Finding Common Ground: Creating the Library of the Future without Diminishing the Library of the Past

Citation

Duckett, B. (1999), "Finding Common Ground: Creating the Library of the Future without Diminishing the Library of the Past", Library Review, Vol. 48 No. 2, pp. 95-111. https://doi.org/10.1108/lr.1999.48.2.95.4

In the back of the minds of many is the fear of what happens to our libraries as we tumble headlong into the electronic future. Exciting and valuable though IT developments are, where are they leading us? And what of print? Are we really content to see it decline into obscurity? Have the disciples of Babbage and Gates vanquished those of Caxton and the scribes? No, of course not, but what is the balance? Where is the common ground? Thoughts such as these where those of Cheryl LaGuardia and her Harvard colleagues as the “frenzy” of the virtual library encountered the backlash of the Gutenberg Elegies (Birkerts, 1996) and Silicon Snake Oil (Stoll, 1995). The idea of a conference to discuss the issue was received enthusiastically and one was held in March 1996 (I deduce, we are not told). This publication is a collection of papers from that Harvard Conference.

This large format heavyweight contains the text of 55 contributions divided into six main subject areas. Prefacing these are two excellent scene‐setting papers. Clifford Lynch of the Coalition for Networked Information, gives a lucid and powerful overview of the many issues involved. Some are familiar, such as the problem of quality control, the definition of “library”, information overload, and the loss of control. Others are less familiar, such as the decline of local identity, the intrusiveness of electronic monitoring, discontinuity across generations of hardware and software, and the need for personal contact. Lynch bravely identifies roles for libraries in the electronic future. The other keynote contribution is by Walt Crawford, who follows his epoch‐making book Future Libraries – Dreams, Madness & Realities, co‐authored with Michael Gorman (Crawford and Gorman, 1995), by a vigorous debunking of such common myths as that the future is all digital, the Internet is free, that everyone is online, that new technology is always an improvement, and that print is dead. To even the balance, some myths of the past are thrown in, that of the golden age of public libraries, and card catalogues!I suspect that not a few of the many contributions that follow may earn Crawford’s scorn, stimulating though they may be. In the first section, “Technology and the network – daimons or demons?” for example, the attempt to characterise the attempt to solve the standardisation interfaces under the rubric “Digital library = holistic library” is a shade over‐glib. This section in general looks at developments in service provision such as the integrated network at the Smithsonian Institution which unites different types of users – research libraries, museums, etc. – and the Harvard Digital Finding Aid which is grappling with the massive and multi‐format holdings of that huge library and reducing them to an OPAC. Architectural considerations figure in redesigning reference facilities to take into account IT, and also, engagingly, redesigning whole IT service provision into a more homely user‐friendly ambience – it starts with the screen!No more getting “lost in cyberspace”. Accounts follow of establishing WWW gateways, training and habituating users to accept IT, of integrating technology and technical skills, and, most welcome this, a look at the psychology of using computers – how do users regard what they are doing?

This is a huge book and I can do little more than lightly sketch in the contributions. Under the rubric “Satisfying our users”, there is much about the changing nature of reference service, how we can keep up to the mark with new developments, use and user problems, how users are changing our libraries, and support for the “electronically challenged”. The title of one essay in the section “The changing face of research” starts: “There are no bar‐rooms or theatres or idle vicious companions”!Twenty‐first century scholarship will require different disciplines, skills and funding. Interdisciplinarity, protecting gateways, and the changing nature of texts are three other themes. On the latter, Project Gutenberg hopes to have 10,000 books in its electronic library by 2001!(A thought I will be discussing in my “bar‐room”!). Thus we enter the next group of essays on “Changing material, changing economies”. Co‐ordination and co‐operation, the US Government’s role in the libraries of the future, electronic document delivery, maximising tight budgets, the role of online books and a rerun of the “Just in time versus just in case” scenario all feature.

What does all this turmoil lead to? “The future of intellectual organisation” looks at the problems of bibliography, of organising “ephemeral metadata information”, of the need for a “client‐server cataloguing code”, and the problem of simply identifying, permanently, digital documents. Archiving electronic data is a recurrent theme, while the problem of describing, minutely, rare books is solved by electronic imaging. “Our individual and collective futures: the library as an organization” concludes the volume, and brings us back to earth with a bump. Organisational models, staff and team development, all seem rather tame and familiar. I missed a finale on a par with the keynote addresses which would send us into the new millennium with our skills honed, mouse in one hand, book in the other, confident and assertive in our re‐defined roles – what were they again?

Without a doubt, these papers are challenging, timely and stimulating, and I have enjoyed those I have read, but I’m not really any the wiser on the future of print or how we can create the library of the future without diminishing the library of the past – to use the words of the book’s subtitle. The contributors collectively build up an impressive body of knowledge of the New Librarianship for the Library of the Net, but the library of the past seems to be merely that which is digitised!

I must both praise and curse the publishers and editors. I must praise them for giving us this collection of stimulating papers on such topical issues. I must praise the layout, type size, headings and useful auxiliaries (references, index, lists of resources used, etc.). And I accept that 55 contributors is a lot. But I must also castigate them. This is one of the most awkward books I have had the misfortune to encounter. If I were a waverer in the book/non‐book debate, then this overweight, oversized, unportable mass of paper would quickly drive me to a screen. The wretched book is barely useable away from a large table. A less generous typeface, fewer blank pages, thinner pages, a smaller page size with page wide lines rather than school‐bookish columns, surely something could have been done to cut down this mammoth compendium to more user‐friendly proportions? Already the early pages in my copy are becoming detached from the over‐ambitious “perfect” binding. Several slim, low‐cost paperbacks, each reflecting one of the major themes, would have been an attractive alternative. I have criticisms for the editors too. One gripe is the contents page. It is hard to find out what the 55 contributed papers are about !One has to fight through authors’ names and institutional affiliations, often several of them, before the title of the paper is reached, sometimes on the third or fourth line. The 55 articles have a total of 99 authors, a joint‐authorship of eight taking the biscuit. With an average of less than nine pages per article, such prolific name dropping (and citation‐grabbing?) is excessive and obtrusive. More navigational aids are needed to guide us through this complex book; abstracts or brief summaries. Author details could have been relocated to a separate section and more informative subtitles used on the contents page. Economy and clarity please dear editors; surfing the print requires time I do not have. If print is to survive, then let us not forget all we have learned about good book production.