Libraries, Tomatoes, and Transformation

Tomatoes in winter always make me yearn for the freshly picked ones from my father’s garden, big, red, and juicy, the kind that drip down the chin when bitten. I avoid buying the hard, cottony ones in the supermarket that are shipped in from thousands of miles away, preferring to wait for the opening of the farmer’s market. That’s when I bump into friends and acquaintances as we move from one booth to another, scooping up produce from local farmers.

Academic libraries, whether viewed as facilities, services, or resources, have gone through and need to continue going through their own transformations. Users can get information any time of the day, transmitted in from server farms around the globe. Regardless of the vendor, it all looks pretty similar, just like the supermarket tomatoes. Information seekers prefer to get their answers from people they know, the same as folks looking for a real tomato. Students go on Facebook or tweet a friend and faculty members email a colleague before they consider using the library. University librarians try to shake up the library’s image by adding coffee shops but remain fairly traditional in offering services and resources, not always taking advantage of the transformative power of the Internet. Public libraries seem more willing to experiment with Web 2.0 collaborative technologies that give control to end-users. By incorporating social networking tools into the library catalog they enable patrons to communicate directly with one another, sharing opinions and recommendations, adding videos and content.

How might an academic library look if it took a bite from the juicy tomato instead of the mass-produced cottony one? If we look at the library as physical or virtual space it might be different, perhaps, but not as much as many librarians fear. The public is used to faceted searching and recommender systems when they search Amazon and BestBuy and those features are available in a growing number of library catalogs. Patrons no longer have to walk back in time when they enter the library’s portal. Learning commons are another example of libraries changing to meet their users’ needs by blending information and technology support in one place. Some cutting edge libraries have added presences in virtual environments such as Second Life without compromising their more “real” existences. These are incremental changes that for the most part leave control within the library. It’s a shift from the supermarket to the farmer’s market, far smaller than the earlier transformation of the library as protected repository of precious manuscripts into a place where books are shared.

But what if patrons want the experience of managing their own information seeking just as much I want the flavor that comes from a tomato that I pick off the vine myself? Today conventional publishing paradigms struggle to exist in a world where average people can create and publish content in a variety of formats, disseminating it globally to readers and viewers. Library professionals are well aware of the battles fought by earlier generations to integrate popular fiction and audiovisual materials into their collections even then these were acquired through established distribution channels. Many libraries have embraced the open access movement without fully appreciating its implications. If we want to decrease our dependence on copyright protected, publisher-generated content, then what fills the void? How far will we go in encouraging independent content creation and dissemination? Web 2.0 technologies are all about collaboration and dispersing previously centralized control to the ends. Are we capable of accommodating the rapidly increasing flood of content on our campuses?

Whether because librarians’ expertise is not fully understood on campuses or because of our own awareness of the enormity of the task at hand, librarians are just beginning to acknowledge the role we can play in helping faculty manage their writings and course materials. Libraries regularly license digital journals and e-books and some create their own. Might it be conceivable that as e-books become more common a professor would want to put a required text on reserve embedded with her annotations? Or that a community of practice would request its wiki be added to the library collection? Or a graduate assistant ask that his advisor’s reading recommendations be available on the library website for all students to see? The demands of scholarly communication on the library go far beyond teaching others about intellectual property rights and responsibilities. They require libraries to be much more responsive to faculty and students’ changing patterns of use. Let’s try not to imagine the complications that arise the first time someone uses his mini pen camera to reproduce copyrighted material and share it over the Internet!

Just as academic librarians abandoned or expanded facilities that were designed for an earlier age, now we can utilize our vast knowledge of database structure, indexing, and information access to develop institutional repositories. Web 3.0, or the Semantic Web, is predicted to enhance those capabilities, allowing machines to assume much of the routine work of searching. Students use library buildings to socialize with friends or to catch up on their sleep. The creation of the previously mentioned coffee shops concedes the reality that patrons’ definitions of libraries are more expansive than our own. Why not then increase our interpretation of an institutional repository to include student work as well as student social space? Student papers, presentations, and videos all have the potential to contribute to the corpus of knowledge on any given campus, at least for a while. If librarians recognize the value of cloud computing, then maybe we can imagine ourselves as part of our campus cloud, creating new spaces for university resources.

Library services may seem very removed from the tomato patch but not if we consider it from the eyes of the individual. Just as I want fresh, juicy tomatoes available at my local store year-round, increasingly library patrons want customized services that reach them wherever they are using whatever device they have at their disposal or in their hands. The walls of the library have to become even more porous so that services and support are available where the need is. This does not have to be excessively burdensome if we make use of existing technologies to develop multimedia pathfinders and online tutorials, resources that can be reused and replicated without a librarian’s intervention. Much of the public has sacrificed privacy for convenience, sharing personally identifiable information to save keystrokes or gain preferred shopper status. Sign on to Amazon and see the titles being recommended, all based upon earlier purchases. As users’ expectations evolve, is this a service they will come to expect from academic libraries and, if so, what will happen to our policies protecting patron privacy and confidentiality? Will Web 3.0 technologies be powerful enough so that when a patron comes into the library he is automatically texted a list of new acquisitions available for his research? Are we looking at the next iteration of Selective Dissemination of Information?

Ultimately, if we really want to serve today’s users, then librarians must allow them into our world to a greater degree than ever before. By recognizing that their needs are our own and their actions very similar if not identical to ours (Does anyone really not use Google as a first resort when answering a question or check Wikipedia to get general information?) we come to an understanding that we are all focused on the same goal -- seeking answers in an age of information overload. The challenge of being user-centered is that we must be willing to let faculty and students define our direction with librarians ceding power in order to be more responsive. Librarians may find that giving up some of our control and allowing our users to work with us is more freeing than frightening. Their participation is critical if we are to transform the library for a new era. After all, the best produce is often right in our own backyard.