Blog about Libraries

First off, thanks for the invite to your blog. Hey Ned, I'm Mike.

I read thru your post about competition -- who are we competing against, etc. Lately here, we've been talking (that's what librarians do, man) about "trends" that are important to the future of libraries. All of this is in the quest to determine "what kind of librarian will we need in 5-10 years". Interesting stuff. I came out with a series of economic statements about competition and our advantages and disadvantages.

I said that the library will lead the university in a convergence of resources, repositories, teaching & learning tools, and discovery tools (federated, of course), because no other agency on campus sees the need or has the means. I think that this takes place in a competitive environment. If we recognize that the above statement is true, then we will pursue if it is in the primary business model of the library. I mean, I'm not advocating that we pursue lecturing students on bioethics...that's already covered and we would suffer a massive competitive disadvantage. But in this area of resources, organization of info, teaching & learning support and discovery...we da man!

An interesting session I went to at CIL '06 was about environmental scanning. There was one statement that really stuck out about libraries within the marketplace. Alane Wilson stated that the OCLC Perception Study revealed that people trust libraries about as much as they trust the Internet (specifically Google if I remember correctly). But her phrasing was particularly telling; she said, "this is death, from a marketing standpoint." The message clearly was that libraries are failing to differentiate between themselves and the competition.

I don't dispute the marketer's perspective. On the other hand, is the viewpoint that libraries are actually competing with businesses really accurate? Do we honestly think we can compete with bookstores? With videostores? With GOOGLE? After all, if they don't move product, if they don't sell ad space, then they go out of business. If libraries fail within the marketplace, they risk becoming irrelevent, but it will take a lot longer for their funding to actually dissappear than it would for a local business. However, that doesn't mean we should not be doing our level best to get the best return on taxpayer dollars. That is just plain responsible stewardship of their money. In other words, we do have a responsibility to get the best possible return on the taxpayers' investment, but not at the expense of other organizations and/or businesses.

There is a subtle but important difference between thinking of libraries as being in competition with businesses and thinking of libraries as having the potential to own a particular set of niches within their community. This means making libraries as indispensible to their communities as possible, while at the same time fitting in well with the surroundings as a service provider, as a community partner and as a community builder. Libraries should do this by defining their uniqueness and by selling it to the public tirelessly. That is different than the adversarial perspective of being in competition with businesses and other organizations.

So, what does it mean to "own" niches? It depends on the community. It depends on the tax base. It depends on the leadership capabilities and talents of the personnel in the library. And certainly, it depends on the community itself, the needs it presents and where the library fits in to fill those needs. Those niches are there, I guarantee it. Maybe it means becoming the civic center of a community. Maybe it means developing partnerships with local artists, non-profits, or businesses. Maybe it means becoming the research arm of the local government. Maybe it means taking on responsibility for the local 211 service. There are hundreds and hundreds of scenarios that are probably right for many, many libraries. They just have to have the energy, courage, and creativity to make them happen.

I have been playing with Netvibes a lot over the last several weeks and even though I think it is still a pretty raw tool, at the same time it strikes me as an example of how the web I first experienced is...well, dead. Back in 1994 when a visual and hypertext Internet first began with web browsers, it wasn't long before the previous generation of tools was killed off (what did that take, a year or two?) Instead of using Gopher, which represented information in a linear fashion, with html it was possible to imbed links, images and some graphic design within pages to enrich and add value to the product. This enabled the user to be even more of an explorer, led around the web by their interests. As they read one entry they might finish it or they might follow its links elsewhere and who knows where it would lead? And that was pretty cool.

Fast foward to the present, where the endless (aimless?) wandering is still kind of fun, but at the same time less novel, and perhaps even less desirable. Back in 1994 linking and traveling was the thing, but people use the internet differently today. Instead of wandering, instead of crapshooting their way around the open web, people are more sophisticated about what information they want, about where they like to get it, and about how they like to receive it, organize it and store it. The increased quantity of useful information on the web has created the market for tools that organize and manage the stuff available through the pipeline.

I have about nine minutes before I fall asleep, so I'll make this short.
Having read blogs about libraries for some time, I am tired of just making comments and have decided it's time to be a poster.

Let's get this sucker off the ground, eh?