The library profession is at a cross roads. Computer technology coupled with the Internet have changed the way content is created, maintained, evaluated, and distributed. While the core principles of librarianship (collection, organization, preservation, and dissemination) are still very much apropos to the current milieu, the exact tasks of the profession are not as necessary as they once were. What is a librarian to do? In my opinion, there are three choices: 1) creating services against content as opposed to simply providing access to it, 2) curating collections that are unique to our local institutions, or 3) providing sets of services that are a combination of #1 and #2. This presentation elaborates on these ideas and demonstrates some of the possibilities. The most complete version of this presentation is located at http://infomotions.com/musings/future-2015/

1. A
few
possibili,es
for
librarianship
by
2015
Eric
Lease
Morgan
University
of
Notre
Dame
November
26
and
30,
2009

2. Types
of
libraries
There
are
many
individual
libraries,
but
there
are
only
a
few
different
types.
No
maJer
what
type,
they
all
share
a
number
of
core
values,
and
the
all
support
a
set
of
similar
services.

6. The
whats
of
librarianship
Libraries
collect,
preserve,
organize,
and
disseminate
data,
informa,on,
and
knowledge
for
the
purposes
of
making
the
work
of
their
respec,ve
communi,es
easier.
To
one
degree
or
another,
just
about
everything
us
librarians
do
can
be
associated
with
one
of
these
processes.
These
things
are
the
whats
of
librarianship,
and
they
change
very
slowly.

11. The
hows
of
librarianship
The
hows
of
librarianship
are
the
things
of
our
everyday
work,
our
day-­‐to-­‐day
opera,ons,
the
specific
workflows
within
each
of
our
libraries.
The
hows
of
librarianship
change
at
a
much
faster
pace,
and
these
changes
are
usually
driven
by
technology.
And,
librarians
love
lists

12. Catalogs
are
a
good
example

13. Journal
indexes
are
another

14. Lists
as
indexes,
not
databases
With
the
advent
of
freely
available,
industrial
strength
indexers
–
not
databases
–
we
have
seen
an
evolu,onary
development
in
the
crea,on
of
lists.
This
is
the
work
of
the
“informa,on
retrieval”
community
whose
tools
are
mathema,cs,
and
the
epitome
of
this
community
is…

16. “Smart”
computer
indexes
# calculate term frequency/inverse document frequency!
sub tfidf {!
my $n = shift; # number of times found in document!
my $t = shift; # total number of words in document!
my $d = shift; # total number of documents!
my $h = shift; # number of hits in the corpus!
my $tfidf = 0;!
if ( $d == $h ) { $tfidf = ( $n / $t ) }!
else { $tfidf = ( $n / $t ) * log( $d / $h ) }!
return $tfidf;!
}!

17. “Next-­‐genera,on”
catalogs
One
possible
future
for
libraries
lies
in
the
re-­‐
crea,on
of
our
venerable
library
catalogs,
but
I
think
this
represents
a
limited
vision…

19. Pu]ng
content
into
context
Considering
the
current
environment,
a
more
promising
future
of
libraries
lies
in
making
content
more
useful.
Examples
include:
annotate,
compare
&
contrast,
create
flip
book,
do
concordance
against,
find
opposite,
find
similar,
highlight,
incorporate
into
syllabus,
plot
on
a
map,
print,
rate,
review,
save,
share,
summarize,
tag,
trace
cita,on,
translate,
etc.

20. Demonstra,ons
(Psst,
Eric,
do
a
couple
of
demonstra,ons
here!)

21. Customiza,on/personaliza,on
Pu]ng
content
into
context
is
also
a
maJer
of
understanding
who
your
customers
are,
what
they
are
trying
to
accomplish,
and
crea,ng
systems
that
seem
to
“know”
these
things.

25. Plan
B
-­‐
Archives
A
“Plan
B”
or
another
future
of
libraries
lies
in
their
ability
to
be
more
like
archives.
This
work
falls
into
two
categories:
1)
the
work
of
“ins,tu,onal
repositories”,
and
2)
the
digi,za,on
of
“special
collec,ons”.

26. New
ways
to
do
old
thing
If
this
is
the
case,
then
you
will
need
to
use
computer
technology
to:
1. Decide
what
content
to
include
(collec,ons)
2. Collect
it
(acquisi,ons)
3. Normalize
it
(cataloging)
4. Index
it
(systems)
5. Provide
access
to
the
index
(public
service)

31. Change
happens
s
l
o
o
w
l
y
Books
are
not
going
anywhere.
Journals
are
s,ll
the
medium
of
formal
scholarly
communica,on.
The
licensing
of
content
will
con,nue.
Because
of
these
things,
the
work
of
librarianship
as
it
stands
today
will
change
slowly
over
the
next
five
years.

35. Evolu,on,
not
revolu,on
Time
and
energy
need
to
be
spent
now
in
order
for
change
to
become
a
reality,
to
discover
new,
addi,onal,
and
supplemental
roles
for
ourselves.
The
opportuni,es
are
only
limited
by
our
imagina,on
and
willingness
to
transform
them
into
reality.

36. “Gracias”
hJp://infomo,ons.com/musings/future-­‐2015/