[Sigia-l] integrated catalogues?

[Karl Fast]

> Is it possible for successive generations that rarely visit the physical
> space to know and care about the library?
> 
> Why and how would libraries become hotbeds of innovation to revive their
> fortunes?

<aside>
like many of my posts, this started as a brief response and turned
into a hastily composed mini-essay...hopefully it's of some interest
to those determined to read all the way through.
</aside>

These are great questions about libraries (you ask others that are
just as good, and various people have posed similarly good questions
in this thread).

These are also very difficult questions. Libraries are asking these
questions (and many more). Certainly some librarians are blind to
these issues. But there are lots of people who are doing interesting
and innovative work. They don't usually get much attention outside
the library world, but they are there.

It is a non-trivial problem (which is why it interests me).

On the plus side there are smart and passionate people who are
thinking, talking, writing, programming, experimenting, testing, and
doing the hard work of blazing a path through the jungle. It's a
challenging problem, and by extension, an interesting one too. Lots of
things overlapping: information, knowledge, interaction, cognition,
technology, education, cultural memory, the public good, and the
continuing development of civilization (however that is defined).

On the down side, the work is difficult (so it scares a lot of
people away), funding is often limited (relatively speaking), the
commercial sector gets better press and most of the talent,
librarians are trained to think more about what-is than
what-might-be (this is my opinion; not everyone would agree), and
there is a widespread perception that libraries are dead or dying or
doomed anyway (the rough logic here is that books will disappear, so
libraries will also disappear). These are just some of the bigger
and more obvious problems that libraries are facing.

I find it helpful to distinguish between the library as a physical
manifestation and the library as a concept. The concept of the
library is much more interesting than the library as a building that
houses books. The idea that the library is a physical warehouse of
books is simplistic and naive. It doesn't account for the ways that
libraries are deeply embedded in the social, cultural, and
intellectual life of a community--and across the entire spectrum of
that community. Spend an hour or two observing people in your local
public library and you'll see what I mean.

This leads to the problem of purpose. What is the purpose of a
library? Today we must also ask what is the purpose of a digital
library? This is a difficult philosophical issue. 

David Levy discussed the purpose of digital libraries in his keynote
at the ACM Digital Libraries conference a few years ago. He traces the
purpose question back to the origins of the public library and relates
it to the future of digital libraries. The full text is online. It's
worth reading if you care about this.

  Digital Libraries and the Problem of Purpose
  by David Levy, D-Lib Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 1
  http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january00/01levy.html

I particularly like this bit:

  Purpose, however, clearly is relevant to digital libraries, in
  whatever way we conceive of them. Indeed, I would argue that
  researchers and funders currently have a shared purpose, a mission,
  which stretches from research and development through to the greater
  good of humankind, and provides psychic energy and justification for
  the current research agenda. This mission, which might be called
  "the digital library faith," is an almost evangelical belief that
  digital materials are right and good. I think it goes something like
  this:

  1. Why are we doing digital library research and development? To put
     digital materials online so they can be found and used.
  
  2. And why are we doing this? To make these materials more broadly,
     quickly and efficiently accessible.
  
  3. Why? Because information is good, so more information is better.
  
  4. Why? For the sake of democracy, education, the advancement of
     science and technology.
  
  5. Why? For the sake of the "good life": freedom, health, ethical
     conduct, wisdom, well-being.

  It would seem hard to argue with a statement of purpose as
  well-intentioned and self-evidently good as this. It has the aura of
  Mom and apple pie, truth and justice and the American Way. Still, I
  think it has its difficulties, and deserves to be debated and
  fine-tuned. 

It is easy to say that libraries need to be more innovative. I 
agree with this, but I think it's important to go beyond this. Way
beyond this. Here are three reasons why.

First, it is criticism without pointing towards any solutions. It's
easy to say libraries need to change, harder to figure out how they
should change, and quite challenging to implement those changes.

Second, it implies that innovation is easy. Uhh, it isn't. You can't
turn innovation on like a light switch.

Third, it suggests that libraries are not doing anything. They are.
They're not necessarily doing enough things or doing the right
things or doing them well, but they're not sitting on their hands
either.

Innovation is hard. Predicting the future is hard. Inventing the
future is really hard. It takes time and energy and passion. And
quite a few misteps along the way. Libraries could be doing a lot
more. But there is activity. There is passion and energy and ideas.
At a high level, I find this encouraging, even if I am sometimes
discouraged by the low-level details.

This is an enormous topic. Complex. Challenging. Interesting.
Important. And there are a bazillion ways that information
architects can contribute (and other people too).



--
Karl Fast
http://www.livingskies.com/