1. Working in The Information Future:
Non Traditional Paths in Library
Work
Stephen Abram, MLS
Forum for Information Professionals
University of Alberta, SLIS, Edmonton, Feb. 8, 2013

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It’s simple really
• Users will continue to be diverse in the extreme
• Expectations around timeliness will increase
• We will have a foot in both camps for many years to come: digital and
physical
• Content will (is already) be dominated by non-text (gamification, 3D,
visual, music, video, audio, etc.)
• Search will explode with options and one-step, one box search is for
dummies
• The single purpose anchored device is dead as a target environment
• Devices will focus on social, collaboration, sharing, multimedia, creation
• Librarians will need to focus primarily on professional service and
strategic alignment (reduced roles in organizing knowledge and
step&fetchit politeness)
• Service Professionals NOT Servants
• E-Learning, collections and metadata will go to the cloud massively

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Market Share versus Winner Thinking

9. Deer in headlamps slide here.

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Who are you?

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• I’d add . . .
• Vision
• Creativity
• Respect for other degrees and talents
• Comfort with lack of structure
• Comfort with performance contracts and measurements
• Comfort with pay tied to performance
• High comfort with virtual work and team work
• High comfort with ambiguity

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• Is my career non-traditional?
• MLS 1980
• 1980’s major recession
• Contract work
• Suncor
• Coopers & Lybrand
• Wage & Price Controls
• Full-time
• Coopers & Lybrand/Currie Coopers & Lybrand
• Hay Group / Hay Management Consultants
• Contract
• Smith Lyons Torrance Stevenson & Mayer
• Until 1991

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• Moving to the Dark Side
• Thomson Electronic Publishing
• Thomson Corporation (300 companies)
• Carswell
• Micromedia
• Micromedia IHS Canada
• Micromedia ProQuest
• Sirsi
• SirsiDynix
• Gale
• Gale Cengage Learning
• Lighthouse Partners
• Dysart & Jones

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• Thomson and Librarians
• Executive positions
• Mergers & Acquisitions
• Training and Development
• Sales
• Customer Support
• Product Development
• Market Research
• Metadata
• Systems and IT
• Editorial and content creation
• Hundreds of librarians
• Lost count at 25+ CEO’s with MLS

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• Micromedia & IHS & ProQuest and Librarians
• Executive positions
• Mergers & Acquisitions
• Training and Development
• Sales
• Customer Support
• Product Development
• Market Research
• Metadata
• Systems and IT
• Editorial and content creation
• Customers
• 1/3 of staff had library training

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• SirsiDynix and Librarians
• Executive positions
• Mergers & Acquisitions
• Training and Development
• Sales
• Customer Support
• Product Development
• Marketing Communications
• Market Research
• Metadata
• Systems and IT
• Editorial and content creation
• Customers and Library Relationships
• Librarians hired on contract or PT 250+
• 250 employees with MLS

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• Gale Cengage Learning and Librarians
• Executive positions
• Training and Development
• Sales and sales management
• Customer Support
• Product Development
• Market Research
• Metadata
• Systems and IT
• Editorial and content creation
• Customers
• 700+library trained employees

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• Consulting
• Choosing target markets
• Choosing clients
• Conflicts
• Skills
• Admin Support
• Business development
• Cash flow
• etc.

23. Library Megatrends
It doesn’t take a genius to see
librarian skills and competencies
applied to the trends and issues in
each sector

24. Content Fragmentation
•Digitization’s real impact – non-fiction vs. non-fiction
•Format
• Print, ePUB, PDF, Kindle, etc. etc.
• CD, DVD, USB, etc. etc.
• Streaming
• Licenses, Open Access, Creative Commons, etc.
•eBooks, eJournals, eContent
•Games, Learning Objects, Guides, …
•Copyright Issues (NatGeo, Tasini, TPP, SOPA, AC, etc.
etc.)
•Author Lawsuits, WikiLeaks
•Citation fragmentation
•Make no mistake, the legal framework for knowledge

25. Beyond Text, Books and Reading Literacies
•Text aloud and shrinking codex market
•Graphics & Charts
•Formulae
•Pictures, Maps
•Video & Audio
•3D objects
•Gamification
•Deep Data Mining
•Assessments
•Community collaboration, cohorts, & social sharing
•The book model in your head is nostalgia

26. Walled Gardens or Infinite Access
•ILS
•CMS
•Cloud(s)
•Device dependencies
•Formats (e.g. Kindle)
•Discovery versus consumer search versus native
search
•4 horseman to watch:
•Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook (not Microsoft)
•Who controls reading and intellectual freedom?

27. Learning Object Diversification
•NextGen Textbooks
•eLearning (white label, proprietary, custom,…)
•Learning Management Systems
•Cohort Learning Environments
•Presentation Systems & Virtual Conference Environment
•Personal Learning Environments (PLEs)
•Collaboration Software as standard workplace
•MOOCs, e-learning, ‘distance environments’
•Open Access, scholarly publishing and deep aggregations
digitization
•The Academic Bubble is the next BIG disruption

28. End User Fragmentation
•Teens / Post-Millennials
•Millennials (gender, IQ, social)
•Aging workforce and tipping points
•Other demographics
•The new digital divide is not economic or aligned
with poverty
•Business versus Consumer
•The Device Divide
•Mobility
•Librarians’ relationships with cohorts are critical.

29. Search Fragmentation
•The new Algorithms
•Consumer Search
•Specialized Search
•Professional Search
•Semantic, Sentiment, Social, Suggestion Search etc.
•Mobile search
•Social search
•Work and personalized alignment
•Augmented Reality
•SEO & SMO & Content Spam
•Geo-location
•The ultimate search choice fragments

30. Technology Fragmentation
•Feature Phones die
•Smartphones dominate
•Tablets (Phablets?!)
•Laptops
•Desktops become rare
•Gaming stations as access
•Television as device
•E-Readers (e-paper versus plasma)
•Internet of Things
•Browsers lose dominance to apps and HTML5
•Fanboy behaviour is NOT Professional behaviour

31. Imagine
How do your skills apply to these
issues and challenges?

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34. Black and White
• The polarization of discussion
Dogmatic vs. Professional positions on:
eBooks, access, copyright, etc.
Political and social value systems in conflict

35. Black & White

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• Examples of B&W discussions
• These can sometimes lack professional perspectives, be politically
dogmatic and belief driven, and use death symbolic metaphors
• E-books versus Physical Books
• Open access versus Proprietary Content
• Free versus Fee
• Business Models versus Social Models
• Apple versus Microsoft PC
• Desktop vs. Laptop vs. Tablet vs. Phone
• Privacy and Confidentiality
• Make no mistake. I’m not saying the discussions are wrong or taking
sides I just think professionals see colour and shades of gray.

41. Definitions
• Discovery
• Search – known item retrieval
• Topical or Subject Search
• Research
• Immersive Learning
• Assembly
• Two step discovery: discover, searching, finding,
use
• The pressure is ON for librarians to scale up their
information fluency training initiatives

43. 1,200,000,000
1,000,000,000
Double a penny every day for a month =
Over $1 billion in just 30 days
800,000,000
600,000,000
Series1
400,000,000
200,000,000
-
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

44. Recognize key shifts

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OMG – the digital book!

46. Trends Differ Slightly by Library Sector
•Public Libraries
•Academic Research Libraries
•Community College Libraries
•School Libraries
•Specialized Libraries
•Consortia
And so do the audiences, members, users …

47. Public Libraries
•Recommendations (LibraryThing for
Libraries, Bibliocommons, Book Psychic)
•Community Glue
•Economic Impact and VALUE studies
•Programs on steroids aligned with collections and
space
•Partnerships
•Education and Learning – REALLY committing to
learning and accreditation/ credits / diplomas /
certificates
•Renewed advocacy moves to Influencing and selling

48. Academic Research Libraries
•Confronting and acknowledging the Academic Bubble
•eLearning alignment, MOOCs, LibGuides
•Repositories: Content Archipelagos? Standards and Cooperation
•LibGuides next generation
•Patron-driven acquisitions
•Post-literacy: Information Fluency versus ‘literacy’
•Demarcation between Undergrad, Grad and Faculty/Staff
•Dealing with different personae
•Copyright compliance
•E-Coursepacks and e-Reserves
•Strategic budgeting
•Partnerships and Liaison roles and managing same sustainably

49. Community College and Undergrad
•Information Literacy
•Distance education and eLearning
•Textbooks, Reserves, Coursepacks, e-all
•MOOCs
•Mobility
•Collections for new degrees and certifications
•Dealing with the scalability issue in Higher Ed

50. School Libraries
•Dealing with cost-effectiveness
•Common Core and ‘new’ curriculum
•Aligning with research
•21st Century Learning
•Future of the Textbook
•Scaffolded Information Literacy / Fluency
•Filters
•Staff and Faculty relationships
•Classroom pages
•Impact

51. Specialized Libraries
•Intranets
•Internal knowledge, RM
•MS SharePoint
•Relationship building
•Embedded Librarianship
•Personal branding
•Outsourcing
•Training (scalability)
•Proving impact, value, and mission alignment

52. Consortia
•Consortia
•CRKN, OCUL, TAL, etc.
•Dealing with the small town mindset
•OCLC Linked Data, RDA and global metadata
strategies
•DPLA
•Library Renewal
•EveryLibrary Advocacy PAC
•3M e-books (CALIFA / Douglas County initiatives)
•Dark literature, orphan works, etc.
•Cloud initiatives

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• Issues in the Private Sector
• Cooperation vs. Competition
• Walled Gardens versus Openness
• Living in all technologies
• Mapping and understanding changes in users
• Licensing content and lawsuits
• Staff development
• E-first versus print first
• Integrating non-print content
• Choosing to stay ahead of most customers
• The adoption curve
• Adding dimensions to Pricing
• Revenue is a measurement of success not a goal in itself.

54. So what is the answer?
Where are the real pain points?

56. Grocery Stores

57. Grocery Stores

58. Grocery Stores

59. Cookbooks, Chefs . . .

60. Cookbooks, Chefs . . .

61. Meals

62. Are we going to support a totally
build it yourself world?
Imagine IKEA merging with GM...

65. Let’s think
Think: Are you thinking
food, courses, days, weekly plan, or
nutrition overall?
What is a meal in library end-user community or research, education and learning terms? Are you focusing on scale?

66. The new
bibliography and
collection
development
KNOWLEDGE
PORTALS
KNOWLEDGE,
LEARNING,
INFORMATION &
RESEARCH
COMMONS

67. What are the real issues?
•Craft versus Industrial Strength
•Personal service only when there’s impact
•Pilot, Project, Initiative versus Portfolio Strategy
•Hand-knitted prototypes versus Production
• e.g. Information Literacy initiatives
• Discovery versus Search versus Deep Search
• eLearning units
• Citation and information ethics
• Repository archipelagos
•Strategic Analytics
• Value & Impact Measures
• Behaviours, Satisfaction
• Economic and strategic alignment

68. What We Never Really Knew Before
 27% of our users are under 18.
 59% are female.
 29% are college students. We often
 5% are professors and 6% are teachers. a lot
believe
that isn’t true.
 On any given day, 35% of our users are there for the very
first time!
 Only 29% found the databases via the library website.
 59% found what they were looking for on their first search.
 72% trusted our content more than Google.
 But, 81% still use Google.

79. Be More Open to the Users’ Path

80. What Would You Attempt If
You Knew You Would Not
Fail?

81. Get to where the user is.
eLearning, Mobile, Dis
tant, Virtual, Workflo
w

82. Choose

84. A Third Path

86. Don’t study the issue to death.

87. Smelly Or
Yellow Sex
Liquid Appeal?

88. Focus on the Whole Experience

90. Until lions learn to write their own story,
the story will always be from the perspective
of the hunter not the hunted.

92. Stephen Abram, MLS, FSLA
Consultant, Dysart & Jones/Lighthouse Partners
Cel: 416-669-4855
stephen.abram@gmail.com
Stephen’s Lighthouse Blog
http://stephenslighthouse.com
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