JASPUL-CILC |
UPDATE:2003/07/09 |
| Research
information services in a global, networked environment: the RLG perspective
Japan Association of Private University
Libraries Symposium |
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Good afternoon. Ifm James Michalko, the President of RLG. Thank you all for making the effort to attend this session. My special thanks to the organizers and to Kato-san for inviting me to address this important group today. I understand that I have about 90 minutes to speak with you. Then we will have a panel and a question and answer session. In my talk today Ifve decided to focus on the future - the future of library services - and, in particular, the future of research information services. As we know itfs increasingly impossible to think about this future without acknowledging that it will necessarily be defined by its inherently global nature and dictated by the networked environment that has already emerged. My talk today will have four parts. First Ifd like to tell you a little bit about my organization, RLG, because my perspective on the future of research information derives from the work wefre doing, the mission that wefre pursuing and the institutions with whom we work. Then Ifd like to provide some general observations that I believe set the context for the future of research information services. These are my personal feelings about the current environment from which I believe our future will inevitably derive. From those stipulations about the current environment Ifll speak a bit about the libraryfs advantages and challenges in a global, networked environment and where we should be looking for guidance in designing our future. Finally, Ifll talk about digital library services. What are they likely to be? How will they be different than what wefre currently doing? What are our users telling us they want? What will 21st century library services be and how will research information manifest itself in this future? This is a relatively long talk. I ask for your patience. Itfs speculative. Again, I ask for your patience. I hope it is a challenging vision that will dare us to imagine how our current activities fit with and support the long-term future of research information services. Let me begin by briefly introducing RLG. RLG is a not-for-profit organization. It brings together museums, libraries and archives from around the world in order to address problems and issues related to research information that they share. Wefve now grown to more than 160 members. Ifm pleased to say that Keio University is one of our recent members and our key institutional relationship here in Japan. Wefre very pleased to have such a distinguished institution as our partner in addressing research information issues. These have always been at the core of our mission, which hasnft changed over history. While wefve changed the ways we pursue our mission many times over the years we have always emphasized access to information. That emphasis has always included collaboration and a focus on the information that supports research and higher education. Our agenda focuses on our membershipfs needs and issues. Despite their diversity they all share a mission of service to scholarship, which is the commonality we seek to emphasize. The major way in which we leverage this common interest is through collaboration. We identify those issues that require collective action -- problems that are too complex and too long-term to be dealt with by a single institution. And finally we provide information services to ensure that certain categories of research information, which might not be supported by the commercial sector, are available to the research and teaching community. With this mission and this agenda as our background we regularly set priorities for how wefll invest our resources and focus our membersf efforts. Our current priorities are listed on this slide. Youfll see that they very much emphasize the international, the digital, and they assume that the networked environment is going to be the arena in which research information lives and is used. In the case of digital research resources wefre following our historical practices by focusing on those areas where the commercial sector is not active. A good example of this is our Cultural Materials online resource that aggregates digitized versions of objects from library, archive and museum collections. As this brief overview should indicate RLG is very much engaged with our member institutionsf desires to supply to their constituents - faculty, students, and staff - the research materials that support teaching and learning. This requires us to watch carefully what is happening in the university and research community. I think the digital revolution and the ubiquity of the networked environment have established a new context for libraries and their services. So now as I turn to some speculation about the future of research information services, let me set the context and provide a few stipulations about the environment in which we have to consider these future services. This is a personal and selected set of observations. In some of these are areas where I see the library community in some disagreement. In some cases simply resistant to the obvious. Here are my seven stipulations. EThe shift to electronic resources has happened The shift is reflected in library spending patterns as well as the preference and use patterns of our constituencies. Certainly the library community has been aware of this for quite a while. For the broader higher education community in North America it may have become most widely understood when The Chronicle of Higher Education published its article on The Deserted Library and appended a graphic showing that spending on electronic resources at one State University of New York campus had gone up six times over the previous decade, reaching nearly one third of its materials spending in 2001.[i] They didnft pick an outlier for this observation; the North American Association of Research Libraries (ARL) statistics have been showing this shift for quite some time. As ARL said when they released the most recent 2001 numbers, gAfter almost a decade of data collection, certain trends have become clear. The average percentage of the library budget that is spent on electronic materials was 16.25% in 2000-01, nearly five times as much as in 1992-93. Almost $132 million was reported spent on electronic resources in 2000-01, by 106 universities. The vast majority of these expenditures increases have gone towards the purchase of electronic serials and subscription services. Whereas only $11 million was reported spent in this area when it was first included on the survey in 1994-95, 106 libraries reported electronic serials expenditures totaling more than $117 million today.h [ii] Ewe have learned a number of things about users, the Internet, and the electronic environment The recent Outsell survey of the gDimensions and Use of the Scholarly Information Environmenth sponsored by the Digital Library Federation and The Council on Library and Information Resources in North America [iii] is a clear touchstone for what wefve learned. Wefre still extracting all of its meaning but the basic lessons affirmed what wefve seen on our campuses or confirmed the local institutional studies that are now emerging on the landscape. The principal take-away from the survey is that gDespite the triumph of print as a reliable source of information, most of the respondents tended to go first to online sources in studies and research. Almost 90 percent of researchers said they went online first, then consulted print sources. About 75 percent of students said they used the Internet first, then went to a professor or librarian for assistance and consulted print sources last.h [iv] EStudents misperceive the electronic domain as a complete environment As one university survey put it, gAnother problem is that with more electronic resources, user expectations increase. If they can get some of our collection electronically, they want to get all of our collection electronically. Worse, they often avoid resources that arenft easily accessible. A math professor admitted to us that he only reads journals that we subscribe to electronically. This aversion to print is seen in the citation lists of student papers. Citation lists are dominated by articles that are easily accessible. As students have become accustomed to working electronically we have found them citing fewer print-only resources.h [v] And that is too bad but it is an accurate description of the current state of affairs. One that we all know echoes previous episodes in the transformation of library services. All we need recall is the mixed environment when the automated library catalog was being introduced alongside the card catalog. Many of the same misperceptions prevailed then. It is a misperception that we can work to overcome, but it is a perception with which we will simply have to work. Good scholarship, good teaching, good learning is the product of hard work. I was struck by the observation in an article about the ascendance of Google that in a sidelong way made the same point. gItfs the collapse of inconvenience, says Siva Vaidhyanathan, assistant professor of culture and communication at New York University. It turns out that inconvenience was a really important part of our lives, and we didnft realize it.h[vi] Inconvenience, hard work, is an important ingredient in creating something worthwhile. [As a side comment: Ifd urge you to watch for the forthcoming book, intriguingly titled The Anarchist in the Library by Vaidhyanathan; editorial reviews suggest itfs an interesting study of the impacts of peer-to-peer networking on a whole variety of social and cultural conventions.] EThere are limits on what the library can do about this state of affairs In this regard, I find the observation by Nicholas Burckel, the library dean at Marquette University, fairly compelling. He argued that to increase use of the librariesf traditional materials requires on good pedagogical strategies in the classroom more than what the library can do on its own. gIf you [the faculty member] allow a student in your course to get an A, and he or she has not consulted primary sources, and you have not required them to use print sources, therefs no way the library can make that happen.h [vii] Enostalgia for formerly normative behavior is understandable but unproductive To a certain extent the current patterns of electronic-materials use may be anti-intellectual, they may be engendering a fast-food mentality of scholarship, and it may be that the quality of the information that some students use has been degraded, but as an important part of the support structure in higher education, libraries cannot afford to imagine that we are in a position to rewind the paradigm. While we lament information illiteracy and urge more education and provide more training, the users have a different opinion. They think of themselves as adept and skillful at using online information even though they may have little or no formal instruction in information gathering.[viii] Our job is to understand these expectations and patterns and deliver the quality, the trusted, the authoritative, and the important within the newly established paradigm. Erenewed emphasis on the library as social environment is not entirely a bad thing If our students are not coming to the library for traditional materials, the phenomenon perhaps represents a different kind of opportunity for the library to assert another of its contributions to campus life -- the physical place as a social environment. I know that there continues to be great divergence in the perception and experiences of libraries about whether this is true -- in whether students are, in fact, not coming to the library, as measured in circulation statistics and turnstile counts. Nevertheless a variety of surveys indicate loss of users no matter how measured. Wefve always known that libraries in a campus environment were about more than the materials, but the electronic challenge of the web has perhaps highlighted once again this other important role of the library even while we struggle to find new modes of providing the materials of education and research. The library will be an important physical place as long as university members desire and value community. Ewe know that not all libraries are the same I think we should stipulate to this as we begin our discussions. Even in our homogeneity we are different. Even while we know that the global environment brings us closer together, it also will emphasize some of our differences. Our clients and their needs differ in a variety of local ways, our resources differ, our histories differ and our experiences and circumstances differ even while we may share a common, high-level commitment to improved access to information. Anything I say today will have at least one counter-example. So wefre faced with a very confusing and changing set of circumstances. The world of research and learning is increasingly and overwhelmingly electronic, our students regard this as the only environment in which to work and there are genuine limits on what the library can do to impact the environment in which we will have to create and deliver future services. How can we provide as for our users well or even better in the networked environment than we have done in our physical, printed information world? Itfs going to depend on developing new and different services. In striving towards this goal of new and different services I think the library has some advantages going for it. The first advantage is that libraries are trusted. In a Columbia University study many of the students reported that they only use sites that are linked to the school, with the assumption that this means the site or database is eapprovedf. [ix] The Outsell respondents said that they use the Internet and rely on it heavily. However, they trust the library more. Fifty-five percent report that they verify the accuracy of Internet resources. I found it amusing that the California Polytechnic library portal actually features links to parody sites as a way to demonstrate the unreliability of much web information. The second advantage is content. You have the power to purchase and present what these audiences want. What you present will manifest the hybrid library of physical materials, electronic materials both leased and locally created and the external information sources to which you link. Wefre working through some of the problems inherent in creating the hybrid library. As it emerges it will be a powerful resource for our audience. We have things they need. This trust in the library and in print sources combined with the overwhelming initial reliance on online sources is a compelling disconnect.[x] It forces us to ask how can libraries leverage this unique ability to deliver content while taking advantage of the well-earned trust that audiences place in them? Can you leverage it to make the library a valuable and essential part of the future research information environment? I think you can and I think the way you leverage content and trust is with tools and services. Itfs the presence of compelling tools and services that will bring your audience to the library both physically and virtually. As I recall overhearing at a conference some years ago gContent that you can interact with in ways of your own choosing is no longer content, itfs a service.h Of course, the ways that you can interact with content depends very much on the kinds of tools and services supporting that interaction. Where should be we be looking for the tools and services that must be built and maintained in the future? Where should we be looking for guidance on tools and services? I have two suggestions. We should be looking more often towards the commercial sector. Also, we should be watching the research on our future users (teen-agers). Therefs a major lesson from the commercial sector that we need to learn that has to do with saving people time. Herefs where we might find the common ground between our service mission and the way the commercial sector values tools and services. Academic users have some similar characteristics to their knowledge worker counterparts in industry. The most important is that they are running out of time. In the commercial sector content users spend upwards of 16 percent of their time obtaining, reviewing and analyzing external information. One can sensibly imagine that, given the nature of education and teaching, students and faculty of all types spend much more of their workweek on similar tasks. The commercial sector has estimated the value of these information access costs -- a recent study puts it at $10,000 per year per professional employee. Now granted, universities are not well positioned nor inclined to try to estimate student and faculty time in the same way, but the opportunity costs of information confusion in the academic sector certainly cannot be much smaller. [xi] The issue here is to understand fully the processes and practices in which our users engage. We have to design the future library services to mirror and support those information-seeking habits that have already been formed. And it is not just the information seeking processes that need to be modeled; we need to create environments that mirror the multi-tasking characteristics of the borderless social and work econveniencef mix that students expect. Students use the most convenient computer, the one eat handf to go on the Internet. They donft distinguish between work and social activity online. They donft distinguish between work, home and leisure. They open and use multiple applications simultaneously. Theyfve got instant messaging going, email, web browsing, word processing, etc. all going on at once.[xii] Thatfs the environment into which our services have to fit. If our library services can provide applications that save time and do it within the context of that econveniencef environment, wefll deliver something important and valued to our desired audience and wefll regain some of the lost users. The other set of behavior and need patterns that should inform our thinking about tools and services are those evidenced by our future users -- the teen-age population. College students rely on information seeking habits formed prior to arriving at college. One recent North American study found that 94% of online teens have used the Internet for school research and 71% used it as the major source for a recent school project. [xiii] I think the combination of lessons from the commercial sector and from our future users can be incredibly informative, in fact prescriptive, about what we ought to be doing as we create our future services. I submit that we in the education and library sectors ought to be equally concerned with the needs of our constituents whether they are senior faculty or incoming freshman. We ought to strive to save them time, give the best possible resources in the ways that they want to encounter them, and provide them with support that makes them successful in their tasks whether itfs research or learning. The way that wefre going to do that is to rethink what our future services need to be and to begin building those services now. The future is already with us. Wefre not early to this challenge but I donft believe wefre too late yet. For the rest of my talk Ifd like to concentrate on what those future services might be, and what kinds of characteristics they might have. I will speculate about the roles we as librarians can play in the future, global, networked research environment. The starting place for this speculation is the digital library. In many cases our efforts in the digital environment have focused very heavily on building digital collections. However, as collection building challenges are overcome and we progress beyond some of the basics with which wefve been struggling, we have to begin to think about what it will mean to service a digital library. And as soon as we consider services, we have to think--as Ifve just said--about users, their needs, their expectations, the ways in which they define success. In this part of the presentation I want to suggest what I think users want and what it will mean from a service standpoint. I know that the service targets Ifm suggesting arenft going to happen right away but our efforts are going to tend in these directions. One day wefll see that our incremental progress has resulted in a complete redefinition of what we do and what we deliver. So let me begin with the digital library. I observe that right now we use the adjective edigitalf with the word library. During the 21st century the dominant form of the library will be digital. It will be the physical library that comes to need the distinction of the adjective. Nevertheless, my favorite definition comes from the one that Cliff Lynch of The Coalition for Networked Information has provided -- his definition of a digital library essentially asserts them as a service manifestation. I like his view a lot and find it a very useful leaping-off place. He said gDigital libraries are the systems that make digital collections come alive, make them usefully accessible, that make them useful for accomplishing work, and that connect them with communities.h What hefs captured in a few phrases actually sums up the kinds of expectations, desires, wishes, and urges that we hear, although much less coherently articulated, from both scholars and students. In the world where research is cyber-research, what will the library, museum, archive be? What will library services be? Will we be able to find the library? My basic assertion is that in the world of cyber-research, which will be the principal and overwhelmingly dominant form in which research occurs, the library will manifest itself almost entirely as a service array, packages of capabilities, not inventories, physical or otherwise. The library as physical place may be important for community purposes but it will be largely unimportant to the array of services that we provide to researchers and students. This new service array, these new service packages will encompass some of what we do now, but they will be very different manifestations and they will be extended and overtaken by new services and activities that will loom much larger in importance than those that have evolved directly from current practices. Future services may extend and expand some things that we do. But looking at our future services and trying to see in them our current services is going to be like looking at a bird and trying to see the dinosaur. Following Clifffs definition means that librarians and the services they provide will have to make digital libraries accessible, alive, useful, and connected (with communities). What will make them accessible? What does alive mean? Whatfs utility in this context? And with what and to whom do these connections have to occur? I think we can extract useful guidance on those questions from what scholars and students are telling us now. We may have to sift and extrapolate through their comments, instincts and urges with our deeper understanding of information and the nature of libraries, but if we follow their path it takes us to that different service array Ifve been describing. To illustrate this I thought Ifd share with you the sense of a talk that was given to the assembled RLG membership last year as well as some excerpts from student testing that RLG did recently. Ifll give you my extrapolation and understanding of the implications lodged in their remarks and Ifll leave you with my conception of the 21st century service array. Let me introduce Howard Bloom. Introducing a cyber-researcher Howard is the author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History and most recently Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century. These are beautifully written and stunning reading experiences. I donft know if they are available in Japanese translations yet. If not I expect they will be soon. They are incredibly wide-ranging in their underpinning research. The Global Brain runs to 370 pages of which 145 are notes. We asked Howard to talk with us about his work, how he creates new knowledge and what he needs from the library. He titled his talk Stranded in the Digital Desert and Saved by Cyber-Research. He is a strange and wonderful man as are many of the brilliant, intense and emotional users with whom you work. This does not make him dismissible. Letfs let Howard introduce himself. <Howard clip 001-002> Transcript of videoclip: gThe fact is that I wish I could be there in the room with you right now because you are my partners. You are more than my partners. I am a parasite. I am a carnivore. I am a person who goes around pouncing on the knowledge gathered by other people and lacing it together in entirely new ways. You are the people who put together my pasture, my grazing grounds, and put together the prey I feed on. When I pounce on that prey, hopefully I give it back to you in entirely new ways. I need your help badly. There is a reason that I called this talk "Stranded in a Digital Desert and Saved by Cyber Knowledge." My books are extremely research-intensive. My life is extremely research-intensive, and I rely on you in ways that go beyond anything that you can possibly imagine. I have a very strange position, and this is why I am so clearly dependent on you. In a strange way I am your client 20 years from now. I am the cyber client that you soon will have. I have been a cyber human for 14 years now. Once upon a time I walked upon the sidewalks. Once upon a time I loved looking at the facades of buildings.h *1 Howard canft leave his house. Hasnft left his house in nearly fifteen years. Hefs got a particularly treacherous form of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. He canft go to a library. He works almost entirely online. What does he say about accessibility? <Howard clip 006-008-009> Again, Bloom: gWhere should I have been getting this information? Not from books. I should have been getting it on line. If I had been able to get it on line, I would have been able to knit together 15 times as many facts. When I go on line and search on any given subject for the journal articles, the journal articles I get in abstract form. The most marvelous search engine made available to people like me has been Medline. Medline is a wonderful search tool. The only problem is that all it gives me are abstracts... In addition, I need books. I need entire books. I need them to be available with a search engine so that, when I search for a given topic like emotional contagion, I can find material on it in journal articles; I can find material on it in every book that is relevant, and I can go directly to the paragraph that is relevant because I am taken there by who? By you. By the custodians of knowledge, by the people who made knowledge available to me.h*2 Bloom wants everything online and he wants it accessible with deep semantic connectivity. This has some very interesting implications for the convergence of digital content whether it be textual or cultural. But would delivering everything with deep connections make the material useful? Howard has some things to say about utility and what he needs and what it means to make the collections come alive. <Howard clip 005-014-011-012> Bloom: gI am already getting enough information to do more bibliography and annotation to my work than most people are capable of believing, and it is not enough. It is not enough; I am still frustrated here. I am still hungry for knowledge. What do I need from you? I need the next generation of knowledge technology. I may even need the generation of knowledge technology beyond that. I need to be able to read information in such a way that I can underline it and bold it; in other words, I need to read it on a computer. I need to be able to make my notes as I am going along. I need to be able to take little bits of it. This means that I need your help. This means that, when I am researching a town like Catal Hüyük which was a city 8,000 years ago, which was a city in what we call the Neolithic era, the new Stone Age -- a Stone Age city and it was a sophisticated place -- I want to be able to get the feel of that place. I want to know what it felt like to live in that place. I want to know what kind of bowls I would have been eating out of. I want to know where the food came from that I would have been eating... I need something that gives me the virtual experience of walking into a room in Catal Huyuk, of talking with its people. I need animation. I need VRML. I need something that goes beyond VRML. Yes, there is VRML presentation of a temple in Catal Huyuk. It is so primitive that it is utterly and completely useless. I need what it was meant to be. I need the feel of a room in 19th century Victorian England... I need the feel of that room. I need to hear the conversation in that room. How am I going to get it? Ultimately I am going to get it through a combination of animation and holography, visualization in every conceivable form.h *3 Bloom wants to be able to annotate, clip, comment on and re-use what he finds online. Re-use is what makes it possible for information, for digital cultural content to deliver new value and importance -- to become learning; to become new knowledge. He wants visualization, animation, and translation. Essentially he wants material presented in ways that break through the distinctions we make between discovery and delivery, between interpretation and presentation, between media and mechanisms. But, given who he is, he wants even more -- he wants to be connected to all this in a pro-active fashion. <Howard clip 018-019-016-017> Bloom: gAll I want from you is everything. All I want from you is the entire world of knowledge as we know it, translated into totally accessible terms and accessible to me instantly every minute of the day, and I want add-ons to my own intelligence. I want intelligent agents... and would learn through evolutionary algorithms your interests, that would learn your whims, that would learn those things that really turned you on, that really made you passionate, and would go out and find them for you. If you wanted to get a bit of information, it would also anticipate the information you needed. Imagine this intelligent agent coupled with this infinite storage that taps me into you on a full-time basis. Here is what I really want from you. Are you ready? This is a big plan. I want something the equivalent of a protein chip that is less than the size of one of those little, round Band-Aids. I want to be able to put it right here behind my ear. I want infinite memory capacity to be in my little protein chip. I want to be able to park the ideas. ... I don't want to have to come to my computer and look it up. I want it there in my brain immediately. In other words, I want to access your databases with something that is completely portable, which travels around with me everywhere.h *4 Howard wants to be connected in a very intimate way both to the community of material and to the communities of others who think and work in related areas. Maybe we canft do what Howard would like, but if thatfs the unreachable end-state, what things can we do that take us that direction? What does it say about the way we ought to be redefining our services and our work? I think it tells us how we ought to embody in practice Clifffs notions of making digital libraries accessible, useful, alive and connected. With the physical library dimming and receding as the 21st century progresses, selection and acquisition will be overtaken by new activities, specifically, @E the creation of digital collections, @E brokering interactions between those collections, @E and doing the supplemental, deep intelligent mark-up of digital materials. Making material accessible will become connecting the material and user at new, rich deep levels, facilitating the extraction of just what they need, and fostering interpretation. Not necessarily doing the interpreting although Ifd argue that this is what some bibliographers and most curators either have been doing or should have been doing for a very long time. Making material useful will require us to support @E data mining, @E provide algorithmic manipulations of that material, @E support the tools of re-use @E and the development, deployment, supply and support of intelligent agents. It doesnft seem unreasonable to imagine that in the future wefll name algorithms after libraries, and intelligent agents will be named after their creators in the same way that in North America we say Shaw-Shoemaker, or here you might say, gIs it in Iwanamifs Kokusho somokuroku or Takeuchi Rizofs Heian ibun?h Let me summarize: In the 21st century library services wonft be the inventory delivery -- we will be offering brokered connections. We wonft be making bibliographies and catalogs -- wefll be creating algorithms. We wonft be doing selection -- wefll be establishing linkages and connections. We wonft be doing material preparation -- wefll be doing mark-up. We wonft offer reference service -- wefll give people intelligent agents and guide them to the right algorithms for mining and creating their own tailored connections. Therefs an opportunity and a challenge here. And I think the opportunity takes us back to some first principles - that were articulated elegantly long ago. If we embrace the challenge and the opportunity that digital libraries, that digital materials represent, the 21st century will be the age when library services come demonstrably and enticingly close to delivering on Ranganathan es ideal laws of Library science: @E gBooks are for use"; @E "Every reader his (or her) book"; @E "Every book its reader"; @E "Save the time of the reader"; and @E "The library is a growing organism.h And I think those laws are equally compelling and provide equally strong guidance whatever library work you are doing. You should always be examining and evaluating your work by how it furthers one of these precepts. Theses laws still dictate what our services on behalf of the user should be. And just to be sure that you donft dismiss Howard and the conclusions Ifve extracted from his comments, let me follow my own advice and look at what teenagers say about the Internet and what they regard as valuable services. The Pew Internet and American Life Project released a report on the school-related uses of the internet by 11-19 year olds called The Digital Disconnect: The widening gap between internet-savvy students and their schools. I think their key findings read like a tools and services wish list. They say students in this age group, those who are just about to become our audience, regard the Internet as @E a virtual textbook and reference library, @E a virtual tutor and study shortcut, @E a virtual study group, @E a virtual guidance counselor, and as a @E virtual locker, backpack and notebook. [xiv] These findings donft tell you exactly what applications you ought to build as digital library services but they give you a very good sense of what is valued. They raise a variety of questions about where in this roster of desired deliverables the library wants to position itself, about what kind of surrounding and supporting capabilities the library must have, and how far beyond our traditional service offerings we might have to go if we want the library brand to be front and center in the online lives of our coming audience. And just to confirm that this service array is all that our clients have ever wanted and still want, herefs a few clips from some students - listen for the echoes of Bloom, the instincts of Ranganathan, see if you can find the services in what they have to say even if you canft find the Library. <student video clip> Students are numbered based upon the order they spoke. Students 1 and 5 were paired together (females) Student 2 and 3 were paired together (females) Student 4, separate (male) Student #1 Ifm lazy and I donft like having to go down to the library. If I could avoid it and do it all from the comfort of my home in my pjfs then Ifm happy. Student #2 I try to avoid the library, if possible, but I obviously have to go there to get books and stuff. But I much rather do research from my room. Student #1 You could print it. Skip the whole library altogether. Student #1 Just kind of start by a shot in the dark. And then you have to kind of narrow and move around from there. Student #3 Ifm not an expert. Student #2 Yeah, Ifm like, basic. Student #1 Categorizing is very helpful. Student #3 I think one of the things I like about it.... Student #4 I was under the impression that you could get any journal article from any journal from any university. Thatfs what I thought. Student #5 Itfs probably unrealistic but Ifd like if it theyfd send me the material. Student #1 Yes. You click on it someplace. Student #5 Thatfs what Amazon does and all these clothing stores. You buy stuff online and they send it to you. Resources are for use - gI want all the journals onlineh Every reader his resource - gI need more of what I really like. Ifm not an experth Every resource its user - gCategorizing is really helpful.h Save the time of the user - gI want to do it in my pajamas. I want to do it in my room. I want them to just deliver.h The library is a growing organism - gI want to skip the library altogether.h And when they skip the library altogether, what will our professional goals be? I think it will be to provide the service array I outlined. Then be 21st century librarians, bibliographers, curators, and professionals operating in a global, networked research environment. I think itfs an exciting and exhilarating prospect. Thank you for your attention and for your interest in these speculations. I look forward to our panel and your questions and observations. References: [i] Scott Carlson, gThe Deserted Library,h The Chronicle of Higher Education, 16 November 2001, <http://chronicle.com/free/v48/i12/12a03501.htm > (27 February 2003). [ii] Mark Young, Martha Kyrillidou, and Julia Blixrud, gARL Supplementary Statistics 2000-01,h press release, ARL Webpage, 7 July 2002, <http://www.arl.org/stats/announce/sup01pr.html > (27 February 2003). [iii] Amy Friedlander, Dimensions and Use of the Scholarly Information Environment: Introduction to a Data Set Assembled by the Digital Library Federation and Outsell, Inc., (Washington, DC: Digital Library Federation Council on Library and Information Resources, 2002). [iv] Sue Roppel, gSimon Fraser University Library Faculty Survey Results,h Simon Fraser University Webpage, 7 June 2001, <http://www.lib.sfu.ca/about/reports/survey2001/faculty_report.pdf > (27 February 2003). [v] Neil Swidey, gA Nation of Voyeurs,h The Boston Globe Magazine, 2 February 2003, <http://www.boston.com/globe/magazine/2003/0202/coverstory_entire.htm> (27 February 2003). [vi] Scott Carlson, gDo Libraries Really Need Books,h The Chronicle of Higher Education, 12 July 2002, <http://chronicle.com/free/v48/i44/44a03101.htm> (27 February 2003). [vii] Lynn Dagar and Leigh Watson Healy, gTrendAlert: What The Dot.Com Survivors Can Teach Us,h Outsell InformationSM Briefing, Outsell 60 Company MonitorSM vol. 2, no. 1, 17 January 2003. [viii] Scott Carlson, gStudents and Faculty Turn to Online Library Materials Before Printed Ones, Study Finds,h The Chronicle of Higher Education, 3 October 2003, <http://chronicle.com/free/2002/10/2002100301t.htm> (27 February 2003) [ix] gThe Use of Electronic Resources Among Undergraduate and Graduate Students: Summary of Key Findings for Student Interviews,h Electronic Publishing Initiative at Columbia (EPIC), September 2001. <http://www.epic.columbia.edu/eval/find03.html> (27 February 2003) [x] Carlson, op. cit. [xi] Dagar and Healy, op. cit. [xii] Steve Jones, principal, gThe Internet Goes to College: How Students are Living in the Future with Todayfs Technology,h Pew Internet & American Life Project, 15 September 2002. <http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=71> (27 February 2003) [xiii] Amanda Lenhart, Maya Simon, Mike Graziano, principals, gThe Internet and Education: Findings of the Pew Internet & American Life Project,h Pew Internet & American Life Project, 1 September 2001. <http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=39> (27 February 2003) [xiv] Douglas Levin and Sousan Arafeh, gThe Digital Disconnect: The Widening Gap Between Internet-Savvy Students and Their Schools,h Pew Internet & American Life Project, 14 August 2002. <http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=67> (27 February 2003) *1 Bloom, Howard Stranded in the Digital Desert and Saved by Cyber-Knowledge, RLG Annual Meeting, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, April 23, 2002 *2 Bloom, Howard Stranded in the Digital Desert and Saved by Cyber-Knowledge, RLG Annual Meeting, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, April 23, 2002 *3 Bloom, Howard Stranded in the Digital Desert and Saved by Cyber-Knowledge, RLG Annual Meeting, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, April 23, 2002. *4 Bloom, Howard Stranded in the Digital Desert and Saved by Cyber-Knowledge, RLG Annual Meeting, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, April 23, 2002. |
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