[Asis-l] Stephen Abram: Evolution to Revolution to Chaos? Reference in Transition

[gerrymck]

Colleagues/

Reference in Transition

/Gerry

FEATURE
Evolution to Revolution to Chaos? Reference in Transition
by Stephen Abram, Vice President of Innovation, SirsiDynix

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Many years ago, the esteemed Barbara Quint offered an estimate that
Google answered as many reference queries in half an hour as all the
reference librarians in the world did in 7 years.

I suspect that ratio is quite different now — worse, from this old
reference librarian's perspective! Reference is the place to watch for
change and innovation in libraries. Indeed, all this 2.0 talk is all
about the real nature of the customer relationship — in person and
virtual. The IT and metadata types were dealing well with a fairly
predictable future — one driven by the consumer space and
reaction-driven, one with standards and rules and not as influenced by
messy human behaviors. You can almost see that train heading down the
track and just hop on and enjoy the ride.


It cannot be denied that our reference stats are down, though this is
not the case with our research requests, training activities, and
one-on-one contact with clients. Public library circulation is way up.
Website hits — from nearly any measurement data point — are up. Even
gate count is up in most libraries. In public libraries, life is
proceeding very well. In the academic and college space, change is
moving apace with elearning and learning commons initiatives growing
and major technologies expanding, such as OpenURL, federated search,
portals and portlets, APIs, and more innovation in user experiences
aimed at learning and research missions — and not centered on
libraries alone.

Reference and research services, the front line of library service,
are dealing with a far-less-predictable future. The asynchronous,
asymmetrical threats facing us are very real hydra monsters
challenging our roles in many ways, all having some truth. The fate of
reference has come into clearer focus in Web 2.0/Library 2.0
discussions and debates. The emphasis has moved from understanding and
learning the technology to understanding end-user behaviors in
context. Policies have moved from serving library management needs and
library workers' preferences to where end-user needs trump librarian
insights and personal search preferences. If this attitude hadn't
changed, we'd be in real trouble now — although, admittedly, you still
occasionally encounter dinosaur tracks and hear the roar of distant
mastodons. A plethora of new end-user research — from usability
through personas and from hit analyses to ethnographic and behavioral
studies — focus on workplace needs, scholarly behavior, learning
styles, and entertainment and demonstrate a material shift in the
library user firmament.

After more than 20 years of primarily working on the infrastructure of
libraries — servers, websites, wireless, electronic content licensing,
broadband, access, security, viruses, etc. — we have reached a real
tipping point. In 2008 we are seeing the real action in our world of
libraries move from the back office to the front desk. We're moving
from a technology-centric strategy to one in which the real needs of
our clients must predominate. Aligning technology with user behavior
no longer suffices to ensure success. We need to understand, and
understand deeply, the role of the library in our end-users' lives,
work, research, and play. This is critical to our long-term success,
and failure is not an option.

[MORE]

[ http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/sep08/Abram.shtml ]

/Gerry

Gerry McKiernan
Associate Professor
Science and Technology Librarian
Iowa State University Library
Ames IA 50011

gerrymck at iastate.edu

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