Library Bypass?
December 4, 2011
As most readers will know, this week was Online 2011, the big UK trade show for librarians and publishers in the library market. I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it this year, as I’m pretty busy with teaching and writing articles and studying for the MPhil/PhD (upgrade meeting quite soon). Then ProQuest called and asked if I would take part in a panel they were organising on “Library Bypass”.
This really picked up on some of the themes of this year’s Bloomsbury Conference and so I agreed to go along and speak from the point of view of Ranganathan’s Fifth Law:
The library is a growing organism
At the Bloomsbury, I used this image to represent the idea before moving on to speak about the work of mobile libraries and embedded librarians – i.e. the library outside the library space, because just as the book has evolved, the library has too, and we can and do access its resources everywhere.
At Online, I touched on the idea of marketing and brand identity, raised first on our panel by Isabel Holowatay (Bodleian Libraries). I suggested that unlike well-known fast-food chains famous for their in-your-face “You’ve been served by [insert company name], have a nice day” style, we librarians have, for most of our history, been able to rely on our physical space – the library building – to let users know that it is the library that is providing them with their information.
Now, though, with desktop access, it is difficult for users to know when they have access to information because the library has purchased access for their institution and when an article is just free to view anyway. I know that I have access to thousands of online journals thanks to UCL Library Services, but, at the time of use, I only know I need a UCL password if I have to pass through the Shibboleth authentication system, which, thanks to IP identification and other mechanisms behind the scenes, I don’t have to do for every article.
I’m not saying that libraries should wrap their branding round the Shibboleth-provided materials. How irritating would that be? (“This article was provided by [insert library name], have a nice day” Yeuch). I’m just saying that as a profession, we need to recognise that our tools for managing the library organism may work for predicted growth, but aren’t quite in control of the library that we have today, which has expanded well beyond the petri dish library science assigned it and is, quite literally, spinning a web of knowledge around the world.
Should we all go home depressed then? Not a bit. How can you bypass something that is, literally everywhere? Our issue isn’t bypass, it’s recognition. Isabel Holowatay made the point that the Bodleian Librarian, Sarah Thomas, reinforces to her staff that individuals matter and can make a difference. I’m sure all the RLUK Librarians would agree with this. Certainly at UCL, although I have an awareness that the library is providing me with support, on a day-to-day level, I think like most academics – “I’m co-teaching with Fred today”; “I’m running a writing workshop with Gill”; “I’m meeting up with Ruth to talk about increasing the book holdings for Historical Bibliography” (Preservation Librarian; Head of Special Collections; Subject Librarian). Library bypass? I think not. I need Fred and Gill and Ruth … and that really helpful lady on the issue desk last week who told me there was a process for staff to borrow journals even though they have a sticker saying “REFERENCE ONLY”.
“Library bypass”? No thanks. As an academic, I need the Library (inside the petri dish and out).
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Image: slide from my presentation ‘Ranganathan in the 21st Century‘; text overlaid on photo by Chris Devers, Copyright Commons, some rights reserved.
While I absolutely agree that we are all people and we are known as individuals, how do you bridge the gap between branding us as ourselves and branding us as members of the library staff? “I’m Fred – ask me (you know I can help)” is well and good – try saying, “I’m Fred and pleased to help you, but if I’m not here any of my colleagues in the library can help you instead”. It’s not nearly as snappy!
Surely what we are trying to do (what we should be trying to do) is save the service, not save the individual.
Just a thought!
Hi Heather
I think it’s possibly different in the public library sector but as academics are used to having dual identity (individual + employee of the university) I think that we are comfortable with our library staff having a similar dual identity.
Maybe … Kinda … Sorta
Certainly I don’t see our university library as needing saved – it’s thriving and we love it. How to save the public libraries … Needs bigger mind than mine to strategise.
Anne
Point well made – and taken. “Saving” services is perhaps more of a public library imperative at the moment than an academic library one. (And I don’t know how we are going to do it, either)
But suppose I had said, “Surely what we are trying to do (what we should be trying to do) is PROMOTE the service, not PROMOTE the individual”? In other words, it is the generic skills of librarians that need to be recognised, because that is the way that we can integrate the library with its community.
If Flossie has fantastic skills, we don’t want people thinking, “Flossie is fantastic (and she just happens to work in the library)” – we want people thinking,”Flossie has fantastic skills BECAUSE she works in the library”. That might be pitching it a bit strong, but hopefully you get my drift.
Hi Heather
Yes, that would be the ideal. And if everyone who works in the library provides excellent service, then good service and working in the library would be at least a correlative and hopefully perceived to be a result.
The sad truth is most academics (especially in science) are not aware of the library and the library (as a building and as an institution) can’t penetrate their consciousness itself. But as academics are used to working individual to individual, my hypothesis (rightly or wrongly) is that individuals working on behalf of the library can reach out kand form a bridge. What happens on or over the bridge should be awareness-raising of what the library,as an institution, does.
It’s that lack of awareness that the panel at. Online was asked to speak about.
In Arts and Humanities awareness is higher – a common phrase is that the library is our laboratory.
Anne
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