PVLD Director's Blog

Libraries and the Cognitive Surplus

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?

News from the Public Library Association Conference 2008

Adult Services Assistant Manager Debra Petersen and Branch Manager Jennifer Addington attended the Public Library Association's biennial conference in Minneapolis last week and came back full of ideas and enthusiasm.

They are sharing what they learned and their thoughts on their PLA Minneapolis blog.  Check it out for some great ideas...and keep checking as there is more to come!

I think we might transform this blog into the "PVLD conference" blog as a way of sharing what we learn at the various conferences and workshops that staff attend. 

Web 2.0 and the Read/Write Library

I came across a couple of interesting items on the subject of Web 2.0 and libraries during my blog-surfing over lunch today.

First, courtesy of Michael Sauers at the Travelin' Librarian blog, is this video produced by British innovation and creativity expert Charles Leadbeater and colleagues about "Web 2.0" and its implications.

It's a good description of the social web and how it is transforming society, and while the Annoyed Librarian might call it another piece of "twopointopian" propaganda, it does at least acknowledge that for all of the opportunities it provides the social web also raises as-yet-unanswered questions and possible concerns.

I was just reflecting on the video when I got an email from Jackie Siminitus, "E-Rate Specialist and Library Advocate" of AT&T with a link to this very interesting post about how libraries in Chile are moving "from cataloging books to training users how to blog" from  the PBS Idealab blog.

In a world where all too often civilians (i.e. non-library people) think that the Internet is making libraries obsolete it was great to see a "non-library" blog recognize "...a larger trend taking place at libraries large and small from the southern tip of Chile to the Siberian tundra of Russia. Public libraries are no longer just points of reception; they are transforming into centers of transmission and communication, where local users take advantage of increasingly affordable digital cameras and free online tools to write and share their own local stories."

It was also inspiring to read that "nearly every library - from the southern tip of Patagonia to the northern border with Bolivia and Peru - will be equipped with wi-fi by the end of the year."  Wouldn't it be great to be able to say that about libraries in the U.S.?

Most inspiring of all was this video of Enzo Abbagliati of of Chile's national library network talking about how Chilean libraries are embracing the world of Web 3.0 (not 2.0!) as a catalyst for social change and to support participatory democracy:

Enzo Abbagliati from BiblioRedes

And his term "Catalysts for opportunity" is about the best description of what libraries and librarians can provide that I've heard!

Another bit of evidence that Web 2.0 et seq. is something to be embraced, not feared!

 

The Library of Congress and Flickr

From the Library of Congress blog – the Library of Congress is partnering with Flickr to "help address at least two major challenges: how to ensure better and better access to our collections, and how to ensure that we have the best possible information about those collections for the benefit of researchers and posterity." [And thanks to David Weinberger over at Everything is Miscellaneous for sharing the link]

The Library of Congress blogging? Posting to Flickr? Tagging? How cool is that!

I love the idea of The Commons – using Flickr to share the world's public photo collections. We've already used Flickr for our 40families project site, and it would be great to get all of our local history photos into The Commons.

This quote from the end of the post is also great -

"From the Library's perspective, this pilot project is a statement about the power of the Web and user communities to help people better acquire information, knowledge and—most importantly—wisdom. One of our goals, frankly, is to learn as much as we can about that power simply through the process of making constructive use of it."

To Matt Raymond and the folks at LoC – thanks for helping light the path through the social web.

From Web 2.0 to Web 3.0

I thought these two YouTube videos from some of the big names in the Web 2.0 world were interesting.

Here's Tim O'Reilly, who is widely credited with coining the term Web 2.0, giving his definition -

And now Eric Schmidt of Google with his take about Web 3.0

I found it interesting that the fundamental attribute of Web 2.0 as described by Tim O'Reilly is that users add value to the data.  You can see this in a lot of what we are trying to achieve with the social catalog - user reviews, shared lists, etc.

What Eric Schmidt describes as Web 3.0 is users adding value to the process by developing micro-applications and by being the vehicle for viral transmission of both data and applications.  The fairly recent but explosive growth of the "widget" seems to be a good example.

I'll need to do some thinking about what this means for libraries.  Some quick thoughts include opportunities to make the tools for micro-application development available through the library website, opportunities to develop our own micro-applications and widgets that can then be virally transmitted....any one else have ideas?