Feb. 20, 2001
Libraries are in a state of flux, perhaps more so than at any time in the past, or at least the rate of change is faster than ever before. Since 1970, my small hometown library has moved from a cramped, building with a small children's section in the basement to a modern one with an open floor plan, computer terminals providing connections to libraries across California and public Internet access, sound recordings and videocassettes, comfortable chairs scattered throughout, meeting rooms …and no card catalog in sight. Although hardly a cutting edge institution, the Sebastopol Public Library now meets a very different set of public needs than it did in 1970 and will, no doubt, meet still different needs in 2030.
A primary shortcoming of almost any projection of libraries' future, such as the bookless library forecast by F.W. Lancaster (described in Harris & Hannah 1993), is a narrowness and paucity of imagination-an inability to anticipate the ramifications of what is known, not merely an inability to forecast the next revolutionary technology, although new modes of communication and transmission certainly begat still newer modes and increased expectations.
What does it mean to serve the community? One example is the challenge from the big bookstores. Steve Coffman (1998) notes that although the selection of materials in the chain bookstores is far thinner than in a good sized public or academic library (a fact not readily apparent to the customers), the bookstore offered a congenial place to sit by oneself or gather with friends and sit with a cup of coffee; in short, a casual atmosphere not found in most libraries. In addition, the hours were often more convenient that in the average library. That appeal hasn't been lost on library planners. At Stanford, the newly redesigned public spaces feature a variety of options for seating and conversation beyond the old standard carrels. The administration also contracted with a vendor to provide coffee and a comfortable sidewalk café seating just outside the front door.
Here again, choices must be made in how to best use limited space-providing for relaxed social gatherings versus for library materials. At Stanford, the three new reference centers that replaced the old centralized reference area occupy a significantly larger percentage of the library and offer much more seating and reading space, but at a cost, however, because the library badly needed additional shelving and a new remote storage facility within a year of remodeling.
The cost for providing technology-mediated information, whether on microfilms and CDs or through online databases may be another overlooked factor as significant as the cost of paper books. New technology requires new services-in terms of machinery, software and labor costs for maintaining access to the information-that correspond to the costs of maintaining a physical collection; the library must make hard choices about allocating necessarily limited resources. That may mean that some community expectations will not and cannot be met-hence the danger of inviting charges that the library is abandoning books as other services are brought to the fore. (Dowlin 1997)
Even in academic settings, the question of books versus new technology has come up many times, despite the long history of accommodating other formats for information. The current trend of integrating different media seems likely to continue in both the public and academic collections and technology is unlikely to allow cheap and easy digitalization of materials on paper any time soon-if ever. The debate over books versus other forms is and always has been less about the information itself-which is what libraries provided for a very long time-than about the format, even if format is not immaterial and has great implications for ease of use.
How much need will there be for traditional services? While the rapid spread of the Internet (over 56% of adults and over 75% of children have access (Jesdanun 2001)) and development of search engines has given rise to expectations that libraries are irrelevant, the Internet as a major force in society is only a few years old-and the Web hasn't yet been indexed. Carla Hesse (1996) (in a slightly different context), speculates that "the kind of experimentation we are witnessing in electronic publication is a symptom…of [an] unregulated communications medium." Bernie Sloan (2000) notes that many of the predictions for the future of the librarian in digital libraries have tended to be in the two extremes: librarians will be unnecessary, or librarians will be all-powerful mediators. The truth probably lies somewhere in between. Even in a digital library, patrons often need help finding the resources they want.
With or without reference services, minimal indexing and access for most non-book formats comes back to haunt us when everything can and will be searched. As more materials become accessible, providing access points becomes ever more critical. In the British Library's Initiative for Access program, one major component was to explore the digitization of its vast microfilm holdings. Like most major libraries, microfilm was seen as a means to provide access for fragile and crumbling materials. The British Library's experiments were successful and the resulting images were as good as the sources allowed. Aside from the quality issues (poor quality originals don't allow OCR), digitized films require thorough indexing to be valuable to the user; the films were labeled by reel and were inconvenient because they might require endless scrolling to find the desired image, but scrolling through digitized images is much less practical. (Towards the Digital Library 1998)
In planning for the library of the 21st century, library directors, planners and librarians must be able to anticipate the best choices for their communities and for the health of the library. Although none have perfect future vision, many consequences of current decisions can be forecast; ignored costs greatly compound the surprises of technology and economics. Reasoned choices backed by community support will allow libraries to continue to be important in American society in the decades to come.
Coffman, S. (1998), What if you ran your library like a bookstore? American Libraries, 29(3), 40-47.
Dowlin, K. (1997). Virtually yours: models for managing electronic resources and services. Retrieve Feb. 15, 2001 from www.witloof.sjsu/courses/restricted/Virtual.html [requires password]
Harris, M. H. & Hannah, S. A. (1993). Into the future: the foundations of library and information services in the post-industrial era. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corp.
Hesse, C. (1996). Books in time. In G. Nunberg (Ed.) The future of the book (pp. 21-36). Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press.
Jesdanun, A. (2001, February 19). Study: Net use by U.S. adults is record 56%. San Jose Mercury News, 81.
Sloan, B. (1998). Service perspectives for the digital library remote reference services. Library Trends, 47(1), 117-143.
The British Library (1998). Towards the digital library: The British Library's Initiatives for Access programme. London: The British Library.