I just spent an hour writing a post about this amazing video featuring Clay Shirky, and then lost it due to some mysterious glitch! Now I need to try to recreate my "brilliant" thoughts!
For some reason the video won't embed in my post, so here's the link to the DonorPower blog post where I found it. Take a look...it's well worth the 15 minutes or so.
As I watched it I kept thinking about the implications for libraries.
Libraries originated as essentially repositories of content (think the great library at Alexandria or the monks preserving their manuscripts during the middle ages), and have evolved into institutions focused largely on content delivery. Its interesting that some of our most "innovative" service models (and sources of heated debate) are largely about how we get better at delivering content. Think about the current debate about the limitations of the Dewey Decimal System, or the move towards "merchandising" our collections, or the often heated discussions about whether we should more heavily emphasize customer demand or professional judgement when selecting materials. All are about more effectively connecting our customers with our collections....i.e. content delivery.
Now think about the world that Mr. Shirky describes in the video. A world in which people expect to participate in the creation and sharing of content, not just to consume it. A world in which an individual, using low cost technologies, can participate in the domain of content organization and delivery that has traditionally been the domain of libraries and well-capitalized businesses. A world in which the 200 billion hours/year that has been spent watching television can be redirected to the creation and sharing of content.
I think this shift from passive consumption to participatory creation and sharing will render our current delivery-based library service models obsolete. The challenge for librarians and library institutions is to transform ourselves so that we become active participants in this new world.
What does this mean? Some thoughts -
Librarians need to shift from being organizers of and gatekeepers to information and content to designers of the systems that allow people to actively participate in the creation and sharing of content and the design of library services.
The boundary between the "library" and the community will become increasingly permeable. Our staff will need to have the deep knowledge of the needs and aspirations of the communities we serve that only active engagement outside the four walls of the library can provide. As a young library school graduate and job applicant I interviewed the other day put it - "We need to have the kind of community involvement that means that wherever we go in the community we meet people we know, and we need to develop services based on real understanding of community needs not what we pretend to know."
Our internal boundaries will also become more permeable as we rapidly reconfigure our organizations and services to adapt to changing community needs.
Our library buildings will become just one service point in an array that spans the virtual world and the physical communities we serve. Web-based services, cell-phone based services, widgets on the websites of others, "pop ups" at community events, micro-services at locations throughout the community (mini-collections? kiosks? book-dispensing machines?) will become the norm.
The library buildings themselves need to be redesigned to foster participation and engagement. Service desks that have staff and customers working side by side to collaborate on solving the customer's problem? Replacement of the discreet and somewhat secretive suggestion box with white boards (physical or virtual) where customers can share their thoughts about library services and build on the ideas of others? Spaces where staff and customers come together on a regular basis to discuss library and community issues?
Our catalogs need to move beyond inventory management systems to platforms for users to share information, make connections with people of similar interests, and help one another find the resources that are most relevent for their needs in their particular contexts. (See my previous post on the Social Catalog and Bibliocommons)
We need to build deep and broad institutional knowledge of emerging technologies and business/service models and skill in the rapid deployment of new technologies and models. Technology-based innovation can no longer be the sole responsibility of the IT staff.
We need to stop viewing volunteers as supplemental labor and find ways to engage the full array of talents, experiences, and knowledge that our volunteers bring to us (See Boomer Volunteers)
Most of all we need to build library cultures that encourage and respect the participation of our communities and organizational designs that foster experimentation and learning.
There is a huge store of intellectual capital waiting to be tapped - in our communities and within our institutions. Let's tap it!
Those are some of my thoughts...what are yours?
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