Holy Crap, What Virtual Reference Can Teach AI?

This post was done in about 10 minutes…so consider it a conversation starter that needs input.

I had a very interesting conversation talking about project ideas for AI and academic libraries. It quickly focused on AskA Librarian services and good ‘ol digital reference/virtual reference. Imagine, the conversation went, we could take a person’s question and run it through chatGPT and then prompt librarians to work with the person with the AI prompt.

I jumped back about 30 years to discussions of “sandwich interfaces” that would search against a database of previous questions and answers. Then we could look for different types of questions asked, and which would work better with AI. Could we remake QuestionPoint (now LibAnswers https://springshare.com/libanswers/ ) in a librarians driven augmented intelligence function. One that could drive collection development and interface design? Take the virtual reference work o Conway and Radford and join it with Soo Young Rieh’s work in learning and search interfaces!

This then dove into previous studies, like Joe Janes’ work on how many times librarians use reference interviews online, McClure’s Correct Answer fill rate (and the infamous 55% rule), Makiko Maiwa’s research into reference questions asked at different points in an information literacy process, even the work the MacArthur Foundation funded on Reference Extract and the use of Q&A archives to develop credibility scores to integrate into search engines.

It was a sudden moment that showed that a lot of the virtual reference work of the 90’s and early “aughts” could be a very useful framework for the integration of generative AI into reference work. Imagine training large language models on reference data (deidentified). Imagine feeding this type of high value data into generative process to speed the development of research documentation, and improve search interfaces on large databases.

Don’t like chatGPT, we could use open AI and large language model software to dig into the depths of all that human expert labor in Q&A and see what emerges.

I made a joke about throwing chatGPT into random spots of my old papers and resubmitting them. Seriously, a first take at new titles for old papers:

[means of evaluating chatGPT output and prompt engineering] Kasowitz, A., Bennett, B., & Lankes, R. David (2000). Quality standards for digital reference consortia. Reference and User Services Quarterly, 39(4), 355-363.

[determining the utility of responsiveness in conversational modes of AI interactions] Lankes, R. David & Shostack, P. (2002). The necessity of real-time: Fact and fiction in digital reference systems. Reference and User Services Quarterly, 41(4), 350-355.

[Identifying attributes and structures in generative AI prompts] Belanger, Y.M., Lankes, R. David, & Shostack, P.L. (2003). Managing data collection for real time reference: Lessons from the AskERIC Live! experience. Internet Reference Services Quarterly, 8(1/2), 137-149.

[applicability of human mediated Q&A systems for ReferenceAI] Pomerantz, J., Nicholson, S., & Lankes, R. David (2003). Digital reference triage: An investigation using the Delphi Method into the factors influencing question routing and assignment. The Library Quarterly, 73(2), 103-120.

[utility of reference databases of questions and answers for the training of large language models in AI] Nicholson, S. & Lankes, R. David (2007). The Digital Reference Electronic Warehouse (DREW) project: Creating the infrastructure for digital reference research through a multi-disciplinary knowledge base. Reference and User Services Quarterly, 46(3), 45-59.

[transitioning human mediated systems to hybrid human/AI systems for credible reference] Lankes, R. David (2008). Collecting conversations in a massive scale world. Library Resources & Technical Services, 52(2), 12-18.

[just keep the same title] Lankes , R. David (1998). The virtual reference desk: Building human expertise into information systems. In Preston, C. (Ed.), 1998 proceedings of the 61st annual meeting (vol. 35). (pp. 81-90). Silver Spring, MD: The American Society for Information Science.

[same title] Pomerantz, J., & Lankes, R. David (2003). Taxonomies for automated question triage in digital reference. In C. C. Marshall, G. Henry & L. Delcambre (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2003 joint conference on digital libraries, May 27-31 2003, Rice University, Houston, TX. (pp. 119-121). Washington DC: IEEE Computer Society.

Reinvigorate Reference Extract?

https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/80908278

https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/3335162

Ah man, this could be so fun. At the very least it is the beginning of a better narrative than “libraries are doomed,” “reference is dead,” etc.

Is It Time for a Second Edition of the Atlas?

Greetings Readers and users of the Atlas of New Librarianship, I need your thoughts. Next year is the 10th anniversary of its publishing. I’ve been talking with my editor at MIT Press and have a couple of options.

1. Ignore it.
2. Write a new foreword and perhaps a nice on the cover, or 
3. Develop a second edition.

And here’s where I need your honest input.

A second edition would be a lot of work (it would have to be submitted by the end of the summer), but would it be useful, particularly with the New Librarianship Field Guide out there now? I know some of you use the Atlas for classes, so I am really interested in your opinion.

The “New Normal” Agenda for Librarianship

This week the scheduled Real Time sessions ended at librarian.SUPPORT. While it wasn’t intended to, the series of discussions and presentations really sparked some ideas for libraries moving forward. I suppose it was inevitable as we started with Matt Finch talking about scenario and foresight planning. On the Real Time session with Sari Feldman, Hallie Rich, and Galen Schuerlin we talked about advocacy and connecting to communities in a time of pandemic. As part of that we had a little discussion of the phrase “The New Normal.” It’s a phrase that’s right up there with “in trying times like these,” in the “speed to cliché.”

We were noting that it is almost always presented in a negative frame. That is the new normal is expressed as what we will lose – loss of jobs, loss of budget, loss of human contact, etc. But what if we looked at in the positive frame…what is it that we want to be normal after this pandemic? We all acknowledge that things are going to change, I feel an obligation and an urgency to shape that change.

What is our agenda as librarians and the libraries we run on behalf of our communities?

Before I list my proposed items for that agenda, I ask a favor: keep reading. I want to explain where these come from, but more importantly, why having an affirmative and proactive agenda for libraries is vital. This cannot be about trying to predict where things are going to shake out and then running to show our value in that world. It has to be about librarians fighting for social change based on our fundamental and enduring values. There is no doubt that the “how” of libraries will change. I feel now (prepare for another cliché) more than ever the “why cannot.”

I will also emphasize that this is an agenda for the impact libraries should seek collectively. That is, it is not an agenda for how we run or operate libraries (though there will be obvious impacts). This is an agenda for libraries to work toward for a new normal in our communities. How we get there (open access, improved working condition for library workers, new standards for library science education, etc.) is vital and important, but I feel separate.

As one example, we must lobby and work toward universal broadband. This comes from our enduring value of access to information. Yet the pandemic has shown us that the way libraries to this point have worked for universal access, that is by being internet points of connection with WiFi in our facilities or loaning out cellular hotspots is no longer enough. We have to leave our buildings and ensure real national resources and policy is in place so our provision of the internet in the library is completely irrelevant. A big change to how, but not to why.

So what do I see as an agenda for a New Normal that libraries must work toward?

  1. Universal Broadband: Sheltering at home and closing schools and libraries has demonstrated that the internet must be a utility and available to all. The digital divide is wide, unjust, and the damage it is causing in this pandemic age is only highlighting the ongoing damage lack of access has caused for decades to rural and low income families and citizens. Some things to work toward:
    1. Classify and regulate the internet as a utility
    2. Build out rural access to broadband, including transforming libraries into Internet Service Providers
    3. Remove data caps
    4. Restore network neutrality
  2. Workforce Development and Training: At no time in our history have so many people been out of work and the unemployment rate rivals the Great Depression. While we all hope that will change rapidly once lockdowns have been lifted (though that will take many months to complete) there is an acute need now to support people looking for jobs and re-skilling. Libraries must work with higher education, other government agencies, and the private sector to not only get people back to work, but help people find a place in a new knowledge economy.
    1. Deploy adult education services like high school equivalency
    2. Ensure certified school libraries in K-12 schools to ensure literacy skills needed for vocational education as well as college preparation
    3. Team with higher education to support online learners in physical spaces
    4. Provide single service access points to government workforce services
    5. Provide permanent addresses and registration services for social welfare programs
    6. Develop strong prison library services including transition to community connections
  3. Expanding Voter Access to Democratic Participation: Voting is crucial to a well-functioning democracy but is insufficient for a healthy democracy (representative or direct). Eligible citizens must have access to the ballot and access to information on the issues and candidates they are voting on. They must also have transparency in the working of government at all levels to ensure it is the will of the people (all the people) being carried out. Libraries should be a safe place for contentious debate, and facilitators of a community dialog about the future and greater good.
    1. Develop active voter registration and identification services
    2. Host public forums on key community issues
    3. Develop and maintain community strategic priorities
  4. Ensure the Health and Well Being of Our Communities: In the immediate future, librarians must be key partners to public health in developing contact tracing efforts. The goal of contact tracing shouldn’t just be about surveillance, it must be about service. Librarians have not only a background in collecting and organizing information, they do so in a principled way that values privacy and is devoted to service. Librarians have a trusted relationship with their communities. When someone is sick, it is not just about finding out who they have been in contact with, it is keeping them home which means access to food and the outside world. Libraries cannot only track the infected but provide comfort and support.In a longer-term libraries need to form tight partnerships with mental and physical health agencies to guide community members to needed resources.
    1. Provide service-oriented contact tracing services to town, county, and state health departments
    2. Form partnerships with physical and mental health services and partners
    3. Provide forums highlighting wellness programs and ensure such programs protect community privacy
  5. Essential Crisis Response Capacity: In hurricanes, flooding, and civil unrest libraries have provided vital services to communities (academic, school, public, special, all types of libraries). The same must be true in this pandemic where our buildings cannot be a refuge. This pandemic has shown that the essential things in a crisis are food, water, medicine, and information.
    1. Build in emergency provisions to the copyright law to allow for rapid research access to relevant scholarship on a crisis topic (virology for example) and continued education services to home bound citizens
    2. Build citizen information services that not only disseminate trustworthy information on a crisis, but verifies the information and provides community feedback to decision makers

A few notes on these goals before we proceed. Libraries cannot achieve these goals alone. They all require strong alliances with government, industry, not for profits, and citizen participation. These may be part of our New Normal Library Agenda, but they are for the betterment of communities, not advancing libraries. While these are not ideological, they are political, and we should not pretend to be neutral in our goals. The right and the left can argue about how we achieve universal broadband (government policy like eRate or market forces and competition), but we must demand practical approaches to getting it done. The market has gone so far in say universal broadband, but as we saw with rural electrification in the Great Depression, government has to step forward. Lastly, these need to be done in alignment with our professional ethics – striving for diversity and inclusion first and foremost.

Being Proactive

In 2014 I wrote a piece on the dangers of libraries, public libraries in particular, expanding their missions too far to meet the needs of a community. We can’t be a single institution making up for all the inadequacies and inequities of our communities or nation. Now, as when I wrote this, more and more government services are retreating from the public sphere. Physical offices and real people on the phone have been replaced by automated phone trees and websites. Libraries, in many cases, have stepped in to try and provide service.

Librarians now must answer questions on tax preparation, the census, employment support, and a host of government services. All too often we stretch tight resources ever farther, and risk being a place to answer all questions…poorly. We must partner and advocate to fill these gaps. To build strong partnerships, we must be clear on what we value and what we contribute.

Effective librarianship means acknowledging our strengths and what we bring to the table. It also means advocating for the well-being of our communities beyond our doors and functions. Health information is not just the role of medical librarians, it is the role of the library to bring the health department with community health advocates. Why health and not just focus on “knowledge and learning?” Well, as is clear from Maslow’s hierarchy, people are not able to lean if they are scared, hungry, and sick. To ignore the need to keep people healthy, our mission on learning and community is hollow. Public libraries are not viable institutions if the community is unemployed and without taxes. We have seen this clearly in the English libraries where volunteer libraries have repeatedly demonstrated the need for professional librarians and real budgets. In effect to protect our self-interest, we must protect our communities.

Libraries can no longer pretend we are apart from the full spectrum of needs in the community, that we can remain neutral in the face of inequity that divides these communities, nor can we pretend that we can be the fabled savior acting alone to save communities…we are our communities. Librarians are citizens, voters are stewards of collections, experts are part of our true collection. To say we are about literacy and not partner with teachers means our dedication is to what we do, not what needs to be done from the perspective of the community. To say we are about community and only be a source of ebooks in a pandemic is hypocrisy. Yes, our fellow citizens need ebooks, but they need compassion, connection, and community dedicated to their full well-being.

A new normal is coming. Will this new normal be founded on what we lost, or what we seek to gain?

In the dark ages of European history, people lived literally in the ruins of the Roman Empire. Every day as they sought to survive disease, famine, and violence they were reminded of what they no longer had. It paralyzed societal development. It took a renaissance that respected and learned from the past, but confidently (and yes arrogantly at times) was dedicated to moving forward.

Will our new normal be libraries half empty by social distancing, or community hubs that extend beyond our socially distanced footprint to the kitchens and living rooms of every one of our community members? Will we tell of the time when we provided internet access in our buildings to over 90% of US citizens, or will we tell the tales of how we won with our allies universal access for all? Will we wait for a vaccine as our staff gets furloughed, cars park in our parking lots for WiFi, and we endanger our most valuable assets, our staff, in curb side drop offs? Or will we partner with departments of health, technology companies, and foundations to ensure disease is tracked and the sick are cared for?

We must fight for a new normal with our collections, our buildings, but mostly, with our expertise. Librarians by title, by education, or by spirit must bring about a new normal that pushes ahead society. It must minister to those seeking meaning. It must support better decision making in the wake of this pandemic and in preparation for the next crisis. 

I am making this document available for comment on Google Docs to see if we as a community can refine and improve it. Please join the conversation at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1z4urUctLkAf7yYmQt5SOVf1tmJTnbmz2_BoXWms1KTA/edit?usp=sharing

Thank s to all who took the time to add comments. They are extremely helpful. I’ve turned off commenting for now so I can incorporate them into a version 2.

The Library as a Movement

A conversation between Marie Østergaard, Library Director Aarhus Public Libraries in Denmark and R. David Lankes, Director of the University of South Carolina’s School of Library and Information Science on the idea that the library is a movement of communities members, librarians, politicians, partners and more.

If you would rather just listen, here’s an MP3 version.

Audio only of the conversation

Library Renaissance: Building the International Knowledge School

tl;dr version:

Two years ago I did a world tour where I talked about a librarianship based on knowledge and community engagement. I ended up doing a lot more listening than talking. I met amazing librarians, I found common cause, and ideas of how we all could work closer together. So, now it’s time to bring together those seeking a new librarianship into an emerging school of thought. We’re having a planning meeting in Florence, Italy on September 18th. If you are unable to join us in person, we will also be bringing in folks virtually. At that meeting a group of amazing librarians, library organizations, and partners will plan a sort of international progressive conference. Want to play?

Full Version:

There is an emerging school of thought around librarians, libraries, and their relationship to their communities. This school of thought seeks to go beyond data, materials, and information to knowledge, helping people make meaning in their lives, and focusing on communities making smarter decisions. A school of thought goes beyond a smattering of innovative services, or single lighthouse agencies. It is a comprehensive approach to a discipline that ties in theory and practice. The power of these schools of thought can be seen in architecture (modernism that transformed urban living with skyscrapers), economics (changing how countries see debt and how to build global financial marketplaces), to the arts (impressionism), and research (naturalistic inquiry, critical theory, postmodernism).

Right now, this new school of thought in librarianship can be seen in a FabLab driving through the Netherlands, an advocacy campaign in the United States focused on transformation, on new service models in the cities of Brazil, in an atlas of new librarianship, in the advocacy MOOCs of Canada, and a distributed digital library master’s degree in the European Union, and a new public square in Pistoia. It is being shaped in the field, the classroom, and the halls of academia. It is championed by an international cast of librarians, scholars, government workers, and library supporters. The work has resulted in numerous publications, videos, and Internet sites.

There is a loose and growing network of people across the globe working to push the field of librarianship forward. This network exists in email threads, Tweets, Facebook groups, and conference sidebar conversations. It is time to pull this network together, forge a common narrative for the future of libraries, and produce an actionable agenda to equip global change agents to enact new library service in communities across the face of the Earth. While this change will happen with and within existing associations, institutions, and agencies, there needs to for a separate conversation to share knowledge, tactics, and resources to make these changes possible.

To this end, I am proposing a series of national “inventories” leading to an international academy where delegates of the national events share and learn with colleagues to build a strong collaborative network. The shape and nature of this network will emerge from the process and is seen not as an organization or “place,” but rather as an inter-personal connection for projects, mentoring, and support. The ultimate goal of the network is to constitute the new school of thought around a librarianship of knowledge and meaning over materials and buildings. The ultimate goal of the school of thought, what in South Carolina we have been calling the Knowledge School, is to improve society through helping our communities make smarter decisions.

As you can see there are a lot of details to be worked out. However, we already have a number of resources developed from text books, to curricula, to project plans, to documentaries. We also have initial buy in of several international organizations. On September 18th we will be gathering (in person and virtually) in Florence, Italy to plan for the international events.

I’ll be keeping folks up to date here as details and concrete plans emerge.

If you and/or your organization are interested in helping organize this endeavor let me know: [email protected]

Fear of the Dark: Crafting a Security Narrative in Libraries

[tl;dr version: Rather than simply fight the current false dichotomy of security versus freedom, librarians should craft an alternative narrative around security through knowledge.]

We fear the unknown. It is a truism from fairy tales to military strategy. The other, the alien, the undefined sets people on edge. It is also apparent in the recent reaction to the Paris attacks and the attacks in Africa and the Middle East. It is leading to a dangerous and misguided narrative around migrants and Muslims.

For some this is a narrative built on racism. For some it is clearly fear-mongering for political gain. It ignores the facts (such as 18-24 month background checks-more review than any other entry point into our nation) and frankly ugly truths (a clear bias of one religious affiliation over another).

However while the “fear the Muslim” narrative is abhorrent and must be challenged for the good of the soul of this nation, I want to talk about a parallel narrative. It is one that librarians can have a powerful role in countering and in crafting an alternative narrative that ensures the values we hold as a profession. We must directly challenge the narrative of freedom versus security.

The security narrative flattens the complexity of preventing harm to citizens as a choice: give up some freedoms to ensure security. Give us (the government) your private information, your freedom of transport and right to assemble and we will take care of you. These freedoms, so goes the argument, are not really losses since if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. The narrative is a false dichotomy: it is either freedom or security.

The primary flaw in this narrative is the belief that security ONLY comes from restrictions of rights and freedoms. This is a misguided as the racist and reactionary belief that terrorism only comes from the Muslim faith, ignoring both the overwhelming number of Muslims that condemn violence and the terrorism perpetrated by Christians and other religions. Terrorism has nothing to do with a love of God, but of a hatred of our fellow man.

Librarians must craft a narrative of security through knowledge. Every day I work amongst Muslims and Buddhists, Christians and Jews, atheists and deists and I’m sure a bit of Wicca thrown in as well. I stand shoulder to shoulder with a diverse body of faculty staff and students every day. A large portion of our student body comes from India and China. We have students from the Middle East and the former Soviet Block. I stand without fear because we are all a part of a common community bound around knowledge.

Many will rightfully point out that this is a privileged community. In essence I stand with people able to afford and have access to higher education. It is a fair point. So I ask, instead of this invalidating my point, why not ensure equitable access to knowledge and learning to all as a way of countering hate, and insecurity.

Our libraries – school, academic, public, special, all libraries – should be platforms where communities can come together to learn, and learn side by side. Libraries should craft a narrative that says the most secure societies are ones that learn together. Stop watching who I call or what I buy, and start helping me to learn. Give me a stake in opportunity (in this nation and beyond), give me something to lose

Neighborhood watches shouldn’t be citizens looking out for strangers, but libraries working to introduce strangers and transform them into allies. Librarians can’t simply fight the surveillance state, they must model an alternative where openness of debate and ideas brings security. As librarians we shouldn’t be seen as simply obstructing the work of security, we should be seen as pillars of security through knowledge, learning, and community engagement. Library cards instead of ID cards. Databases of articles instead of databases of Muslims. In times of crisis libraries are places of refuge AND places that fight disinformation and paranoia with facts and research.

This is a constructive narrative that transcends political point of view or party. It is a narrative that says to our communities (towns, colleges, schools) we are keeping you safe by making you smarter. Dispelling the unknown, the dark woods, the other, the alien is a click and visit away. We are havens not to escape misinformation and fear, but havens from ignorance where you can embrace your fellow community members and build a strong diverse community.

On Productivity: Introducing a Blog Series on Reinventing the Academic Library

[Today, and over the next two days, I will be posting ideas related to Reinventing the Academic Library focusing on public services in supporting research-oriented universities. I believe these ideas have currency in different types of libraries, but for this series I wanted to be more tightly focused. I begin this series with some thoughts on a key mission of research libraries: scholarly communication. It will be followed by a series of mini-proposals for new services. The goal is not some mass implementation of specific projects, but rather to stir up conversation around the mission of the academic library.]

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Being Quite Prolific

A faculty colleague at another institution remarked that I was “quite prolific.” My first reaction was to disagree. I am surrounded by highly productive colleagues that regularly speak, publish books and journal articles, and push forward on grants so I may be used to some intimidating productivity. However, and I apologize in advance for the bragging, I looked at my year, and I can’t disagree. In the past year I have:

  • Published an audio book based on a previous self published book (Expect More)
  • Published a new book (Boring Patient) and an accompanying audio book
  • Released Expect More as a free download (leading to over 7 thousand downloads)
  • Signed a new book contract with MIT Press
  • Taught a MOOC for 600 people
  • Helped organize an intensive continuing education program for 10 states
  • Won a new IMLS grant
  • Gave 10 presentations including 1 international

Oh, and that was through ablative chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant and on top of blogging and my normal teaching load (but not my service load – bless you fellow faculty). To be sure I am pushing out a lot of blog posts this week to clear the decks for major work on my new book (more on that Friday).

So, not bad. However, if you begin to poke at that record something very interesting emerges. All the books published (audio and written) were self-published. Of those 10 presentations, 6 were given online, and only 2 in an academic venue. Don’t get me wrong. Each of these took time and effort, but not the same effort of a journal publication. Also, the production length of each is MUCH shorter than traditional academic publication.

The Audio books were produced in three weeks. The Boring Patient was drafted in two months. The presentations were normally put together in a few hours a week before the event. Compare this to say the production of The Atlas of New Librarianship. It took over a year to write, and then 13 months to produce through MIT Press (from submission of the manuscript to printing).

Also, the nature of the work is very different. The ideas in these pieces are often formative. That is, I am putting ideas out for consideration and discussion at a much earlier stage. In essence, my presentations are what I am thinking about now, not summative presentations on previous work. Rather than finishing a work and then submitting it to peer review, I am throwing out ideas for peer discussion, and then adapting and adopting.

My point here is that while in numbers it looks like I am more productive, what is really happening is that my production is more representative of the entire scholarly process, not just finished research. Those presentations turn into blog posts, turn into book chapters, turn into grant proposals. Instead of just publishing the chapters, you are seeing all of it.

Now a good part of this is a factor of being a tenured full professor. I have the liberty to publish in alternative venues than peer reviewed journals. I have the liberty to experiment with self-publishing. But a good part of it is a new affordance of technology – scholarly conversations can happen online in fast forward.

Scholarship in Fast Forward

This became very obvious in a recent interchange between Lane Wilkinson and nina de jesus on libraries, institutionalized oppression, and the Age of Enlightenment. What struck me about this discussion was: the topic, the depth of reasoning in the pieces, and the speed of the analysis and conversation. I could easily see these pieces published sequentially in a scholarly journal – one reacting to the other. Yet this process would have taken months, if not years of submission, publication, submission, publication. Instead it was happening on blogs linked by twitter in days. Lane is frankly impressive this way. Just take a look at the depth he goes into with ACRL’s proposed information literacy standards framework. This level of feedback and broadcast thought used to be reserved for conference cycles, not daily cycles.

It would be simplistic to say that technology is accelerating the pace of the scholarly discourse. There is still a huge role for peer review and formal publishing, and those take time, resources, and a hell of a lot of effort. I think we are seeing technology change cultural norms of scholarship, and dip deeper and deeper into the academic foment – the dynamic process where hypothesis, studies, agenda, and outright hunches are generated before formalization, execution, and review.

This push into process, and making the supposed transparency of the research process a reality, is exciting. It also brings with it fundamental questions for scholars and librarians alike (not that those are mutually exclusive groups). There is the obvious question of metrics and measuring impact as well as validity. There is also the role the library plays in capturing and preserving that foment. Do we need a right to be forgotten in scholarly chatter and blogging? Librarians have long been at the birth of ideas (feeding researchers through reference and resources) and at the entombment of research (gathering and fixing research in static documents). Now we are presented with the vast rich chaos of the interim which to me is a fundamental area of investigation for librarians.

Just as school librarians have taken a once passive role as keeper of books & supporters of curriculum, and transformed it into an active role owning (and teaching) information literacy, so too does the advancement of scholarly communication present a huge opportunity to academic librarians. In addition to teaching people how to access and assess the scholarly record, we should be shaping the very process of scholarly communication. Instead of advocating for open access and then creating silos of document morgues called institutional repositories, we should be building cross-institutional curated publishing platforms hand in hand with disciplinary scholars.

What’s Coming Next

To follow up these thoughts I’ve put together a series of mini-service proposals that talk about how we might reshape services in libraries supporting research intensive universities. These are intended to “get the creative juices flowing,” and getting folks to think differently about academic libraries. They are more sketches than finished pieces.

It has been my experience that aside from selling librarians on these ideas, it is equally challenging to convince those who oversee and use the library. A student of mine who was directing a library, saw the library as needing a major update, and a greater focus on service and the undergraduate experience. She was shocked when she did focus groups with students, asking them what they thought of the library. “It’s fine.” “It’s a great place to study.” When asked what else they needed? “Not much…more outlets.”

The problem she encountered is not that people (students, faculty) were dissatisfied with the library, they simply expected too little from it. In many cases, faculty and students simply discounted the library, because they didn’t see how it could get better. In fact they had never even thought of HOW it could be better. This is not surprising as it is not their job to see how we can get better- it is our job as librarians to dream bigger and push our communities to want more in order to accomplish more. These mini-proposals are put together to start that conversation.

I leave you with one last thought. These proposals do not go into detail what libraries are already doing nor do they cover the range of potential services (data curation, digital humanities support, creating assessment centers, hosting community/university incubators). That is not a value judgement. However, there proposals, or any new services, can no longer be added on top of what we are already doing. The academic library of the future is not simply the library of yesterday PLUS. We must take a serious and hard look at what we no longer need to do.

An Assured Path to Irrelevance or An Outright Impeachment of Our Basic Principles

In a previous post I talked about a potential path of disaster for public libraries. The TL;DR version is that if public librarians and their libraries seek to be all things to all people they will ultimately be stretched too thin and become the poster children for ineffective government. This is particularly true in light of shrinking services by government agencies. Within that argument (or rather the solution provided) are the seeds of a massive disruption in public services in general. In this post I’m going to expand on those seeds. I am going to start this discussion of public services in the obvious place: collections.

The past 6 decades have seen an unprecedented change in how librarians view collections. Libraries, by and large, have been fixated on documents (or more broadly “document like objects”). The documents were physical, fixed, and owned. If a library wanted to add something to a collection they bought it, they described it, and they placed it.

Libraries then began to expand from documents to other media (to be precise there have always been libraries that collected varying media – I’m talking about the majority) like films, audio recordings, and eventually tapes, CDs and such. Still, the model was of objects owned, described, and placed.

A massive shift in how we conceptualized library collections occurred with the advent of databases. While at first CD’s were little more than digital version of paper reference resources databases quickly represented a massive change in collection content and library business models. In terms of content with the advent of journal databases libraries made available huge quantities of materials that librarians had only a cursory knowledge of. Librarians were now advanced searchers, often discovering what they library “held” right alongside our members.

Electronic databases, CDs, then online databases, also represented a massive departure in the business model of libraries. Where once the majority of resources in the collection were owned, now the vast majority of items (counting articles as items) were rented through fixed term licenses. We are only now feeling the full repercussions of this shift as these licenses have become increasingly expensive; swallowing the collection budgets and more of many institutions.

The Internet was (is) the next major expansion of the concept of collection in libraries. Now anything anyone could put on a page or attach to a URL was part of the collection. That actually wasn’t the biggest conceptual shift though (after all by this point librarians were into discovering resources without previous knowledge of them). No, the biggest shift was that the Internet was not populated with just document like objects, but with services, software, and capabilities. Our collections went from documents, to documents and media, to documents and Facebook, and Google, and Twitter, and real-time video.

While librarians have not fully adjusted to these changes, nor integrated them together (and major issues of preservation still remain a huge challenge), for the most part libraries have successfully transformed to encompass the idea of a library collection as dynamic, open, and important. With each change came stress and discord. Each step turned into a flurry of experimentation and eventual standardization. But on the whole, what once looked like a change that would end libraries is now seen as beneficial. Librarians have not only changed how they see the collection but we have brought our communities along with us. People expect to access databases, and the Internet as well as physical collections. No one really questions any more the use of Google at the reference desk. No one bats an eye when public access computing incorporates gaming alongside Lexus/Nexus.

So we all deserve a big pat on the back. It has been an astounding half-century plus of change, but we did it. We are a different profession because of it, and we are relevant. Yea! No one should underestimate the scale of this disruptive change. But I have bad news…it is time to do it again – massive disruptive change that is.

As our collections have changed, we have added services to our communities (schools, universities, towns, firm, etc.). Where once we provided faster more efficient access to physical items, we added question answering, eventually question answering both at a desk, embedded in teams, and online. We added instruction; first about the library (bibliographic instruction), but eventually around information literacy. We added readers’ advisory, story time, and more recently maker spaces, fishing pole lending, and so on. Once could say that our public services have seen massive change – but I disagree.

As our collections changed, being in a profession primarily concerned with collections, we’ve expanded and shifted our services. However, we have not fundamentally changed them. You see for all of these new services we still cling to a very simplistic service model…us and them: librarians and patron; library and community. We still see the role of the library to serve a community, and in that, to be slightly apart from it. That is problematic because it leads right back into an assured path to irrelevance or an outright impeachment of our basic principles.

Irrelevance? This was my argument in my previous post on the death of public libraries. If librarians continue to see their role as serving a community, and attempting to meet their shifting needs, librarians will be stretched too thin. Librarians will have to become expert searchers, researchers, makers, tax experts, employment advisors, social workers, tutors, and so on. This has lead to many libraries co-locating services such as in a commons model that brings access to librarians, technologists, and learning specialists. We have seen libraries hire social workers, anthropologists and so on. However, if librarianship doesn’t expand to incorporate these services at a fundamental level, we end up with stovepipes of services that sit in an organization or physical space, but gain little from the colocation. In essence, we treat tutors, and anthropologists, and such as just another expansion of the collection.

The other problem is the collocation of services without a radically different service model leads to a diffuse definition of what a library is. We can lose the support of our communities as they struggle to figure out our unique value. Worse still, by adopting new services and offerings based solely on the demands of a community, we can easily fall into a “customer perspective” where we scramble to meet the desires of a community regardless of how they align with core values such as openness, privacy, intellectual freedom, and such. Libraries go from safe, principled spaces of learning to simple gateways to subsidized services…easily disrupted, and easily replaced or discarded.

Librarians want to answer questions or solve problems put to them. In the days of virtual reference we coined the phrase “the greedy librarian problem.” It was observed in service after service, institution after institution, that librarians would receive a reference question, and do their best to answer that query – even if they could pass the question off to someone else (another librarian or an expert) who was better qualified to answer it, or could answer it faster. This came from both a STRONG service ethic, and professional preparation that taught the idea of a generalist librarian.

We are again facing the greedy librarian problem, but now it is in the form of a librarian as social worker, a librarian as maker, a librarian as business expert. If it is offered under the egis of the library, than a librarian must master the content first, then offer the program. This is bad. Bad not in that librarians can become experts in things other than librarianship, but bad in that they may feel that librarianship is expertise in all other areas.

The disruptive change we need now is in removing boundaries between library and community. I have often said, “the community is the collection.” That is more than a rhetorical slogan meant to focus people on “user services.” I mean it literally. If all libraries do is talk to their communities to add new services, or adopt social media to broadcast library events, or become more responsive at a desk, they have not engaged in the necessary and fundamental change needed.

What we need is a merger of collection and community. This is the disruptive, fundamental, and radical shift. In the community you serve, people consume, sure. However, they ALL create, even if they are only creating knowledge within themselves. The power of a new necessary model for public service is to see people in your community as creators who are willing to share their expertise, their understandings, and their resources (like tax dollars, or tuition dollars, or budget lines AND their books). People within your community are willing to teach, and develop programs, and tutor, and the like.

The key massive shift in public services need to make this change? For those familiar with my work, you may find my solution a bit out of character: collection development. Yup. The same skill that has gone through such dramatic changes from documents to media to databases to the Internet, to services. Except, it is development of the community and its conversations.

An example may be in order. A man comes into the library and through conversing with the librarian offers to teach sessions on self-publishing. Now, the first thing that must change is how the librarian responds to the idea of a self-publishing program. Gone is the idea that the librarian will go learn everything there is to know about self-publishing and then start offering programs around the topic. The community member says they already have that knowledge, so they should teach it. Ah, but you say, how do I know they are any good. Do they know about self-publishing? Have they done it? Can they teach? Will they present in a way that upholds the principles of librarianship (intellectual honesty, transparency, and so on)? This is the role of the librarian. This is collection development.

Maybe they can’t teach – great, either the librarian can get them some experience in it (like linking them up with another community member who can act as a mentor) or suggest they put together a libguide, or a curated collection of resources to share. Maybe they only have experience with one platform, can the librarian hook them up with someone with other experiences, or set up complementary programming. Collection development.

In this approach the wall of service between library and community disappears. The librarian is directly working with the community to expose expertise and offer service through the community not to the community. Librarians don’t have to know all the community knows, but they must be able to weave it together and link it. The library becomes a platform not for resource sharing, but for community building and connections.

This then is the next hurdle and challenge: making the community our collection. We have many of the pieces in place. We have an expanded view of collection and the distributed tools that come with it. We have a new definition of librarianship not linked to any particular institution, but focused on knowledge and community. We have some examples of this happening from general approaches like patron driven acquisitions to specific institutions like Chattanooga, Ferguson, and Fayetteville Free. We have the love of our communities. We have spaces to gather. We have an army of professionals and aligned staff in nearly every community in North America.

Now is the time. We can change the world not by informing a community, or serving it, but by unleashing it. We will advance our communities, our nations, and society not by waiting to serve, not by pushing from behind, nor invisibly advocating issues of social justice. We will move forward society by standing side by side with the teacher and the student, the cop and the community, the philosopher and the blacksmith. Librarians, and the institutions they build with their communities, libraries, will, with radical zeal, interweave human capability for greatness. Let’s get to it.

Salzburg Curriculum Snippets and References

After the seminar in Salzburg, I included references to the curriculum and ideas on transformative social action in some of my presentations. I’ve compiled the snippets and links here:

Full Presentation: “Librarians as Change Agents” Video Webchat, U.S. Embassy in Rome, Rome, Italy.
https://davidlankes.org/rdlankes/blog/?p=1303

Full Presentation: “Expect More: Service is Proactive” CARLI Virtual Meeting, Webcast.
https://davidlankes.org/rdlankes/blog/?p=1289

Full Presentation: “Publisher of the Community: New Librarianship Unencumbered by Our Stacks” PLS President’s Program at the NYLA 2011 Annual Conference. Saratoga Springs, NY. https://davidlankes.org/rdlankes/blog/?p=1282

Salzburg Curriculum

This is a video walkthrough with some of my interpretations of the Salzburg curriculum for Librarians and Museum Professionals. More discussion and interpretation to come.