libraries and seeing wonderful displays of information that she characterized as of the "National Geographic" variety - interesting and factual but not relevent to the the issues that people care deeply about but are struggling to understand given a lack of synthesized information from a trusted and honest (i.e. non-biased and non-positional) source.  Who better than a libraian, she asked, to provide this information? 

Where, she asked, are the library displays, handouts, or website posts that provide -

• side by side comparisons of John McCain's and Barack Obama's tax policies (not an evaluation or recommendation, just a comparison based on what the candidates themselves have said)
• a summary of key points of creationism vs. evolutionary theory (again, not an evaluation or a position - just a synthesis of both sides of the debate)
• an overview of the national deficit - what we owe, and who (i.e. what countries)  we owe it to
• a history of banking regulation in the U.S. - what laws were passed in what years, under which Presidents, and a one simple explanation of what they do/did

...or synthesized information about any other timely, possibly controversial, issue that people are struggling to understand? 

In a way Jennifer was asking whether libraries are prepared to play a role not just in information literacy (i.e. the skills and tools to find the information they are looking for) but also what might be called cultural literacy....the synthesized information they need to make sense of the significant issues confronting our society. 

If we take up Jennifer's challenge there is no doubt that, despite our best efforts to present an independent and unbiased perspective, someone will take exception to what we present.  The question is whether that is reason enough not to try.  If public libraries are indeed perceived as "honest brokers" of information, who better than us to provide information that can help people find their way out of the apparent chaos of information overload?   What better way to maintain our relevence?  And if we don't take up this challenge will we be displaced by whoever does? 

Jennifer said something else yesterday that resonated deeply with me - "you can either choose deep change or slow death".

Is taking an active role in synthesizing (not just collecting, organizing and making available)  information to help people think through the "big issues" that confront our society a deep change from the role we currently play?  I think it is.  Is the alternative a slow death?  Quite possibly.  And at a time when noise and static abounds, and sources of succinct factual information seem few and far between, I also have to ask the question "If we won't do it, who will provide people with the tools and resources to find a pathway out of the chaos?" 

Changing Roles for the Reference Librarian

 A couple of weeks ago I came across this article by the Stephen Abram.  Stephen is the Vice President of Innovation at library technology vendor Sirsi Dynix, President of the Special Libraries Association, and one of those people who can be counted on to offer thought-provoking ideas about the future of our profession.

In the article Stephen offers a "Baker's Dozen of Scenarios" for the future of reference services, from maintaining the status quo (which he calls "a recipe for fossilization") through 11 ways that Reference Librarians can use their skills and capabilities to deliver differentiated value to the people and organizations they serve.  Some of the ideas (such as the "information commons") are not all that new, and some at first glance seem more applicable to the special or academic library setting ("embedded librarians'), but throughout there are some interesting and sometimes uncomfortable ideas for new service models.

I read the article with mixed feelings.  On the one hand I was pleased to note how many of these ideas we are already using at PVLD.  For example "partners in action" is about teaming up with schools to improve student performance, something we have been working with our School District to achieve for a number of years.  Our Twitter feed, Chatstat Instant Messaging Service, library tool bar, etc are all aimed at the "remote librarian" and "virtual librarian 2.0" models.

On the other hand, some of Stephen's comments hit uncomfortably close to home.  I think as a profession we have a long way to go before we (as Stephen puts it ) "decloak" -

"That is to say, that as professionals they will give their names — real names. They will have pictures of themselves on their pages. And, most importantly, they will have the confidence to state clearly the nature of their expertise. No more will libraries promote the generic, unnamed librarian as all for one and one for all — vanilla flavor only. If someone is the best in the system at genealogy, then find them — the same for storytelling, local history, business reference, and more. We then place ourselves in the spaces where our users are — the intranet, websites, SEOed on Google, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Ning, and more. And we connect to other experts such as consumer health hotlines or poison control!

How many other professions hide behind their institutional identities without balancing it with individual professional and personal positioning? I can’t think of a single other profession that doesn’t invest heavily in the personal positioning of experts in addition to the professional branding. For us to succeed in the world of socially networked users, we must adapt to this new reality."

At PVLD we've moved some way towards having our staff be real, identifiable people (we all wear name tags with at least our first name or last name if not both, some of our employees have taken the brave step of having their pictures and/or profiles in our newsletter or on our blog, and we do have at least one librarian who is recognized by name in our community as an expertsin her field - Local History specialist Marjeanne Blinn), but we still tend to participate in online services and networks under pseudonyms and to treat the librarians as interchangeable when it comes to serving on the reference desk or even collection development.

We also have a ways to go in getting out from behind the reference desk to deliver service where our customers are - whether in the stacks, at a public computer workstation, or outside the library altogether.

All-in-all though it was nice to see the extent to which our staff have at least started to implement pieces of many of the models outlined in the article....and I know from conversations with other Library Directors that we are fortunate to have a staff that embraces change the way ours does.

PVLD Librarian Takes on Yahoo Answers

Adult Services Librarian Louise Beebe took up the challenge of becoming a "Yahoo Answerer" and within a day racked up the first of what I'm sure will be many "best answers" kudos, due in part I'm sure to the way she backed her answer up by citing a reputable source - and she got this honor her very first question, too...pretty cool!  Looking at the question Louise answered made me think that participating in a service like this not only gets librarians out of the library, it might also be a great skills building opportunity....

Hey, LibrarianCat, look what you got! Congratulations, you've got a best answer and 10 extra points! Your answer to the following question really hit the spot and has been chosen as the best answer: How old does a healthy gerbil usually live to? Go ahead, do your victory dance. Celebrate a little. Brag a little. Then come back and answer a few more questions! Thanks for sharing what you know and making someone's day. The Yahoo! Answers Team

Get the Yahoo! Toolbar for one-click access to Yahoo! Answers.

Yahoo vs. the Reference Librarian

I just got home from the annual American Library Association Conference in Anaheim, and sat down for a few minutes to catch up with yesterday's New York Times Magazine.

My mind still reeling with from the vast exhibit hall with all kinds of technology-related vendors trying to show how their product would help libraries maintain relevance and the multiple conference tracks tackling subjects like the relevance of the Dewey Decimal System and new models for reference services, as I flipped through the magazine I was a bit surprised  to find this article with one of the most cogent articulations of why people turn to services like Yahoo Answers (in which you submit questions that are answered by an army of volunteer, self-proclaimed experts) instead of using the services of the library reference desk.

The punchline, especially if you are a public librarian, comes at the end, when author Virginia Heffernan writes :

"In discussions of Google, hypothetical queries always have the sheen of scholarliness. We imagine Web users asking about the history of Montana or Bjork’s second album — the same kind of questions that callers used to ask the information and research desks of the New York Public Library.

In fact, people ask the Web all kinds of crazy things, including “Does he love me?” (Mamay: “He’s 13, he doesn’t know what love is.”) Look over your own Google search history, if you can bear it. Embarrassment does not inhibit us, as it must have inhibited callers to the public library. People ask about shoe fetishes. They ask about suing their parents for malpractice. They ask about what’s cool to wear in Dallas.

And they ask from the heart. So far, the Yahoo Answers points system rights the giving-and-getting balance, while kindly presupposing that every member has something to say — a valuable answer for someone, somewhere. And we do. If nothing else, we can mirror a questioner’s confusion and make him feel less alone. What I’m saying is: Maybe when we turn to the Internet with questions, we’re not looking for information. We’re looking for — yeah, I’ll say it — love."

We librarians can argue until we're blue in the face that the information we provide is more accurate and credible than what the average Google search will deliver, but if Heffernan is right and people turn to the Internet as a way to get insight into their questions and concerns that avoids embarrassment and makes them feel less alone, then the way we think about "reference" needs to change profoundly.  IM reference and email reference were originally conceived as ways to offer convenience but they also may provide a level of anonymity that addresses the embarrassment issue.  But even this is only a partial solution.  People are  looking for solutions to problems and concerns that go well outside the traditional definition of "information" so we need to think about how we can help meet that need.  We have a long tradition of Readers Advisory...maybe there are other kinds of advice we can offer.  Lately there's been a lot of talk about the need to get outside the four walls of the library and deliver services to people where they are....one way of doing that would be to actively participate as "answerers" on service like Yahoo Answers.   And maybe we need to just give up the idea that the librarian is the one true information guide and figure out ways (ala Bibliocommons ) to help our customers share their expertise and unique insights and advice with one another.  I don't pretend to know the answer...but I do know that reference as we've always done it, or even slight variations on the theme like roving reference or kiosks instead of reference desks, probably aren't going to be enough.

Meebo Us!

Got a question for PVLD?  Want to chat with a librarian?  Now you can contact us via Instant Messaging directly from our home page at www.pvld.org

The story of how this came about is a testament to both Web 2.0 techologies and to the "can do" attitude of the PVLD staff.

Some of us at PVLD have been playing around with IM for a while trying to figure out whether/how to take advantage of it for internal communication between staff members as well as for the public.  We discovered Meebo ( http://wwwm.meebo.com/ ) - a neat tool that lets people IM whatever system they are currently using (gmail, Yahoo, etc.) or by setting up a Meebo account you can IM someone on any other system from the Meebo website.

A couple of weeks ago I figured out how to put a Meebo "widget" on my blog which allows anyone to chat with me via IM from my blog as long as I am logged into Meebo.  The other person doesn't even need a Meebo or any other IM account.

Earlier this week I was showing this to Debra Petersen, Assistant Manager - Adult Services and as we played around with Meebo we realized that it could provide a quick and easy way to test out whether people would use IM to communicate with us.  So on Wednesday afternoon we decided to just do it!

By 1PM David Campbell, our Manager of Digital Library Services, had the Meebo widget up on our website.  The first question came in about a minute later.  Over the course of the afternoon Debra fielded a number of questions.  Many were about things like the library's hours over the Thanksgiving weekend, or how to get a library card online, and there were also seven "real" reference questions. 

If that trend keeps up our little spur of the moment pilot will be a real success.

This got me thinking about why it was so popular so fast when our other "online reference" tools like "Email a Librarian" or the Asknow Virtual Reference Service which uses also uses IM technology are hardly used at all (on average less than 10 questions a month combined).  Of course I don't really know, but my guess is that the Meebo widget has several things going for it:

1.  It's intuitive.  It doesn't even say that it is an IM system. All you see is a box that says "The PVLDLibrarian is online" and a prompt to "Type here and hit enter to send a private message".  Its as easy as that...no special training, user account, or other folderol required.

2.  It's right there on the home page.  You don't need to click down to get to it.

3. It's informal,personal, and local.  You're not interacting with some anonymous librarian somewhere in the country - you are chatting with the PVLDLibrarian from your local library.  It's not intimidating - you don't have to be asking a "reference" question.  If all you want to know is whether the library is open the Friday after Thanksgiving that's fine.  I think this probably makes it MORE useful to most visitors to our website than the AskNow type virtual reference service which implies you have some meaty question you want answered and is really not set up to deal with questions about local library services. 

4.  It encourages human interaction.  Even when using technology like a library website, people want to "talk" to another human being.

As I said, these are just my thoughts.  Whatever the reason, its been fun to see how people have responded.

Try it out!  Just remember that we are still experimenting and may not be online at all times. 

Library 2.0 - again!

This was on the "Gather No Dust" blog today - http://gathernodust.blogspot.com/

http://gathernodust.blogspot.com/2007/09/so-what-would-20-library-look-like.html

I loved the ideas for how to put control into the hands of our customers!

In a similar vein Helene Blowers of the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenberg County passed on an great comment about the learning libraries at http://www.librarybytes.com/2007/09/more-thoughts-on-learning-libraries.html

Yesterday at our Peninsula Center Library Advisory Committee ( a group of community members interested in the library)  One of the committee members, a retired librarian, made an eloquent plea for us not to abandon the systems and structures (her example was the structure of a catalog that can be searched very much like a traditional card catalog) that older adults are familiar with.  This generated an enrgetic energetic discussion about the challenge of serving the needs, skills, and learning/information seeking behaviors of our older community members  vs the very different needs and behviors of other groups such as kids and teens.  In this context I particularly appreciated the comment from Helene:

"A learning library should empower users to achieve their goals, not provide libraries with a means to push forward our own personal objectives (and yes, admit it... every organization has personal objectives that sometimes counter customer's needs - it's only natural).

I think the challenge here for many us in libraries is to realize that when we can abandon our own personal agendas in favor of our user's needs (and put them first at the top of the pyramid), we not only make our libraries more valuable to our community, but we also create a cascading effect that saturates the insecurities that drove those personal agendas in the first place.

BTW: The pyramid I see here is inverted with users filling up the the top plateau and library staff at the tiny pointed base, supporting this huge community through a flexible and adaptable balancing act that allows everyone to achieve success."

Now there's a challenge!

The Changing Nature of Information

Over the past couple of weeks I've encountered some thought-provoking news and blog items about how technology is changing the nature of information.

On Saturday, June 16th NPR ran the following interview with Andrew Keen, author of "The Cult of the Amateur" - http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11131872&sc=emaf  Mr. Keen decries what he calls the "cacophony of amateurs" using "web 2.0" tools such as wikis and blogs to broadcast their opinions and their version of the news and describes this "information" as "unreliable and often corrupt".  Mr. Keen concludes that he prefers the "wisdom of experts" to the "wisdom of crowds".   

I had mixed emotions as I listened to the interview.  The librarian in me wanted to cheer Mr. Keen for supporting the role of professionals in creating, evaluating, and disseminating information, while as a blogger and blog-reader I have come to appreciate the way Web 2.0 has allowed me to learn from and exhange ideas with people in a way that would not be possible through the professionally-mediated  media journalistic process that Mr. Keen espouses.   As someone interested in personal investing, I also thought about the contrast between Mr. Keen's views and the well-accepted view that in general investors are better off with broad market indexes (the wisdom of crowds) than with managed investment funds (the wisdom of experts).  I also had to chuckle at his implication that traditional newspapers unbiased!

Yesterday I opened my local paper, The Daily Breeze,  to see a front page article about the challenges newspapers face as they experiment with Web 2.0 tools such as blogs but wrestle with how to manage the implications of an open and uncensored dialogue with and between readers.  The article began -

"Imagine you were run down by a hit-and-run driver, your local newspaper reported on it and, along with the article on its Web site, you saw this:

"I am so tired of people making excuses for their actions. What are they doing crossing a busy street in the first place? …

"Don't get me wrong, I feel really, really bad for the guy, but come on, be RESPONSIBLE!"

Or imagine your doctor sexually assaults you, and readers who commented on a story about his trial called you a "whore."

Or you're reading an article online about a drunken driving fatality, and the dozens of comments that follow are mostly hateful, profanity-laced and racist, based on assumptions and not facts.

Imagine no more, it's all real. These comments were posted on the Daily Breeze's Web site by readers.

The article was a sobering reminder that with powerful tools comes a responsibility to use them wisely.  In the days when commentary on the news was limited to the editorial pages and letters to the editor the ill-informed and downright nasty comments that are appearing on the Daily Breeze website would never have seen the light of day.  Does that mean we should go back to those days?  I'm not sure... 
Finally, I just came across this posting by Helene Blowers of the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County (and originator of the Learning 2.0 concept) - http://www.librarybytes.com/2006/08/library-20-its-more-than-flickr-and.html   

This is a much more optimistic view of the Web 2.0 -driven changes to the way information is created and shared, but raises some excellent questions about the role of the library profession in this new world.

"As my husband and I tuned into CNN over the two week course of our vacation to catch up on world events, we were surprised to find a good deal of their news coverage showing and acknowledging the power of “soft information” as they shared quotes from bloggers caught up in the conflict and videos posted on YouTube about the crisis in middle east. Why, because information is time sensitive.... because CNN didn’t have enough reporters in the area yet to cover the complete conflict... and because human interest/frontline experiences are worth their weight in advertising gold. (It might also help that they don’t cost the network a cent to air.) Anyway, CNN was very upfront about the airing of these videos as undocumented news sources, but even so they were information and they filled the great need for the “first person” experience.

So what am I getting at?? Simple, it’s this … 2.0 is radically changing the way users get information and that means big, BIG, BIGGG fundamental changes to the information profession and libraries as a whole. As I said to a group of librarians attending a recent presentation I gave … "I believe right NOW is the most exciting time to be a librarian in the information profession because information is changing!!" And not only is it changing, the channels are changing too!!! And what’s most important about this change is that users now are not only able to consume information while it’s still “soft”, they also have a way to participate in its creation and validation too! If that’s not earth-shattering-exciting to an information professional, then I can’t imagine what is!

I agree with Helene that it is a wonderfully exciting time to be an information professional  and that the benefits of the new forms of information outweigh the risks... and we're going to continue to have some great discussions at PVLD about how Web 2.0 and the way it is changing the very nature of information can help us transform our services.  But what do YOU think?  Do you agree with Mr. Keen that news and information creation should remain in the hands of "experts"?  Comments welcome!

More on Rethinking Reference

With all of the Starbucks devotees on staff this should be a no-brainer for us! We can meet our Strategic Plan objective of taking our services out into the community, and get our caffeine fix at the same time!  Any takers?  I'll even buy the coffee!

... the “Librarian With a Latte” program from University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. What’s with Ann Arbor and library goodness, anyways?

With a laptop and a wireless connection, he sets aside time to sit at a table at a popular Ann Arbor coffee shop and invites students to drop by for help. Dozens of students showed up for one of his recent sessions.

“‘Going to where students are seems to be a theme in social-networking discussions, and they mean virtually,” he says. “It’s equally important to go where they are physically.” The coffee-shop sessions help establish relationships with students that become online interactions later.