Re-positioning libraries & librarians for the new age of omnipresent information

Prof. Shalini R. Urs
Executive Director
International School of Information Management
University of Mysore
Mysore
NiLIS , Colombo, SriLanka . November 2012
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Don’t

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Prologue

• The New York Public Library; the
great Debate
• Three scenarios
• What God Has wrought


Imagine a Bookless Library

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Lion statue attacking the patrons of The New York Public
the New York Public Library
Library
− One of the most
famous libraries in
the world sparked a
heated debate
over the $300
million proposal
to renovate the
iconic branch ( 5th
Avenue) and
shipping materials
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Sparking the Debate
The new room will be used for a circulation library,
more lounging and computer space and maybe
even a café.
A growing trend among libraries across North
America to revamp their identity, so that they
are seen not simply as a source of books but
also as community hubs.
"If you've got content on your laptop or on your
screen, why go to a library at all? If you have the same
assets available to you anywhere, why go to a library
at all?"
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Advocates--Christopher Hume
• Christopher Hume, columnist on urban issues and
architecture for the Toronto Star.
• A library that offers public events, educational series
and even coffee is giving its community "more to do,
rather than less to do.”
• Libraries have a greater purpose than to offer
resources and physical books. "It's about knowledge,
it's about information, it's about education, it's
about learning," he said.
• Hume – “any move to encourage more people to
engage with the library and have access to these
resources is a goodColombo, SriLanka . November 2012
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NiLIS , one”.
Shalini Urs

Three scenarios

Developed By
The Academic Libraries of the
Future project, UK
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The Beehive ; The Wild West ; the Walled Garden
Academic Libraries of
the Future (LotF)
Project sponsored by
the British Library,
JISC, the Research
Information Network
(RIN), Research
Libraries UK (RLUK)
and the Society of
College, National and
University Libraries
(SCONUL).
Paints three scenarios
http://www.futurelibraries.info/content/page/scenarios-2050-0
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Wild West
• A no-holds-barred free-for-all flavour.
• A world dominated by capitalism and corporate
power, including the HE sector.
• Private providers competing with each other
and the state offering students educational
services, including information services and
learning material.
• The power lies in the hands of the consumer
(‘student’ )who is able to pick and choose from
courses and learning materials to create a
personal educational experience.
NiLIS , Colombo, SriLanka . November
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2012 Shalini Urs

Beehive
• A typical hierarchical and structured life ; all is
ordered to ensure the common good of the whole
community.
• A society and HE which have open values and the
state is the primary funder /controller of HE.
• Overriding aim--the production of a skilled
workforce, through a largely homogenous HE
system for the masses while allowing the elite to
attend the few traditional institutions.
• A limited market is used to provide competition
within the HE system to drive up quality.
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2012 Shalini Urs

Walled Garden
• An oasis, shut-off from the outside world.
• Inhabitants of the garden neither know nor care
about the world beyond the garden’s comforting
walls ( After all, can’t possibly be any better than
those within the garden?)
• HEIs in this scenario are ‘Walled Gardens’.
• The closed nature makes HEIs insular and inward-
looking, isolated from other institutions by
competing value systems.
• Information services is as much concerned with
protecting their own materials as it is in enabling
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2012 Shalini Urs

The future of Education ?
• Khan Academy ?

• Coursera ?

• Udacity

• EdX
The list will only grow, Colombo, SriLanka . November
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NiLIS
2012 Shalini Urs

By the way, what brought about all
this ?

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“What hath God wrought”
“What hath God wrought”

a message in American Morse code
sent by Samuel F. B. Morse to
officially open the Baltimore-
Washington telegraph line in 1844

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Libraries
• The word library, derived from the Latin word,
Liber means "to peel"
• Refers to the inner bark of a tree, on which
early manuscripts were written
• Even today the word library is evocative of a
collection of books
• The institution of libraries has (ought to ?)
changed dramatically over time.
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What are libraries anyways?
• Democratizing access to knowledge
• Shared/community ownership and access
• A public good ; A public place for reading and
accessing information
• To serve this function, libraries evolved
techniques and tools for selecting, acquiring,
organizing, storing, archiving, retrieving, and
serving users with books
• And strengthened their position as the place
for information/knowledge
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Why / When did libraries reposition?

• Technologies, especially those related to information
production and distribution have always
metamorphosed libraries.
The first repositioning of libraries was triggered
The first repositioning of libraries was triggered
• The birth of the libraries itself may be credited to the
when invention of writingprocesses of libraries shifted
when the focus and processes of libraries shifted
the focus and
from preservation and custodianship to libraries
rom The next watershed technologies to impact
• preservation and custodianship to
organization and access with the advent of the
organization printing technologies.the advent of the
were the and access with
printing presses revolution tore down the walls
printing presses
• The Gutenberg
between the rich and the poor in terms of access to
books.
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• With the advent of different forms of
The second repositioning containers of when
communication and of libraries was
The second repositioning of libraries was when
knowledge/information, libraries also
we moved from container centric to container
we moved from container centric to container
free information. themselves as information
repositioned
free information.
centers going beyond books/documents
Libraries moved from product centric
Libraries moved from product centric
to information.
(books/documents) to service centric
(books/documents) to service centric
organisations.
organisations.
A subtle transition from organization/access to
A subtle transition from organization/access to
dissemination and user/need specific retrieval.
dissemination and user/need specific retrieval.
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What is repositioning ?
• According to business dictionary
repositioning is “changing a brand's
status in comparison to that of the
competing brands.
• Repositioning is effected usually through
changing the marketing mix in response
to changes in the market place, or due to
a failure to reach the brand's marketing
objectives.”
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Why reposition now ?
• In the present day context, libraries are in
need of repositioning due to the twin
factors of :
– competing brands ( Read Google, Facebook…)
– the changes in the ‘market place’
• The Internet is the information super
highway
• The Internet has turned the idea of access
to information into a ‘given’
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Internet Access as a fundamental
Right
• The United Nations proposed that
Internet access be a human right and is
pushed for universal access to basic
communication and information services
at the UN Administrative Committee on
Coordination in 1997
• Reiterated the claim in 2003, at the
World Summit on the Information Society
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Access—a Human Right
• Access to information as a human right is
becoming a reality.
• Countries such as Estonia, France, Spain,
Finland and Greece, have already made
Internet access a human right.
• Finland has made 1-megabit broadband
access a legal right. As Best (2004) argues
‘Internet is a fundamental Human Right in
and of itself ‘
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Libraries – Brand Equity
• It is a question of eroding brand
equity
• The power of Internet coupled with the power
of search engines all but made access / search
synonymous with Google.
• Users have come to equate the ever-expanding
Internet (estimated to be 1600 Exabyte’s in
2011) to be ‘the’ information super store

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Information Marketplace
• Finding information is easy
• Libraries (if they ever were) are not the
place that an user thinks to find
information
• The social media has changed the
information marketplace.
• Users have plenty of choices ( and better
places to go) in the information super
bazar
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What about books and Journals ?
• The domain of books and journals—another
stronghold of libraries is also slipping away
from their folds.
• Information Technologies have been the force
of change in the management of scholarly
communication systems as well.
• The demands of technological infrastructure
for journal storage, access, and management
have made libraries no longer the place for
these functions and services.
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Death of Libraries ?
• Amazon + Apple = Death of libraries?
More innovations from the “A Team” spelling big
change
• There is a perfect storm of the Internet,
technology and hardware creating a systemic
shift in both content and content consumption.
• While not the sole innovators, Amazon and Apple
have collectively synergistically created a
“tipping point” for the distribution of print
content … or what was formally known as
“books”.
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Repositioning Strategies
• There are diverse views and positions on
the future of libraries and strategies for
repositioning.
• We need to focus on /factor in the
following:
• The Internet phenomenon and freedom
from the constraints of containers,
distribution channels, and institutions
• Blurring of distinctions between types/kinds
of information /document genre
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The Cyberspace
• Cyberspace as a multitasking multiplex—
most functions/activities from banking to
networking to shopping, have moved
online. It is becoming ‘the place to be’
• Increased expectations/intolerance of
Digital Natives/Digital Immigrants
• Diverse/Rich interactions and
personalization/customizations (Human-
Human and Human-Computer)
•
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Emergence of Information
Management

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Emergence of iSchools and the
iSchool Movement
• The iSchool movement in the US is a strategy to
realign the academic programmes centered on
Information, to address the challenges of the
Internet era.
• The hallmark of these iSchools is the multi-
disciplinary character in their curriculum, faculty
and students.
• The identity and the unique positioning of these
iSchools are derived from their heterogeneity of
disciplines threaded together by their shared
vision and outlook on information.
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iSchools Organisation
• The iSchools organization (www.ischool.org) was
founded in 2005 by a collective of Information
Schools dedicated to advancing the information field
in the 21st Century.
• Currently there are thirty two schools/departments
that are members of this organization primarily from
the US but now broadening to other countries such as
the UK, Germany, Singapore and China.
• iConference—an annual gathering of the clans of the
iSchool fraternity is sponsored by the iSchools
organization and held every year since 2005
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Consortium of iSchools of Asia-
Pacific (CiSAP)
• CiSAP (www.cisap.asia) is an Asian initiative that was
formally launched in the International Conference of
Asian Digital Libraries (ICADL) 2008 conference in Bali,
Indonesia.

• Broadly modeled after the iSchool organisation, but
clearly recognizing the need for and the imperatives
of the Asian region, CiSAP is building a loosely
federated organization of iSchools of the Asia-Pacific
region.
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The structure and focus of
iSchools: An impressionistic study
• Of the thirty-two schools, only eight of them
continue to have the word “library” in their names
( 25%).
• These thirty-two schools run one hundred seventy
four programmes and of these only thirty-six are
Library Science Programmes ( little over 20%) and
the rest are information sciences, information
management, and others.
• The most common other programmes are media,
communication, informatics, human-computer
interaction.
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Is it a matter of nomenclature ?
• Nomenclature and focus — “moving beyond
libraries”
• Moving from Library and Information Science to
Information , information studies, and information
management
• Broadening of the focus from library to all information
spaces has been the overarching strategy of iSchools.
• Not conflating Information with metadata. Early IR
systems were essentially bibliographic Information
Systems
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Approach of iSchools
• They are concerned broadly with questions of
design and preservation across information
spaces, from digital and virtual spaces such as
online communities, social networking, the
World Wide Web, and databases to physical
spaces such as libraries, museums, collections,
and other repositories.
• Note : iSchools include libraries but are not
limited to libraries and try and converge all
repositories and memory institutions.
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Course Offerings
• Degree programs at iSchools include course offerings in
areas such as information architecture, design, policy, and
economics; knowledge management, user experience
design, and usability; preservation and conservation;
librarianship and library administration; the sociology of
information; and human-computer interaction and
computer science.
• Other programmes offered by these schools include—
information systems management; information security;
telecommunications and network management; Archival
Science; Museum Studies; bioinformatics; health
informatics; others.
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Convergence/Expanding Horizons
• the iSchools have clearly expanded their
horizons and focus on information in all its
forms and all forms of channels of information
and include archives and museums.
• Perhaps it is time for different memory
institutions such as Libraries, Archives, and
Museums (LAMs) to come together under a
common broad umbrella and have a shared
vision to manage human interactions with the
past, present and the future.
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Cultural Institutions
David Carr (2006) in A place not a place:
reflection and possibility in museums and
libraries (originally published as Minds in
Museums and Libraries: The Cognitive
Management of Cultural Institutions) examines
the shared cognitive dimensions of cultural
institutions like museums, libraries, and parks,
and suggests that they make similar situations
for transmitting information.
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Beyond Libraries: A Broader Vision
• The focus of the information profession will
have to be (shall be) this broader vision and
understanding of information—beyond the
confines of not only containers and channels
but also organisations.
• Minds have moved from individual cognition to
distributed cognition.

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Scope of information—from
scholarly to business to personal
• While libraries and LIS profession have typically
confined themselves to the management of
scholarly information (and materials), iSchools
have transited towards information in all
genres, forms, contexts, and purposes.
• Many iSchools have embraced this expanding
spectrum of information.

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• Internet has spawned the Information multiplex
paradigm
• Today life and people interact and function in a
multimodal-multitasking way.
• Life has moved online. We have moved from physical
neighborhood to digital neighborhoods; life
experiences, from shopping to surfing happen at one
place—cyberspace.
• In this context, differentiating tasks (personal or
professional) ( that is why BYOD) and information will
severely limit the relevance of libraries. The iSchools
look at information management from the
perspective of all kinds of information—business to
entertainment to education.November 2012
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NiLIS , Colombo, SriLanka .
Shalini Urs

• iSchools also look at the entire life cycle of
information from data to knowledge. Whether
scientific or business, it is not just about
information but data is also the focus of
iSchools.
• Many of the iSchools have been involved in the
big data (both scientific as well as other)
management.

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Expanding the Scope of
Information
• Focus on big data and data sciences across iSchools.
• DataOne (https://www.dataone.org/) is one exemplar
of this kind of approach towards efforts to build to new
innovative environmental science through a distributed
framework and sustainable cyber infrastructure that
meets the needs of science and society for open,
persistent, robust, and secure access to well-described
and easily discovered Earth observational data.
Supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation,
DataONE hopes to ensure the preservation and access
to multi-scale, multi-discipline, and multi-national
science data.
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Data Sciences Approach
• Expanding the Public Good concept to Content as
Infrastructure approach Cyber Infrastructure
• This also highlights the repositioning of Library
professionals from providers to partners in
science/research
• As Chris Anderson says today “The End of Theory:
The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific
Method Obsolete”
Data is everything

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From Information to Insights
• From data to actionable insights is the
approach of science and businesses and LIS
has to transcend from documentary scholarly
information to data for purposeful living
approach.
• The iSchools look at information management
from the perspective of all kinds of information
—business to entertainment to education.

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Going beyond information: From
information to interaction
• Both from a deeply philosophical
perspective to a more pragmatic
management paradigm, we need to refocus
on human interaction with information
• Moving from information to interaction
puts the user in the center stage aligns with
the theme of user empowerment
• Moving from Collection to conversations

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Interaction − the Zeitgeist thing
• Interaction is the key to all notions of
information and experience.
• Referring to the "the spirit of the times" or
"the spirit of the age” Zeitgeist is the general
cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual, and/or
political climate within a nation or even
specific groups, along with the general
ambiance, morals, socio-cultural direction, and
mood associated with an era
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Social Media is empowering
• In today’s social media and social networks era
“Conversations/ interaction” has emerged as a
fundamental characteristic of all information
spaces (whether social networking sites such
as Facebook or Scientific Journal sites such as
Emerald).
• Powered by the Web 2.0 technologies
informational experiences transitioned to an
era of user participation, engagement, and
interaction in all aspects from collection
building to tags, tag clouds and folksonomies.
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Conversation/Interaction Spaces

• Libraries (whether physical or digital) need to
rebrand themselves as platforms /spaces for
human-human and human-information
interaction.
• We need to move from a position of
information providers to
/conversation/interaction Spaces/platforms.
• Build Communities /Contexts for interactions
(hubs)
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Shalini Urs

Library as a place: building on
strengths and assets
• Libraries as institutions have one great asset in
this virtual world dominated by our competitor
Internet--building and space (something that
the Internet does not have)
• Libraries (primarily academic libraries) have
literally and figuratively been the heart of the
campus and traditionally have had vast
physical spaces.
• In our attempts to reposition, we need to
leverage on this big asset and align with the
new demands.
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• Building on this, libraries have begun to
reposition as ‘the place” for community and
contemplation (CLIR Report, 2005).
• One of the things about space is the so-called
“psycho-social” aspects of space. How they
impact our minds.
• Given that the library’s primary role is to
advance and enrich the student’s educational
experience; libraries can and do offer a
significant social role.
• It is a place where people come together on
levels and in ways that might not happen in the
classroom, or elsewhere.
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• Taking the cue from Café Coffee Day (CCD) ( In
India) branding and positioning (a lot can happen
over coffee), libraries can reposition their
buildings and spaces as “ happening places”. CCD
positioned itself beyond coffee (their core
product) and proposed and built the image of a “
hang out place” where in one can also have
coffee.
• Perhaps it is time that libraries (whether
academic, public or others) reposition themselves
as the place to meet and hang out with friends
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Shalini Urs

Libraries Rock!

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Shalini Urs

THANK YOU


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