TAIGA Forum IV
Lightning Talks
January 22, 2009

Lightning Talks
• 5 Minutes for Talk on Provocative Statements
– The Speaker!!!
• 10 Minutes for Discussion on the Talk and
Provocative Statement from the Audience
– THAT MEANS YOU!!!!

Provocative Statement
#1
1. ... all librarians will be expected to take personal
responsibility for their own professional development;
each of us will evolve or die. Budget pressures will force
administrators to confront the \"psychological shadow\"
cast by tenure and pseudo-tenure that has inhibited them
from taking necessary personnel actions. Librarians who
cannot evolve will be reassigned or fired.

Provocative Statement
#2
2. ... collection development as we now know it will
cease to exist as selection of library materials will be
entirely patron-driven. Ownership of materials will be
limited to what is actively used. The only collection
development activities involving librarians will be
competition over special collections and archives.

Provocative Statement
#3
3. ... Google will meet virtually all information needs for
both students and researchers. Publishers will use
Google as a portal to an increasing array of content and
services that disintermediate libraries. All bibliographic
data, excepting what libraries create for local special
collections, will be produced and consumed at the
network level.

Provocative statement #3
• In five years…
Google
… will meet virtually all
information needs for both students and
researchers. Publishers will use Google as
a portal to an increasing array of content
and services that disintermediate libraries.
All bibliographic data, excepting what
libraries create for local special collections,
will be produced and consumed at the
network level.

what’s provocative about
this one again?

but libraries have better
quality metadata

but library indexes are
more comprehensive
Meier and Conkling,
“Google Scholar’s Coverage of
the Engineering Literature,” JAL (2008)

uh… library content is
broader and deeper
12000000
10000000
8000000
6000000 2008
2010
4000000
2000000
0
GoogleBooks Avg. ARL

but our brand is strong

and it’s not just Google….
there are others, right?

the Google Economy
• … the value of a resource, such as a web
page, can be determined by the way that
resource is linked to other resources. ....
The Google economy is an example of a
network effect.
…
The result is that a person searching for a
book is likely to find the Amazon.com
catalog page or blog posts discussing the
book long before they will find any
library offering the book for loan.

so we need to get more
efficient?
• streamline metadata creation
• leverage commodity metadata
• let users tag our stuff…

My career in librarianship has included work in cataloging, which I have
always understood to be a major part of library funcQoning. But I did
not fully realize how major unQl I made a discovery when I became associate
librarian of the Library of Congress. The discovery was financial—the Library of
Congress is invesQng in cataloging at the rate of $44 million a year! You can
well appreciate that a cost of that magnitude really got my aYenQon.
If such an expenditure produces great benefits for the Library of Congress,
libraries across the country, and others around the world, then we can jusQfiably
argue that the $44 million is well spent. But in the age of digital informaQon,
Internet access, and electronic key word searching, just how much do we
need to conQnue to spend on carefully constructed
catalogs? That is the quesQon I have come here this evening to pose—how
should we think about cataloging in the Age of Google?

which means?
• not that libraries can’t compete with the big
guys
• or that we need to be more efficient…
value isn’t there
• it means that the
anymore for a lot of what we do
• The value has shifted to
• the thing rather than the description
of the thing
• the network, openness, links

Provocative Statement
#4
4. ... knowledge management will be identified as a
critical need on campus and will be defined much more
broadly than libraries have defined it. The front door for
all information inquiries will be at the university level.
Libraries will have a small information service role and
will be responsible mainly for archiving digital content.

Provocative Statement
#5
5. ... libraries will have given up on the \"outreach
librarian\" model after faculty persistently show no
interest in it. Successful libraries will have inserted
themselves into the instructional technology space as a
viable point of engagement with students and faculty.

Provocative Statement
#6
6. ... libraries will provide no in-person services. All
services (reference, circulation, instruction, etc.) will be
unmediated and supported by technology.

Provocative Statement
#7
7. ... library budgets will be reallocated from support of a
greatly downsized facility, collections and staffing
towards discovery and access of information at the
network level. Local unique collection purchases will be
funded primarily by donor contributions; projects will be
funded primarily by grants.

Where the Rubber Left
the Road or
The Tundra is Melting

• 2. Collection development as we
now know it will cease to exist as
selection of library materials will be
entirely patron-driven. Ownership of
materials will be limited to what is
actively used. The only collection
development activities involving
librarians will be competition over
special collections and archives.

• Most libraries’ information service
models are based on using locally
owned resources to meet users’
information needs.
• In the networked environment, the
local collection is becoming less
important and discovery and
access at the network level will
become much more important.

• To this date, despite being aware of use
trends and adjusting purchasing plans
accordingly, a large portion of materials
purchased are not being used in
libraries.
• New business models must be adopted
that support network level discovery and
access and minimize investment in
unused resources.
• Current models of library selection
based collection development are not
that model.

 Use based and patron driven
business models will become the
norm.
 Management of resources will be
based on use and cost data and the
bibliographer selection model will not
exist.
 Legacy print collections will be
managed cooperatively.

 Collection management roles will
continue in archival areas like
special collections as unique
content will need to be identified
for acquisition, preservation, and
digital exposure.
 As this content is unique
libraries may compete over
content development in special
collections and archival areas.

Lightning Responses?

Provocative Statement
#8
8. ... library buildings will no longer house collections and
will become campus community centers that function as
part of the student services sector. Campus business
offices will manage license and acquisition of digital
content. These changes will lead campus administrators to
align libraries with the administrative rather than the
academic side of the organization.

Provocative Statement
#9
9. ... the library community will recognize the decreasing
value proposition of membership organizations (e.g.,
CRL, DLF, CNI, SPARC, ARL). All collaboration of
significance will be centered around either individual
entrepreneurial libraries (HathiTrust), regional consortia,
or OCLC.

Provocative Statement
#10
10. ... 20% of the ARL library directors will have retired, and
there will be a shortage of senior library leaders ready and
willing to take their places. Universities will begin to hire
leaders from other parts of the academy (student services,
academic computing, faculty) leading to a major
realignment of library within the university infrastructure.

Population Demographics

Blended or Remix

Paths to Leadership
• Timing
• Transition
• What is in your toolbox?
– People
– Networks
– Campus
• Finding Custom Paths for those in your
organization (Technology, Instruction,
Information)
Barone, C. (September 2006). Timing, TransiQons, and Careers. Educause Review.

Why Library Doesn’t Matter
Ten Year Challenges Library Ten Year
• No More Library • Collaborative
Projects Projects
• Partnerships are of • Extra-Institutional
Mass-Scale • Information
• Enterprise Support Advocacy
• Economies of • Managing Digital
Scale Information Layer
Chester, T. (2006). A Roadmap to IT Leadership and the Next Ten Years. Educause Quarterly.
Jackson, G. (2004). A CIO’s QuesQon: Will You SQll Need Me When I’m 64?. Chronicle of Higher
Educa:on, January 30, 2004, B22‐23.

Embracing the Remix
Knopper, S. (2009). AppeQte for Self‐DestrucQon: The Spectacular Crash of the Record
Industry in the Digital Age. New York: Free Press.

The Big Switch

Broader Topics
• 64K Question – What is an academic/research library?
23
• What is a academic librarian? Who staffs libraries? 16
– How to break apart traditional tribes and repurpose for
future?
• Opportunities for Budgets – Funding Sources 13
• Leverage the Google 5
• Metrics for our definition of a research library? 6
• Implications of working at the network level? 5
• When Public Good Argument no longer works? 7
• Academic Library User Experience and Branding 22