“Dissolving the boundaries of the library walls…”
I was talking to a friend of mine recently about what I’m doing these days, and after I told her about how I was in library school she casually said to me, “Do you know what you’d like to do with your degree? I mean, since libraries are kind of a dying breed…” This comment pained me for several reasons, because while I don’t think that it is true, I’m worried that it seemed that self-evident to a person. (Let alone the fact it was a friend of mine!)
With that in mind, I’d like to share with you a speech that I wrote with two colleagues at school. Our professor, Joseph Janes, is giving the keynote address at the RUSA pre-conference for the ALA Annual Conference this year. The idea is to give a ‘state of the union’ on reference services in libraries. So Joe asked us what we would do. (Yes, it does seem like we’re doing his work for him.) As you’ll see below, at least one thing that I think it will be important for libraries to do in the future is advocacy. If people think that we are no longer relevant in the 21st century, then, sadly, that will become reality. The speech is rather long, but if you persevere you’ll be treated to some pretty entertaining extended metaphors, a lot of unabashedly heartfelt rhetoric, and maybe a good idea or two.
-Freeda
RUSA State of the Union: The Once and Future Reference Librarian
By Freeda Brook, Althea Lazzaro, and Kate Ratcliffe
Changing Image of the Library
Hello and welcome. Welcome to the library of the future. Look around. In this room we have information professionals, we have mobile devices wirelessly connected to the World Wide Web, and we have, surely, information queries. This is the library of the future: no reference desks, no hours of operation, no institutional walls. It is unlike any library you have ever seen before, and yet it is exactly the same. It is the reference librarian, still committed to providing professional service of the highest quality; it is the patron, with a pressing need in search of assistance; and it is your reference collection, available at your fingertips.
Many in our profession talk about the history of libraries in terms of the history of books—and, as traditional books become de-centered in our new information landscape, our role as collectors, protectors and providers of access to books can feel shaky and confusing. But our history as a profession, when looked at through a different lens, looks to be entirely contiguous with the current moment that we find ourselves in.
Books are a technology—they are containers of information and communicators of knowledge (one would hope). For a good part of their history, books were very expensive, and, for some, rather incomprehensible. There was a code for using them and accessing the information inside that was baffling for many who were uninitiated into the world of bibliophiles. Finding the connections between books, the networks of knowledge if you will, was a mystery that few aside from librarians had the key to.
Umberto Eco depicted this in The Name of the Rose in which the Benedictine library was a labyrinth. The arrangement and collocation of the books was abstruse, and the secrets of the system were carefully guarded. Of the arrangement of the books, the librarian said, “It is enough for the librarian to know them by heart and know when each book came here. As for the other monks, they can rely on his memory” [75]. In this library, the shelves were not accessible, and it was at the discretion of the librarian to grant the use of any book—he was the complete and singular mediator of information.
Scrolling forward over time (to reference our colleague David Levy), books and the information inside of them, have become indispensable to people’s lives. Through centuries of transition, libraries have been there, constantly adjusting to the changing world and processes, continually providing books that were too expensive to own, and decoding the world of human knowledge as contained in the technology called books. Since the inception of modern librarianship in the 19th century we have provided those essential services on behalf of the populations that we serve.
It is time to take a moment to examine why we have provided these services in the past and what motivates us currently to continually find the best means of making information accessible and comprehensible. All of us here in this room are familiar with core principles of librarianship and we feel passionately about our values. Call to mind instances where you have stood your ground on behalf of a patron to uphold our principles of access, diversity, confidentiality, intellectual freedom, and democracy. These principles are not vanishing or being dissipated by new technologies or practices, nor are they yesterday’s news. In the declaration adopted by ALA in 1999, Libraries: An American Value, it is stated that, “Change is constant, but these principles transcend change and endure in a dynamic technological, social, and political environment.” The challenging question before us is this: can our minds penetrate the inner workings of complicated, rapidly changing technological, social, and political systems to see exactly where these values are being threatened to raise the alarm and call for action? We must enhance our abilities in this area for the need is great.
We are surrounded by information-seeking and -finding technology—it is everywhere we look. But where are the human mediators examining, selecting, and weaving together loose threads? Social networking, chat, federated search, digital books, all of these can seem like technologies that displace the human mediator in the research and information-finding process. We no longer have the Benedictine library Eco described, where information is guarded and controlled. The information landscape of today is more akin to the Library of Babel that Jorge Luis Borges imagined. Now information is ubiquitous and available everywhere we turn, but it is de-contextualized and surrounded by incomprehensible gibberish. In this world, as in the library of babel, “for one reasonable line or one straightforward note there are leagues of insensate cacophony, of verbal farragoes and incoherencies” [60]. Like the searchers Borges tells us of, people helplessly seek meaning in an unending web that contains all possible information, but perhaps little actual knowledge.
So what is the role of the reference librarian now? In a world of information where it is easy to simply search, read, and act, we are here to provide context and connections. It is our job to evaluate, to think critically, and to look ahead. We are not merely searchers, we are finders. We are not simply readers, we are knowers. We are not simply doers, we are guides. Librarianship is one of the very few professions where it is our exciting job to learn, direct, develop and keep up with any information technology (books included) that may be useful to our clientele. On account of the fact that we have spent generations learning, watching, analyzing and documenting how people interact with information, we are perfectly equipped to evaluate new technologies as they emerge. As the saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
There are limitless possibilities for librarians in this new landscape, but in order to seize them we must also examine our fears. As Ross and Nilsen noted in their article on reference questions and the Internet, many of the nit-picky, time consuming reference questions that used to occupy our time on the reference desk have come to be readily answerable with a quick Internet search. This truth has given rise to many mixed emotions amongst our patrons and ourselves in regards to the profession of librarianship. There is a sense of fear that our role is becoming obsolete; there is fear that patrons are relying on inferior information and are even more likely to satisfice without double checking their facts than they were before; there is confusion about what the role of the reference librarian should be, as our print reference collections dwindle. Yet again, our fears actually lead us to new possibilities. There is excitement that the time of librarians will now be freed up to delve deeper with the patron. If we no longer have to struggle to locate statistics and facts, we can spend that extra time helping our patron to think more deeply about her question, build a list of sources with her, and have more meaningful, intellectual interactions.
All of this has been largely covered by extensive literature over the last ten years of tumult and change, but there is another trend that has emerged from this shift that is worth exploring and that has gotten less attention. As patrons (or potential patrons) become more and more adept at searching the Internet—gaining information from Google and Bing, getting up to the minute updates on social unrest through Twitter, finding out about interesting articles on Facebook—they may be losing their desire or ability (if they ever had it) to ask questions of the library or the librarian, and this is a critical skill that must be fostered and encouraged for a number of reasons.
As Marilyn Johnson, ardent supporter of libraries and librarians, pointed out in her book This Book is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians can Save Us All, “If you don’t know where to find a book, it might as well not even exist” [13]. This seems like a simple statement, but it is ripe with meaning for us librarians. I’d like to couple that with another simple statement, drilled and adhered into our minds by professor extraordinaire Joseph W. Janes, “We want to search for concepts, but we are forced to search for words.” As librarians, we know the formula to translate concepts into words, and that is invaluable to our patrons. Johnson goes on to tell an anecdote about a tech question that she asks a librarian. The answer is blindingly simple, and it is graciously given. She could, Johnson notes, have gotten the same answer from Google, but because she was unable to conceptualize the kind of answer that she wanted, she had no language to search with. Information that a patron needs may very well exist on the web, but often, it is an exchange with a human being, a reference librarian, that facilitates its retrieval; because it is the communion between curious minds (and surely curiosity is something that we all, as reference librarians, have in spades) that turns concepts into words and words into meaning.
Monetization of Information
An enduring value of librarianship is providing patrons access to information—whatever information will best serve that patron’s need—easily and by whatever means necessary. The ALA Core Values Statement declares, “All information resources that are provided directly or indirectly by the library, regardless of technology, format, or methods of delivery, should be readily, equally, and equitably accessible to all library users.” We may not be the only providers of information services, and we may not be the most technologically advanced, but we are among the very few who can say: we do not attach strings to our services, and we do not give preferential treatment to some clientele over others.
Robert Darnton, historian at Harvard and head of the Harvard libraries, makes the point quite succinctly in his recent book, The Case for Books, “What distinguishes Google’s library from others is not digitization in itself, for that exists everywhere, but rather the scale and its purpose. Google is a commercial enterprise whose primary goal is to make money. Libraries exist to supply books to readers—books and other materials, some of them digitized.” [45].
As far as we know, there is no evidence that Google’s algorithm is tainted with the stink of big industry, and we are not here to cast aspersions on these companies that have become such a significant part of our interpersonal information landscape.
We are here, however, to point out that this is not something that patrons need fear from the library, and that this is a critical service that we offer to our patrons. This correlates directly with the ALA core value of democracy in providing “free and equal access to information for all people of the community the library serves.” As librarians in the nonprofit world of public and university libraries, the only incentive that we have for the kinds of answers that we provide to our patrons is their satisfaction with our work. In a way, this is a perfect incentive.
Barring human fallibility, based on the strength of our own knowledge bases and our opinions, and by our rejection of censorship and our commitment to continuing education, we are concerned only with meeting the needs of our patrons, because unsatisfied patrons mean less circulation, decreased use and decreased funding. (Although these days, funding seems to be inversely correlated to use, since use has gone up and funding continues to decline [ALA State of the Libraries].)
It is true, that we are often using many of the same Internet tools that our patrons use, but we have been trained to fact-check and evaluate, to understand the search mechanisms and displays that our patrons are faced with and help them to sift through the overwhelming world of information, with no Prada ad to place, with no weed killer banner to add, with no swelling and shrinking image of “one weird fact that will help you lose a pound a day” to distract as we deliver the best quality information that we can get our hands on.
Disappearing Walls of the Library
We are ready and willing to provide this quality information, but let us not forget the reality of decreased funding at a time of increased use. A bleak fact appears before our eyes: if our dollars disappear, these necessary services that we provide, free of commercial strings attached, can also vanish. It is time to communicate and advocate.
From a reference point of view, we have our hands full navigating information resources in all formats. We see the complexity, but what does the average person envision these days when they have a question in mind? A single search box. This single search box suggests that all knowledge is available through a simple word or phrase search, but it belies the complexity of the world of information.
The web is vast, and, frankly, it doesn’t have a lot of metadata or classificatory structure. It is a blessing that search engine technologies have made accessing web sites so simple, but it hasn’t reduced the need for librarianship one bit. The web needs mediation, and what are librarians but mediators of knowledge? The web needs evaluation, contextualization, and organization, and we are here to provide that. Even databases and other resources that contain a high degree of classificatory structure and metadata benefit from reference services.
The expanding world of information does not lessen the need for reference, it increases the need. If we continue to simply provide this service with low visibility, however, will our patrons or potential patrons realize how useful we can be to them? As the old soul song goes, “You don’t miss your water till the well has run dry.” We cannot afford to let the best resources be obscured by the dominion of the alluring, yet ultimately unfulfilling single search box, while we wrap all of our worldly goods in a handkerchief, strap it to a wooden pole and hit the rails. Sure, they’ll miss us when we’re gone, but where will we be? Huddled around a campfire for warmth with a can of baked beans and a mangy mutt at our sides. It is not only our job to provide the best reference services that we can, it is our job to advocate for this crucial function in society.
And perhaps it is not just the patrons that need to hear this message. Although many think of information finding as having shifted away from the library, there are statistics to support the idea that our patrons know just how crucial we are to their lives. According to the U.S. IMPACT Study, the availability of computers in public libraries and librarians to advise on their use, coupled with the increasing centrality of the Internet for communication, employment and government services, makes the library a true hub for many communities. To quote the study, “Librarians have begun serving as informal job coaches, college counselors, test monitors, and technology trainers for [a] growing number of patrons.” Because these services are often most important to those who are disenfranchised from political decision-making, it is our responsibility to tell funding agencies and educational institutions of what we witness on the front lines.
It is important to be clear that when we are advocating for reference services in the 21st century, we are reaching beyond site-specific reference. Libraries are no longer isolated vaults of knowledge. Libraries are part of the vast and growing web of knowledge, a web that the World Wide Web is only a part of. The domain of the librarian is not simply her catalog, but it is everything that she has access to—it is all of the sources she needs to answer the patron’s question. This includes library holdings the world over, and Project Gutenberg and Wikipedia and the telephone book and Amazon.com if that is where the question takes her.
Eco depicted the library as a closed-system, one in which access was entirely mediated by a librarian. Borges imagined the reverse: a library that is everywhere and everything, unending, unmediated, inescapable. How will we describe the 21st century library?
These powerful images that have captured people’s imaginations when they consider the library illustrate the capability and willingness to expand what a library can and will be. “The time will soon come when the idea of defining the clientele a library serves in very narrow, often geographically constrained terms will seem very quaint and old-fashioned,” stated Tom Peters in an ALA blog post [December 15, 2008], and indeed that time is upon us. With many libraries engaging with web 2.0, synchronous and asynchronous technologies, we have begun to explode the boundaries of time and space that once constrained our reference services. (That’s right, folks, on top of everything else we do as librarians, we may be tinkering with the very fabric of the time-space continuum. But, if that’s what our patrons want, that’s what they get!)
If this is true, that we are dissolving the boundaries of the library walls by
- building virtual libraries
- and by developing and improving digital reference services like the ipl2, chat reference consortia and improved email reference
then we may have to radically rethink how we respond sensitively and usefully to a patron base that potentially encompasses the entire world.
We don’t have a semantic web yet, and who knows what it will look like when we get it. In the meantime, the semantic web that we already have, the current information system that can understand, interpret and anticipate queries, is simply this: other human beings. More specifically, it is reference librarians. How many times have we listened and watched as a patron communicating her need with not only words but with facial expressions and hand gestures? How many times have we engaged in a game of twenty questions to elicit a patron’s actual query? Machines can’t do what we do, and more importantly, we wouldn’t want them to.
Asking for help, and then being helped, with generosity, intelligence and humor; engaging in meaningful intellectual dialogue with another human mind; the thrill of the hunt with a knowledgeable companion at our side; these are some of the genuine joys of life. Knowing that we are not alone in what can feel like a vast wilderness of information is a dear comfort that only the compassionate presence of another human being can give us, and in many ways, it is what makes life worth living.
As we consider advances in technology and service models, this idea is the guiding light that we should always follow: tools are only useful to the degree that they make us better, smarter and more compassionate. The future of reference, as it has always been, is the future of service. Expressing and observing information needs and engaging in a meaningful, illuminating dialogue, whether mediated through a computer, face to face, or telepathically (who knows?!)—is still truly a human joy, and one that we are paid to make ourselves more skilled at. Lucky us.
