Blog about Libraries

Friday, October 13, 2006

Obsolete? No. Threatened? Well, maybe.

Michael makes many good points about libraries not being obsolete and I agree that they are not. At my library we are lucky to have strong public sentiment about the importance the library occupies as a part of the community. That doesn't mean we may not be facing a rough road ahead, though. We need to face some sobering realities.

Technology and increased connectivity will continue to put people closer to the products and information they seek.
The market will continue to reward companies that create more convenience for information users and at some point why would this not translate into a threat to libraries? After all, one of the reasons libraries were created was to provide easy access to knowledge. Sure, we can probably always remain involved as intermediaries for people who don't want to or who can't buy their books, but there is no reason to believe this cannot transform into a scenario where books are fully downloadable so that patrons don't have to come to our buildings anymore. In that case, even if people still like to get their books from us, we have to be ready to understand that the library as "Place" may become less relevant.
Moreover, and I am sure every librarian is sick of hearing this, why do people need to come to a library when they can just find it on Google? Many of us answer that question quite well, even though it can be exasperating. Yet, the fact that this assumption remains means something; that this perception of irrelevance is very strong, indeed.

Funding will not increase.
I can't see any possible scenario in the near term whereby public funding for libraries will increase. It would be nice if suddenly the economy took off again, overflowing the government revenue stream, but the current stress of energy prices, war and globalization do not bode well for the library funding situation. The recent Bertot, Jaeger, Langa and McClure study on libraries and the Internet hammers home the funding plight (and take a look at this memo, which in retrospect is very telling for its ommissions about where citizens are actually expected to access all that convenient government info). If library funding remains flat or trends downward, then why would we expect that our ability to remain relevant is not threatened? Less revenue means fewer librarians, less programming, less materials, less marketing- not a scenario that makes remaining relevant easy.

However, once you get through all the woe about having the government pile unfunded mandates onto libraries in the form of E-government, there is in my opinion an opportunity lurking. Sure, we don't get any funding from the Feds or the states to provide a public interface to their services, and we should shove that back at them as hard as we can. Recent work on ROI and Impact studies (here and here, for example) are great tools to use- we are completely able to show that money spent on public library services is well spent. Extraordinarily well spent. We should be working with our state libraries, our consortia and with our national organizations to pound this home relentlessly.
But, I think we can also do a lot for ourselves by creating services that make us absolutely indespensable to our local communities, the people who we really need to worry about. For if we are going to be forced to look outside the public funding stream to maintain high service levels, then it's these people we need to impress. We need to create a relationship with them and we need to develop the perception that our institutions are critical to the well being of our towns, counties and districts. After all, our "irrelevance" is a perception. Not a great one, but why should we not expect that we can't combat that by manufacturing new reasons for people to rely on us and to develop new sympathetic perceptions?

Take the E-government issue, for example, where there is clearly a gap between the end users and the products. I don't see why we can't use this service gap to strengthen our position. Certainly, just about every library with an internet connection has done their share of digging to locate information from their own state or local government. But how many of us have made the effort to know our state government websites backwards and forwards to the point that we actually know where a specific piece of information is located, rather than just knowing that a Google search will get us there? How many of us know which government agency oversees brownfields, or consumer protection, or securities trading? How many of us know how our local government runs or how it interacts with local businesses? To an experienced govdocs librarian, this is the bread and butter of their profession, understanding the structure, services and information flow of the public sector.
The near ubiquity of E-government makes it possible for us all to pursue this specialized level of expertise and I think we are missing a chance if we don't grab onto to it and use it as a way to demonstrate something beyond the ROI marketing efforts; that our people occupy a unique professional niche within local government services. Does your county auditor have property data and tax information online? Dig into it and master it because I guarantee people in your county would like to use it, but can't figure it out. Does your locality have businesses who may deal with the federal government? Then maybe you could help them find what they need from FAR (speaking of something that people can't figure out!). Or, maybe you could help nonprofits in your community look for Federal grants. There is a huge amount of help needed and we are just the people to do it. It only requires that we start thinking of ourselves as the "special libaries" for our own communities.

# posted by Steve @ Friday, October 13, 2006