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How Librarians Can Shape the FutureCarl Grant aa Ex Libris North America , Des Plaines, Illinois, USAPublished online: 03 Jun 2010.

To cite this article: Carl Grant (2010) How Librarians Can Shape the Future, Public Library Quarterly,29:2, 95-103, DOI: 10.1080/01616841003776375

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Public Library Quarterly, 29:95–103, 2010Copyright © Ex Libris North AmericaISSN: 0161-6846 print/1541-1540 onlineDOI: 10.1080/01616841003776375

How Librarians Can Shape the Future

CARL GRANTEx Libris North America, Des Plaines, Illinois, USA

The first two sections of this three-part article contrast the myopicfive-year strategic plan that the American Library Associationintroduced just before the Boston ALA Midwinter convention in2010 (Section 1) with a Danish view of a future for librarians thatincludes significant and irreplaceable work (Section 2). Section 3of the article provides several on-line examples that illustrate howother user and professional communities are using modern elec-tronic techniques to collect and provide timely information. Theseprovide exemplary models which librarians can use to move aheadto develop and fulfill a significant information agenda for thenation, their institutions, and the profession.

KEYWORDS ALA planning, planning ALA, future, vision, com-munity building, digital future

EXAMINING THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION (ALA)STRATEGIC PLAN

While at the American Library Association (ALA) Midwinter Conference inBoston (MA), January 2010, I took time to review the recently issued ALADraft Strategic Plan. I think it is a disappointing document if you are look-ing for a clear vision statement, an expression of strategy to be used inachieving that vision, and/or goals and objectives by which to measure theorganization’s success in moving that plan forward.

The draft “Big Hairy Audacious Goal” (BHAG) expressed in the docu-ment is, “ALA builds a world where libraries are central to life-long learning

Received: 02/10; Accepted 02/10.This article is based on Carl Grant’s blog entries for November 27, 2009, and January 20

and February 18, 2010. These entries and his current blog are available at http://commentary.exlibrisgroup.com/

Address correspondence to Carl Grant, Ex Libris North America, 1350 E Touhy Avenue,Suite 200 E., Des Plaines, IL 60018. E-mail: carl.grant@exlibrisgroup.com

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and where everyone is a library user.” Really? That is our big hairy goal? Itis sadly out of touch with reality.

The people who articulated this very small and quite vague BHAG mustnot have attended the ALA conference that I just returned from in Boston.Because what I heard there was that libraries are, at best, facing a harrowingfuture.

Libraries are being closed; hours reduced, funding slashed, staffreduced, collections purged, and programs are being eliminated. The listgoes on and on.

Beyond the financial crisis with which libraries are already dealing,there are the much larger country-wide issues of a failing commercial realestate market, growing unemployment, and numerous states that are facingbankruptcy. If any of these situations worsens, it will require more federalbailouts and almost certainly it will mean that we will all be facing inflationand further devaluation of our currency. And, each one of those crises willhave a continuing major negative impact on libraries as we know themtoday.

In addition, I heard at the ALA meeting how academic libraries “nolonger have a seat at the big decision-making table” on campuses and howa recent panel of retired academic provosts, when asked about the future,could agree on only one thing: They would “never build another library.”

ALA indirectly confirmed this situation when it issued a press releasesaying that college and university libraries:

● Reported more visits than in the previous year. Since that number is nottied to the use of an information service, however, it could mean thatthe students were at the library only to use the coffee shop, computers,study carrels and learning commons, activities which could just as easilybe done in the Student Center;

● Provided a growing number of group information services (just as easilydone in a classroom or Webinar); and

● Provided library reference services by email or Web (which does notrequire a library building). One hardly must wonder why provosts thinkthey no longer need to build new libraries.

I walked away from the Boston conference thinking that our organization isattempting to deal with micro-issues when we should be dealing with realmacro-issues (BHAG) containing real substance. But I do not believe that iswhat ALA has defined in this document

BHAGs should be statements that illustrate the transformation neededin libraries today. It should say that librarianship is far more about the criticalthinking, analytical skills, and information service needed by end-users thanit is about libraries.

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Yes, collections will continue to have a role, but as one panelist pointedout at the RLG (Research Libraries Group) President’s Panel on Friday, ourend-users do not see libraries the same way librarians do: Librarians see themas collections and then build services around those collections. End-users seeinformation and libraries as only one small part of that landscape.

Our job in librarianship is to help users locate—among the ubiquitousinformation they can access—information that is authoritative, appropriate,and authenticated. Then we need to place it into the context needed toanswer their information query.

To do that, we need to realize librarianship, not libraries, is the keyto achieving a BHAG. Librarianship is a structure that encases libraries andinformation, not the other way around, and it will be driven by librarians.Librarianship represents substantial “value-add” to information, especiallywhen that information is so vast and growing so rapidly.

An equally important BHAG would be to start defining a scalablemethod of processing all the vast amounts of information that we considerauthoritative, appropriate, and authenticated. We cannot do that with today’scurrent models of library or librarian services. Yet, if we look around, wesee that this is a place where studying how a community developed orenhanced software works, how things like Wikipedia (and numerous othercommunity-based initiatives), and how we can actually begin to define scal-able models of distilling new insights from the vast information available,librarians can learn how to sort out the best information that will serve end-user needs. At the same time we can underscore and promote the value-addof librarianship.

I look at the plan that ALA has issued and I find it leaves me as parchedas I was before it was issued. I still do not see ALA laying out a clear visionand strategy for the future of this profession. The document issued, endswith a “5-Year Planning Horizon—Mega Issues” that only asks questions. Itanswers none.

One “Mega-Issue” question in the list asks, “How should ALA effectivelypartner with its chapters and affiliates to implement its vision and strategicplan?”

Perhaps ALA should start by actually developing something thatresembles one.

AN INSPIRING VISION FOR THE FUTURE OF LIBRARIANSHIP

Contrast the vague and disappointing document from ALA with the visionof Birte Christensen-Dalsgaard, the Deputy Director General of the RoyalLibrary of Denmark. I heard her speak in Europe, shortly after the ALAMidwinter Boston conference.

Her presentation, called “Libraries in the Google Age,” brought me toa laser-like focus within the first 30 seconds when she said, “Libraries are

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struggling to find a way to add value . . . .” Having personally said this sofrequently that it feels more like a chant than a statement, I quickly realizeda kindred soul was on the stage. I was not disappointed.

Christensen-Dalsgaard pointed out that librarianship is “going from col-lections to service provisions.” (I nearly applauded right there. This is alibrarian that understands what “value-add to information” is all about.)

Further, Christensen-Dalsgaard discussed numerous ways that librarianscould provide value-add to information, including using technology cou-pled with librarianship to help suggest, advise, and support users in theirquest for information. However, as she pointed out, we need to use tech-nology in order to scale our value-add to encompass the ubiquitous supplyof information.

Discussing methods, Christensen-Dalsgaard talked about assigning rel-evance as something critical to providing quality information to users. Whilepointing out that the most relevant information must show up within thefirst two screens of the result set, she also noted that relevance is highly per-sonal to the user. For example, a scientist typically finds the most relevantinformation to be the most recent, while for a historian the most relevantitem might well be something quite different. Of course, she pointed outthat assigning relevance in this way requires us to know a great deal moreabout our users than we typically do today.

Christensen-Dalsgaard also looked at the issues of specializationwherein we need to use technology and librarianship to determine whichof the available information resources are to be delivered to the user. Usingmobilization as her next theme, she emphasized that we need to make sureour technology works with mobile devices, precisely because it is throughthese devices that we will be able to further personalize the informationdelivered.

As an example, she pointed out that most mobile devices today haveglobal positioning capabilities (GPS) capabilities. In cases for which the useris seeking a physical copy of an item, we could use the GPS capabilities tofilter the information to that copy located nearest the user.

Returning to the question of how librarianship adds value, Christensen-Dalsgaard pressed the issue of not only embracing mobilization but alsobroadening the scope of it by creating a tight definition for the interfaceutilized. By broadening the scope of the synthesized information we couldalso further meet the end-user’s needs.

Realizing that we are facing more information, more researchers, andmore knowledge, she pointed out that we must focus on creating more auto-mated tools to handle and process information. Just as I have said before,she then remarked that we need to bring the community of users into theprocess of aggregating and using information. She suggested that librarianslook at the Virtual Observatory (http://www.ivoa.net/) as one example (thethird section of this article provides further examples). She told librarians to

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move from merely helping users to move from “finding to understanding.”She was quick to point out that the “search process is also a learning pro-cess” and should be valued as such. Identifying the use and understandingof facets in the search process was an example of learning that could resultfrom the search process.

Moving to a discussion of library services needed for users, Christensen-Dalsgaard exhorted the crowd to ask themselves in the course of developingservices to ask, “Who are we developing these services for?”

The answer should be a strong guide in both how to develop the ser-vice and the features/functionality to be provided by the end product. Shediscussed interfaces for technology tools used in providing services andstrongly made the case that “a user interface for everyone is an interface forno one”. Beyond and beneath the interface issues, she talked about digitaldata extensively and how we need to provide tools to make that digital datamore useful to end-users. These would be tools that allow, perhaps evenencourage, users to interpret, disseminate, and work with data and to beable to place it in context.

As a result, Christensen-Dalsgaard believes that librarianship wouldmove toward providing users with “intelligent objects, not portals.” Thoseobjects would ultimately be “able to present themselves rather than requir-ing intelligent systems to surround those objects for them to be presented.”Ultimately, she saw these as collections of “intelligent objects, not intelligentlibraries.” Understandably, she was quick to also identify some challengesthat this paradigm would invoke, including that of rights management. Likeothers I have heard, she made the case that “rights need to ride with theobjects so that they can be intelligently handled.”

As Christensen-Dalsgaard moved to conclude her talk, she underscoredonce again, the strong belief that “library services must add value to workprocesses and must integrate into workflows.” This was necessary because“while scarcity used to be the books, it is now time.”

These are excellent points and a truly inspiring talk that conveys a realvision for the future of librarianship.

TOOLS IN LIBRARY AND ACADEMIC TOOLBOXES FORIMPLEMENTING A VISION FOR THE FUTURE OF LIBRARIANSHIP:

COMMUNITY, COLLABORATION, AND OPENNESS

Libraries will not implement a vision such as Christensen-Dalsgaarddescribes using the tools of the past. Nor need they, for there are a vari-ety of new tools at their disposal. However, many of these tools will requirelibraries and librarians to rethink both the substance and forms of the infor-mation they provide today and how they deliver their work to others. In

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making the case for that change, I call your attention to some Web siteswhere you can see large and open Web-based communities at work, sharingworkloads, performing group-thinking, and collaborating to provide con-tent, answers to problems, and even educational content and courses. Theseinclude the following:

1. Dell’s IdeaStorm (www.ideastorm.com) Here is a site that allows usersto share ideas and collaborate with one another in suggesting how Dellcould develop new and improved products or services. The user’s canvote ideas up or down. Fascinatingly, the stats show that customers have:contributed 13,052 ideas, promoted 701,106 times, and posted 87,985comments. Dell has actually implemented almost 400 of the ideas, whichmay not seem like a lot, but—in essence—these 400 ideas came fromoutside the company and at no cost to them.

2. Mechanical Turk by Amazon (www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome). A sitewhere you have access to a global, on-demand, 24/7 workforce.Organizations can get thousands of tasks completed; sometimes inminutes and they pay only when they are satisfied with the results.

3. Virtual Tourist (www.virtualtourist.com). This site is a worldwide-travelcommunity where travelers and locals share travel advice and experi-ences. Every tip on is linked to a member’s profile so you can learn moreabout each member and then read about more of that member’s travelexperiences.

4. Prosper (www.prosper.com). This site is one of the largest people-to-people lending marketplaces with more than 860,000 members and morethan $180,000,000 in loans funded on Prosper. Borrowers can list loanrequests between $1,000 and $25,000 on Prosper. They set the maximumrate they are willing to pay an investor for the loan, and tell their story.People and institutional investors register on Prosper as lenders, then settheir minimum interest rates, and bid in increments of $25 to $25,000 onloan listings they select. Prosper handles all on-going loan administrationtasks including loan repayment and collections on behalf of the matchedborrowers and investors.

5. Askville (www.askville.com). At this site, people get answers fromeveryday people: 55,000 active Guides throughout the country—withthousands available online at any time. It now has more than a millionusers and has answered more than 27 million queries since it launched itsrevolutionary mobile answers service in January. A key difference here isthat people who answer are rated as Guides.

6. Academic Earth (http://academicearth.org/). Here users around the worldhave the ability to easily find, interact with, and learn from full videocourses and lectures from the world’s leading scholars.

7. World Digital Library (WDL) (www.wdl.org/en/). WDL partners aremainly libraries, archives, or other institutions that have collections of

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cultural content that they contribute to the WDL. The principal objectivesof the WDL are to:

● Promote international and intercultural understanding;● Expand the volume and variety of cultural content on the Internet;● Provide resources for educators, scholars, and general audiences;● Build capacity in partner institutions to narrow the digital divide within

and between countries.

What is really important about each of those sites is what they are at the coreof how librarians can add value: collaboration, community and openness.

The sites show us what is possible when you assemble a large commu-nity via the Web and provide both a common need and a means with whichto address it. These sites show what is ours to tap and use in academiaas well as in academic and public libraries. If we move in this direction,I believe we see the potential of a powerful tool to use in transformingeducation, educational consortiums, libraries and library consortia.

Think about how we could apply what those sites show to our environ-ments. To start, we should make education and knowledge on any subjectfar finer in the granular level of its structure. In today’s environment, we fre-quently encounter new concepts, ideas, or terminology and we need shortand quick background and information from a recognized and authoritativesource.

Unfortunately today’s educational offerings are all too often still in theformat of courses, requiring a commitment of many hours per week andmany weeks per semester in order to be utilized. Libraries still largely offercontent in books, magazines, newspapers (and now increasingly electroniccontent), all of which may require a sizable commitment of time to search,obtain, and digest.

However, in today’s environment, what people have is 15–30 minutes tolearn a new concept before they walk into a session to discuss it. If coursesand content could be broken down into tight, 15–30 minute segmentsthat build on each other, then I think we would see far greater utiliza-tion, not only in academic environments, but also in the workplace andat home.

How can librarians help make this happen? We can reach out throughthe Web to tap communities in order to build new educational content thatwill be used by people to teach people. Libraries undertaking this kindof organization and presentation would use these communities of users todevelop new subject areas and offer far more current, far more accessible,information that users would vet by their quick use. Thus, we wouldstill offer the assurance of authority, authentication and appropriateness.Ultimately, both libraries and academics should become the ultimate

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certifiers, rankers and valuators’ of the content created in these environ-ments. The resulting educational offerings would not necessarily be offeredin classrooms or on campuses, but deployed across the Web, in small, gran-ular components that, when linked together, offer a greater whole than isoffered today using traditional settings and methodologies.

There are challenges we have to realize and deal with in this paradigm.For example, as we all know the staggering statistics on how fast the humanrecord is growing and the fact that some (Interactive Data Corporation beingone) predict by 2010, nearly 70% of the digital universe will be created byindividuals working individually and within communities too numerous tocount. The result is that traditional methods of both education and librari-anship cannot scale to handle that growth. Community is one tool that willenable us to harness that human record, distill and analyze it, and derivefrom it new understanding and knowledge.

Yet in order to do that, we have to rethink how we run our operationsand offer services to our members, non-members, users, and non-users.Academic consortia and certainly library consortia are already heavily in thebusiness of collaboration. But we need to step back and look at the newopportunities that exist in the area of collaboration and how to harness thosenew opportunities and use these new tools in order to do our work and todetermine how we can extend our offerings into new environments.

Another issue to think about is that Web-based communities are notgeographically limited. They come together across all geographical, political,and human borders. Academic and library consortia also no longer need tobe geographically limited. Virtual consortia are not only possible—they aredesirable. They are based on shared interests, purposes, or just users, andthe communities to which you can extend to reach and include are virtuallyunlimited.

If we want to find new opportunities, we have to look in new places.We need to make sure our educational courses and our library servicescan be plugged into flickr, Facebook, or MySpace, as only a few examples.For example, imagine viewing a picture of a snow leopard on the Weband wanting to learn more about it. We should provide educational contentavailable right there, where the user is, in a simple search box requiring onlya click to obtain, yet linking them to as much or little content as they needand want. The bottom line is that we need to understand that knowledge isbuilt one brick at a time, and, today, those bricks are more numerous butneed to get smaller and smaller.

In order for academia and libraries to harness that change, we mustemploy collaboration, community, and openness to leverage the opportuni-ties that are in front of us. Then we will be able to put courses, content, andlibraries into online communities so that libraries, universities, and collegesbecome the face and the “brand” for knowledge of all kinds.

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CONTRIBUTOR

Carl Grant re-joined Ex Libris in July 2008 to serve as president of ExLibris North America. During his previous tenure (December 1998 throughMarch 2003), tremendous growth was recorded in this region. Mr. Grant hasheld senior executive positions in a number of library-automation compa-nies and has demonstrated his commitment to libraries, librarianship, andindustry standards through his active participation in the American LibraryAssociation (ALA), in the ALA Association of College and Research Libraries,ALA Library Technology and Information Association, and ALA ExhibitsRound Table; and on the board of the National Information StandardsOrganization (NISO), where he has served as board member, treasurer, andchair. Under Mr. Grant’s leadership, NISO underwent a transformation thatresulted in a revitalized library standards organization. In recognition of hiscontribution to the library industry, Library Journal has named Mr. Grant anindustry notable. Mr. Grant holds a master’s degree in information and libraryscience from the University of Missouri at Columbia. He can be reached atCarl.Grant@exlibrisgroup.com.

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Academic Earth. 2010. Free online video courses from leading universities. http://academicearth.org/ (accessed May 10, 2010).

Askville. 2010. Askville beta by Amazon. www.askville.com (accessed May 10, 2010).Amazon. 2010. Amazon mechanical Turk: Artificial artificial intelligence. www.

mturk.com/mturk/welcome (accessed May 10, 2010).American Library Association (ALA). ALA draft strategic plan. http://connect.ala.

org/node/8949 (accessed May 10, 2010).Christensen-Dalsgaard, B. Libraries in the Google Age. (accessed May 10, 2010).Dell. 2010. IdeaStorm. www.ideastorm.com (accessed May 10, 2010).Facebook. 2010. Facebook. http://www.facebook.com/ (accessed May 10, 2010).flickr. 2010. flickr. www.flickr.com (accessed May 10, 2010).Interactive Data Corporation (IDC) 2007. The expanding digital universe. A forecast

of worldwide information growth through 2010. John F. Gantz, ed.MySpace. 2010. MySpace. www.myspace.com (accessed May 10, 2010).Prosper. 2010. Prosper: The loan marketplace. www.prosper.com (accessed May 10,

2010).Virtual Observatory. 2010. http://www.ivoa.net (accessed May 10, 2010).Virtual Tourist. 2010. Virtual tourist: The people behind the places. www.virtual

tourist.com (accessed May 10, 2010).World Digital Library (WDL). 2010. World digital library. www.wdl.org/en/

(accessed May 10, 2010).

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