What should I tell the librarians?

Next Sunday, I am the keynote speak at the California Association of Libarians conference. They want me to talk about how social media can help libraries.

What do you think I should tell them? If I use you idea, I will cite you.  I will even award you an honorary Dewey Decimal Number.

I have already received some great ideas from Ivan Chew, the Rambling Librarian of Singapore and an American who has asked me not to identify him despite his generosity to me. I have done my hoemwork and of course I've read David Weinberger's superb "Everything is Miscellaneous, but I find myself stuck in the solution.

We need public supported places where the conversations can be held.  We need places that guarantee everyone has access.  We need to encourage literacy and the joy of exploration through reading.

But what happens to the library as we move forward five or 10 or 20 years, when books can be dowmloaded into digital reading devices and people can simply pay or through Google obtain many of the world's greatest books, or movies or digital representations of art.

Is there still a place for  for these brick and mortar facilities? What do you think?  What is the future of the American library as you know it?

Comments

[Rohit]

I think the interesting challenge will be to separate the institute (the physical library) from the individual (the librarian). The need for a physical library may always be there, but will be necessarily limited because of space. The role of the librarian, however, is something that I believe has already started to make an interesting shift as the "Librarian 2.0" movement starts to see themselves as enablers of information. Check out this post I wrote a few months ago which generated some interesting comments from several librarians:

Librarians Blogging And The Birth Of Library 2.0

[Anne Johnson]

Don't know anything about American libraries - except that the one nearest me holds used book sales as a fundraiser .. people donate books, volunteers sort them, people buy bag fulls of books over a weekend about twice a year. And this is the only use I've made of that library, despite living a short walk from it for 7 years.

There will continue to be a role for libraries as a place for people to get exposure to words in writing on paper. As soon as I could read, every week my parents would visit the library in the small Scottish town near where we lived; we'd take home the maximum number of books allowed per visit, and I'd get through all of mine in a week.
Later, as an undergraduate and post graduate, the library and librarians were the source of instruction about what kind of information was available - libraries should (perhaps do ?) offer regular classes on how information is organized, what kinds of fact and fiction exist, how to find things you need or might enjoy. If the library can be regarded as a place for exercising the mind, broadening and deepening knowledge and appreciation of literature and the written word, and at least as necessary as playing fields and health clubs for exercising the body, then it has an ongoing place in the world.

[Geoff Livingston]

Shel, the last thing you need is a homework assignment, but I really think reading Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash would be very helpful. In it is a virtual Library of Congress avatar, a second life esque on steroids AI that has full access to the entire library's knowledge. Plus the book is a hoot, too (the lead character's name is Hiro Protagonist) that accurately predicted much of web 2.0.

[David]

Why not start with a little flick through Meredith Farkas' 'Social Software in Libraries'...it is unlikely to tell you anything new about social software, but will highlight how librarians are using it.

There is still a place for both a physical library and a librarian...they are just going to be very different from what we see today, and it is important that we don't necessarily clump the two together. Libraries as physical spaces have a very important role for bridging information divides that are created not only by money, but also by the skills of members of the public. Whilst many people see librarians as nolonger useful, that is a lot to do with the image of the librarian as someone putting books on shelves rather than the reality.

Librarians are information professionals in the information age. It is a great time to be a librarian as long as they don't get stuck in the traditional image of the librarian, and make sure they keep building on their information skills.

[Stefan Constantinescu]

Please encourage libraries to create some sort of mashup between Amazon and something like Slide Share.

No I'm not advocating plagiarism, but some of the best ideas I've had have been due to reading what others had to say about a certain topic.

Take techmeme for example. I could care less about the story on top that is in bold and large text, I click on each and every link under it labeled as "discussion" so I can see peoples' opinions on a piece of news. Their ideas may be obvious, but at the same time some new angle, some new approach at analyzing something will spur my creative juices to flow.

Imagine how powerful it would be if a university had their own Amazon like internal structure where students can rate and talk about books. Now imagine if students can attach the papers they have written that have used that book as a reference. Now imagine if that system wasn't in place for university ABC and university 123, but instead a resource for all the American universities to tap into?

Academia is still very pre 1.0 in terms of sourcing, indexing, card catalogs, it is complete and utter chaos. Why can't I just see what my fellow students and the students before me have written about a piece of work? Centralize those ideas so we don't have to recreate the wheel semester after semester. Seth Godin talked about this and called it the wikipedia gap: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/10/the-wikipedia-g.html

I'm a college drop out, just turned 21 years old yesterday. I left with one year to go. I've already sold my first company and now blog about mobile telecommunications. My job affords me a lifestyle in Finland where my dream is to work for Nokia. I left college because I didn't learn a single thing. Sure I could read a text book and spit out what was said in chapter 5 sub section 3, but since when did that ability of regurgitation become the definition of education?

[Shawn Lea]

Online book clubs. Blogs with excerpts of new books at the library and interviews with the authors of those books. Classes on how to look information up online. Better Web sites (most library Web sites suck). Twitter site exposing local cads who don't pay their library fines. (Just kidding, just kidding...)

Our local libraries are also becoming the place where people who don't have Web access at home are going to log on. The libraries are not working that captive audience enough. Why not "sell" them on the idea of checking out an actual book after they log off?

I also see that local libraries could be a clearinghouse for all kinds of community information. Right now you can get tax forms and such, but why couldn't I get forms to sign up Medicaid or CHIP or Meals on Wheels or...?

The point is that libraries are like other businesses right now - get the public interested in books in general and feed them information of interest to them that they want to receive and they will eventually connect the dots that you are where the books and the information are.

Speaking of book sales at libraries that Anne Johnson commented on above, I donated hard-back books when I was through reading them for many years - until I figured out they weren't stocking them in the library but selling them in these book sales. I was donating the book so someone else could read it for free and the library wouldn't have to buy it - not for them to get 50 cents on a book in mint condition I paid $25 for and read once. Sheesh.

[Douglas Karr]

I belong to the Indianapolis Marketing Book Club (your book was first with the original '2' of us!)

Books are such a focal point of business professionals. If libraries adopted and helped connect those professionals, it would be a great boon for their industry.

Virtual networks and social networking are fantastic, but we all need somewhere to actually land and do business with each other... seems to me that libraries could transform themselves into that physical networking point. And they could do it with books!

[Benoit]

The libraries will never go away. They server a purpose and I do not think the books will ever go away either. The answer is simple. I do not like reading a book on a digital device. It annoys me more then anything.

On a side note, the libraries gives me the opportunity to browse through the stack and find books that google couldn't have found by just browsing. I do this repeatedly, looking endlessly in the art stacks. How many artist I discovered this way is just amazing.

My two cents...

[Randi Mason, MLS]

Not sure what you should tell the librarians -- they seem to be following the social media trends with the same intensity as the communicators. Not surprisingly, you'll find it being referred to as library 2.0 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_2.0).

YALSA (Young Adult Librarian Services Association: http://www.ala.org/ala/yalsa/profdev/socialnetworking.cfm) not only has a blog (http://blogs.ala.org/yalsa.php - look at anything tagged 'Technology' for social networking posts), but has been podcasting, posting to Twitter (@yalsa), and posting bookmarks at del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/yalsa/) for awhile. Part of their Gaming panel took place in Second Life (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCFHhfoj788)

The American Library Association lists their social networking tools on their wiki (http://wikis.ala.org/readwriteconnect/index.php/Main_Page)

And then, there are resources like the LibraryCamp unconferences (http://librarycampnyc.wikispaces.com/) and people like Jessamyn West(http://www.librarian.net/talk/ , also MetaFilter), Jenny Levine http://theshiftedlibrarian.pbwiki.com/) and K.G. Schneider(http://freerangelibrarian.com/2007/10/16/do-you-use-meebo-me-or-aim-for-reference/) to pull from for resources.

Hope this helps
-r

[Kami Huyse]

Let's bring this down to the mircro level for a moment. The library is where my son is learning to love learning and books. We have a lot of books at home, but I can'r begin to duplicate the breadth and depth of choices offered by the local library.

From your global neighborhoods perspective, libraries are a mirco community for learning. A library's unique selling position is as a facilitator of the local community. No matter the march of technology, people need public places to connect. Recently, our local libraries in San Antonio went all wifi. People can still use the provided computers, but now the library can be an attractive alternative to Starbucks.

[Ellen Gerstein]

Remember that CLA is not strictly public libraries. This conference like most library conferences focuses on all flavors of libraries - academic and subject specialty librarian also make up their membership. The non-public librarians are just as hungry, if not more so, for ways to take on the new social media and apply it to their work.

[Mike Chapman]

I've done some volunteer work in libraries and came away from it realizing that they play a key role in giving the underprivileged members of our society access to the larger world that is on line. Kids were in competition to get on the limited number of computers. Let's use libraries and librarians to reach out to those who are left out of social media because they don't have computers at home. Public libraries, in particular, struggle to receive funding. Let's ally with them in that battle and recruit them to ensure net neutrality.

[Justin Thorp]

It's tough... 98% of the reason why I went to the physical library in college was because the coffee shop was in the same building and its where all the brainy girls hung out at.

And... most of the classes about good information finding habits were a joke.

[Caroline]

I have only been a librarian since 1991, but I have heard this type of talk from the beginning. Just as VHS was not the death of the film industry, libraries as physical space will always have a place in our culture. The Google book project is wonderful, but there is nothing like the look and feel of a paperback novel, especially when you're curled up in bed with your cat and cup of hot chocolate. Also, the high expectations of ten years ago for the e-book industry have gone unfulfilled, except in the niche market of academia (where most students do research remotely).

Blogging and social networking are simply one more way to distribute content. True, nobody knows what new distribution channels the next decade will bring, but I'm not getting rid of my turntable, cassette player, or bookshelves any time soon.

Looking forward to meeting you in Long Beach next week!

[Marjorie]

I love books and can absolutely swoon in romantic admiration for them, but I'm also excited about the future of libraries in the digital age.

I do think that people's perception of the librarian is different from the reality in most cases; however, a great number of libraries are embracing the digital revolution and are introducing "innovations" such as self-checkout terminals and automatic check-ins so that they can focus on what they do best, i.e, sift through the masses of information that's available in print and online to find the really useful stuff for their patrons. [Farmington (N.M.) Public Library is doing just that.]

They've also been offering classes on everything from using the Internet to conducting genealogy research on the Web to learning how to use office software tools.

Some libraries (especially those in smaller, rural regions) are still conducting business the old-fashioned way, but thanks to the Gates Foundation and a generation of new librarians eager to harness the power of technology to benefit their patrons, most public libraries have become staunch advocates for participating in Web 2.0.

And, of course, as several have mentioned previously, given the rising number of immigrants into the U.S., not to mention the working/low-income class, libraries are also continuing to fulfill their traditional mission of providing access to information to every member of our democratic society.

Cheers,
Marjorie

p.s. Donations to libraries are almost always used to fund library collection development. The vast majority of books donated to the library are popular materials (of which it probably has plenty of copies already) and textbooks (which are almost always outdated). If you want a library to put a donated item into its actual collection, you'll need to give it to the librarian with that request. The librarian will then review the material to see if it can be put into the collection (there's a whole list of criteria, none of which have to do with censorship, in case you're interested) and then make a decision whether or not to catalogue it.

Hope that helps!

[shel israel]

Why is it that so many comments are coming in from people who do not give the whole name or where they are coming at this from?

[Aaron Tan]

Libraries will shift their focus on collections to the creation of knowledge through conversations. They'll do this through the Social Web where they participate in conversations in the community and supported by "library resources" as we know it. Conversations are preserved in community repositories in the forms of blogs, wikis etc, together with formal institutional knowledge. They will be a less need for physical bounded books when e-paper becomes ubiquitous. Print on-demand will be commonplace and libraries will be spaces for conversations both online and offline. Most importantly, the library institution will be decentralized.