The Steering Committee of the first annual Taiga Forum presented the following statements for discussion at a March 2006 conference of associate university librarians and assistant directors at the 50 top academic libraries. Anyone care to guess which of these predicted changes will first migrate into the realm of public libraries?

1. …traditional library organizational structures will no longer be functional. Reference and catalog librarians as we know them today will no longer exist. Technical services and public services will have merged into a new group called “consulting [something]”. Public services and instructional technology, wherever it exists, will have merged or will no longer exist.
   
   
2. …libraries will have reduced the physical footprint of the physical collection within the library proper by at least 50 percent. Support services see similar reductions and these changes impact the national libraries as well (they are probably merged).
   
   
3. …the majority of reference questions will be answered through Google Answer or something like it. There will no longer be reference desks or reference offices in the library. Instead, public services staff offices will be located outside the physical library. Metasearching will render reference librarians obsolete.
   
   
4. …all information discovery will begin at Google, including discovery of library resources. The continuing disaggregation of content from its original container will cause a revolution in resource discovery.
   
   
5. …a large number of libraries will no longer have local OPACs. Instead, we will have entered a new age of data consolidation (either shared catalogs or catalogs that are integrated into discovery tools), both of our catalogs and our collections. The ERM system and the ILS will be one and discovery will be outsourced.
   
   
6. …there will no longer be a monolithic library Web site. Instead, library data will be pushed out to many starting places on the Web and directly to users.
   
   
7. …academic computing and libraries will have merged. The library will be a partner is the Learning and Research Support Services Infrastructure. Its value will depend on its ability to reallocate resources to new curation, workflow, and resource specialization services.
   
   
8. …there will be no more librarians as we know them. Staff may have MBAs or be computer/data scientists. All library staff will need the technical skills equivalent to today’s systems and web services personnel. The ever-increasing technology curve will precipitate a high turnover among traditional librarians; the average age of library staff will have dropped to 28.
   
   
9. …publishers and intermediaries will have changed dramatically. Many small and scholarly publishers will fold. Subscription agents and book vendors will have new business models. Dissemination of non-STM serials and books will no longer be commercially viable.
   
   
10. …books and e-book readers will be ubiquitous. Standards will have magically made this possible. Hand helds will be ubiquitous and library resources will need to be accessible to these devices to meet user needs.
    
    
11. …simple aggregation of resources will not be enough. They have to be specialized for constituency use and projected into user environments (my.yahoo, e-portfolio, CMS, RSS aggregator). Workflow replaces database and website as the primary locus of attention. The library role is to project specialized services into research and learning workflows.
    
    
12. …'Intermediate environments' will be as important as consumers of library services as endusers. Intermediate consumers are environments in which users construct workflow and digital identity. RSS aggregators, course management systems, uPortal, my.yahoo, flickr, myspace, microsoft research pane, etc.
    
    
13. …libraries will provide shared curation services for important portions of the cultural, scholarly, historic and institutional record. This will move from ad hoc, sub optimal project working to a collaborative strategy, a shared approach.
    
    
14. …research support services will become routine. The institutional repository will be one set of services within the wider set of services that assist in the researcher and research administration workflow.
    
    
15. …the library community recognizes the debilitating fragmentation of its collaborative structures and consolidates around fewer targeted initiatives and organizations. This is driven by the recognition that system-wide efficiencies need to drive local improvement.

"We talk about 'work-life balance' as if these are competing interests. But what we really need is a fully integrated life....There is always more work to do and if you're not careful, you can burn yourself out. So you have to be disciplined about building in the time for those things that revivify you. Some people need to get completely away - take a few days off from email and phone calls and work worries - to recharge. That's never been my style. The library is never far from my thoughts, and I like it that way. At some level I'm always trying to figure out the next step or resolve some dilemma or see my way to some creative way of addressing the next challenge. What keeps me fresh is the variety - to explore a new city for a couple of hours, or pop into a splendid museum, or see a great unknown local punk band in some dive - and then get back to the laptop, the email, the projects at hand....Which doesn't mean, of course, that it's not still a challenge to avoid getting overextended. ...Maybe I can spend more time just tackling three things at once rather than four...."

[and from a comment from a reader:]

"I have a joke that I always tell my European friends. The joke is told as follows: 'The problem with the Internet is that it was invented...by Americans.' Americans rarely get this joke, Europeans immediately understand what I mean.

All the new technology, and the Internet in particular, feed and enhance the American pathology to always do more. Americans equate more with better. Europeans have a different understanding of what constitutes a balanced life. ...[Americans tend to praise] technological tools because they allow [them] to work 24/7, as you say. Europeans would condemn these new tools for precisely the same reason. You say you like the technology because it allows you to freely choose which hours you will work. Europeans would say that it enslaves you to constant work. Where is the truth in this? It is hard to say.

As for me, I hold the technophiles to account. They told me that this technology would make my life better, easier. They told me that it would free me up to do the things I want to do; that the technology would aid me by giving me more time. If you judged the new technology based on the sole criteria of providing more time, you would have to judge it a gigantic failure. I haven’t met a single person who has told me they have more time. In fact, just the opposite is true. People complain about being too busy.

In the end, I think the technology does have the potential to make life better. But that will only happen when we learn new ways of managing it. The beauty of the old technology lay in the fact that it was static, that it was not easily transported. The static nature of the old technology allowed us to escape from it and recoup on a regular basis. In the old days, you couldn’t bring the office home, you couldn’t bring your phone with you. You were forced to put it aside. But on the other hand, you are correct to point out that the mobility of the net can free you (if you manage it wisely). Scott, maybe you are the pioneer. Maybe you have found the way. The secret is controlling the technology to serve you and not the other way around."

Michael Stephens, “Tame the Web”:


1. Dismiss blogs/wikis/RSS as just for the geeks not library users
2. Plan technology projects without involving them until the wheels are in motion/contracts are signed
3. Appoint a technophobe librarian to manage the techies
4. Allow barriers to exist that make it difficult for IT staff and librarians to plan and collaborate
5. Bog down their projects in red tape and approvals that take weeks or months to get
6. Send your seasoned librarians to conferences instead of mixing up seasoned folks & your techies to a variety of association and professional meetings, including tech-based conferences
7. Plan project timelines that extend so long the planned service or tech innovation is out of date before it launches
8. Pooh Pooh the idea of the Emerging Technology Committee, the library is doing just fine without it
9. Make your library website an afterthought not a "cyber branch" location
10. Always ensure that non-technical people make the important technical decisions
11. Never Dream. Never innovate. Never "Think Outside the Box."
    
    Karen Schneider, “Free Range Librarian”:
    
    
12. Underfund technology as much as possible. Pay particular attention to keeping a lid on technology salaries, but don't be afraid to shave the hardware budget first and foremost when cuts must be made.
13. When faced with either eliminating an old service no one uses or improving technology funding, go for the old service every time.
14. Be sure to throw around the phrase "professional staff" in the presence of library tech workers who do not have library degrees. So what if they have degrees in computer science or decades of skill, if they aren't librarians?
15. Require library technical staff to work in areas they are unfamiliar with, such as reference (and be sure to single-staff them on the ref desk at peak times). Just because you would never ask a children's librarian to reboot a server doesn't mean you can't ask that a techy be 'well-rounded."
16. Expect technology staff to routinely work weird hours without special compensation. They're the ones who chose to go into technology; they should be willing to come in to the library Saturday at midnight to do server work.
17. Make frequent comments--or simply tolerate them from staff--about how "having" to provide technology takes away from "real" library work.
18. Do not expect non-technical staff to learn any technology skills whatsoever. It is perfectly reasonable for someone upgrading a server to run across the library to help someone put a bullet in Powerpoint.
    
    Christina Pikas, commenting on Karen’s list:
    
    
19. Repeatedly force your techies to drive across the county to plug in a computer that some kid has unplugged.
    
    Fahren, commenting on Karen’s list:
    
    
20. Decree that every request is technologically impossible until the librarians present evidence that it has been done everywhere except here. Then take six months to do it so when it's finally implemented, it's out of date.
    
    Prairie Storm, commenting on Karen’s list:
    
    
21. Take a bright idea from a techie. Give it to a non-techie to implement. Or conversely, take an idea for operations improvement (statistics gathering for example) from non-tech line staff. Give it to a techie to implement. In neither case, give the implementer a requirements specification. In neither case, allow the person who had the idea to be involved in its implementation.
    
    Sarah Houghton, “Librarian in Black”:
    
    
22. Do not expect your technical staff to ever need training on anything. After all, whatever skills they came in to the job with are enough to last until they retire, and they already know so much more than the rest of us.
23. Require your tech staff to have MLS degrees & computer science experience, but don't bother paying them adequately for either.
24. Don't encourage technology staff to go to conferences or professional development events. They'll just come back with more of those pesky idea-thingies.
25. Discourage telecommuting.
26. Solicit input from technology staff on projects in a totally perfunctory manner, but already have your decision in mind, which you will stick to no matter what their recommendations are.
27. Hold technology projects and services up as the poster children for how great the library is, but don't bother supporting those projects or services with adequate staff or money. After all, technology is just an "add on" to real library services.
    
    Dorothea Salo, “Caveat Lector”:
    
    
28. Be passive-aggressive. Don’t tell your techie you need help setting up your new widget. Say “Hey, I got a new toy! Wanna come see it?” Because, hey, that way you don’t have to be grateful.
29. Don’t just mention how many real library services you had to give up for all this silly tech stuff. Loudly bemoan how badly your library needs to hire “some real librarians.” Double points if your techie has an MLS.
30. Constantly ask your techie why s/he isn’t hasn’t quit to go make more money in industry. Because of course there’s no way a techie has any intellectual, ethical, or social investment in librarianship.
31. If your techie is female, send her into all the tech-boy locker rooms (IRC chats, locker-room-style tech conferences, and whathaveyou) you can possibly find. Refuse to understand why she might be uncomfortable. By no means accompany her or stand up for her. Pooh-pooh or make excuses for the lads’ behavior; it can’t possibly be that bad. Double points if you know some of the lads. Triple points if you supervise them, or if they respect you.
32. If a project involving technology fails, blame the technology. And hold it against both the techie and technology (not the particular technology employed, but all technology) forever.
33. Cram every technology skill imaginable into your techie job ads. Network installation, database administration, ILS management, web design-it’s all technology, right? Any techie knows how to do everything, right?
    
    Source: Jessamyn West, “Librarian.net”:
    
    
34. Make sure you never give techies any sort of real ownership of tech projects; once everyone signs off, it’s as if everyone built it.
35. Involve techies only tangentially in your technology plan as a “special guest” and not someone who should be driving the technology directions.
36. Criticize techies for not training up everyone to wizard-level skills in the new item. Make sure that you blame any failure of staff to use and learn technology on the tech librarian directly.
37. Refuse to learn the new tools, not directly, but indirectly by simply ignoring them.
38. Let techies build the technological tools inside the library but continue to make all the technology purchasing decisions elsewhere in the hierarchy without consulting them.
39. When you have a new web-based tool to roll-out, make sure you test it on the computers in the basement that are running seven year old browsers and then make “tut tut” noises if the web content doesn’t look identical to how it looks upstairs. Ignore the techies’ explanations.
40. Call the Gates Foundation just to check if it’s okay if techies install Firefox on the Gates computers.
41. Give each techie a workstation that is shared with other staff members in a room where they are frequently interrupted. Stare at their screen often and try to puzzle out what they are working on, or comment that it doesn’t look like work.
42. Don’t give frontline staff the password to do basic maintenance and troubleshooting of public computers and insist that they call the tech staff to reboot or log in to computers. If tech staff is on vacation or otherwise unavailable, hang an Out of Order sign on the computer and be surly when the tech staff returns. If the tech librarian wants to give the passwords out to more people, thwart them. If they want to train staff on maintenance of the computers, disallow it.
43. Disallow computerization of any forms or tallysheets (though you might want to straighten out your skewed and fuzzy photocopies of the last decade’s ILL forms so people will stop using the forms).
44. Don’t let techies buy any books. Don’t let them teach any classes. Don’t let the patrons get attached to them. Don’t let them give you the old “best practices” flimflam.

1. Treat technology as being as important to your library as circulating books or having storytimes.
2. Try to have a "techie" on as many library teams as possible - they may see ways to leverage projects further with a little bit of "techno-juice" :-)
3. Enable your techie librarians to attend tech conferences, not just library ones.
4. Give your techies time to "play" with new techologies - most libraries probably can't afford the 20% of time that Google allows their engineers, but with a small investment you'll likely see big results.
5. Encourage your organization to understand that big improvements are worth rolling out even if they aren't (yet) perfect.
6. Realize that training expenses for technology staff are likely going to be higher than for others, and occur more often. Realize too that they will likely pay for themselves.
7. To echo Sarah Houghton , if the local job market decrees that IT workers are paid more than librarians, be prepared to match those salaries.
8. If you need to bring in outside help for large initiatives, please be sure that your techies are involved every step of the way.
9. Give them the tools they need to get their jobs done.
10. And, maybe even above all else, create an atmosphere where they can have fun.

...The Web is becoming not just a place to find information, but a leisure destination in its own right. That has significant implications for how we design library services.

Where is your library? Is it on a side-street somewhere hard to find? Or is it on a well-trafficked street? The latter is better, yes? So where are your users? A lot of them are increasingly on the Web. So are you on the Web? I don't mean do you have a static webpage. I mean how are you providing services and communicating with your users in ways that meets them where they are? Blogging? Podcasting? Wifi in the library? Web-friendly policies, etc.?

I still remember visiting a library a couple of years ago where I opened my laptop and tried to instant message, but couldn't, because the library had intentionally blocked the HTTP port used for instant messaging. God forbid I should come into a library with my own computer and sit down to send an instant message to someone--in this case, a co-worker, but why not a friend? Game over: I never returned.

But about your library website--since so many of your users ARE hanging out on the Web, are you happy with how your website looks? How well does it compare? Is it polished yet friendly, interactive yet easy to use? If the Web is a destination, is your library one of the places people want to visit?

...People want a good experience online....How do people feel about your library's Web presence?....

What kind of interactive experience do you offer?...People increasingly want...[the ability to discuss items directly on a library's website]. Information has become more of a conversation, less of a visitation from [or to] the information gods on high.

Network TV is in freefall, traditional radio has serious competition from podcasting and satellite, and people are reading more online. Google Scholar is infinitely easier to use than any library database, [traditional face-to-face] reference is in the doldrums, and books--which these days start as digital objects anyway--are rapidly moving online.

Even as we continue offering library services the good ol' dead-tree way, how your library looks and feels online--and how available, findable, and aggressively "out there" it is to the people who are increasingly "on the Web"--may be key to its survival.

The library was never intended to function as a day room for schizophrenics, or an outpatient clinic for people in the last stages of terminal disease. That it does reveals two hard facts: we don’t care enough about either the homeless or the library. To the homeless we give their fate and scraps of disused real estate in the bad parts of town. As long as they remain there, or wandering the dim maze of treatment facilities, we are fairly rid of them and satisfied.

We also leave them to the library. It is not as though we want them there - we really don’t want them anywhere, but their presence is not as disturbing there as it would be closer to home. We permit the homeless the liberty of the library because we don’t have the workhouses of Dickens’ day or mandatory in-patient treatment. Both of these were abandoned as cruel violations of civil liberties. We don’t beat them; neither do we treat them. They are simply here, getting no better, but in a place where most people do not venture for longer than it takes to obtain something to read at home.

I am waiting for some enterprising library chief to write a grant proposal for a new building whose purpose will be to contain the homeless of an entire community. The benefit, she might propose, would be to keep all of them in one place, for supervision, treatment, rest and feeding, at a significantly lower cost to the town than if they had to be dealt with according to their individual problems. She could base her argument in precedent: we are already doing the same thing on a smaller and less economical scale right now.

I am also waiting for a strong-willed chief librarian somewhere to demand from the other agencies of the city or county reimbursement for the care of the sick and mentally ill that fall to her care. The per diem rate for one adult’s day care would about cover the salary of a librarian, I’m sure.

…I would suggest that whatever remedy is brought to bear upon this situation, that somebody try to extend it to the public library. Either that or post a sign above the door reading ‘Rescue Mission.’

As an institution, the public library needs very badly to seek realistic solutions to this problem-solutions in legislation, in community action, in practice rather than in useless rhetoric. The homeless, that sick and neglected population of our towns and cities, have many problems to overcome: none of those problems are solvable by the public library, though they present great problems for the facility, its users and employees. It is time for the library to reject this job-not the homeless, but the role of their caretaker.

We can always point to the exceptions and the stellar examples, the heartwarming personal anecdotes, the current data, but given the radical changes to the information landscape, if we decide that what we are "good at" is doing business the way we've always done it, we are going to be in the same pickle as the railroads (q.v. Andrew Abbott's discussion in "The System of Professions" of how railroads saw themselves in the rail business, not the transportation business). In watching some of the recent tax bond battles, I wonder if we aren't already there. It will take more to regain ground than simply being the technology centers of last resort. I know that is an important role, though in too many libraries I would hate to be that person waiting on line for an hour for my slurp at the digital trough….Can anyone look at the information landscape today and seriously say that in fifty years libraries can and must look as they do now? Does anyone believe such a model of librarianship serves our users?

If we decide that we are in the same business we have been since the early 20th century, then we are defining ourselves by the formats we deliver and the buildings we inhabit, and we will be the cobblers of the 21st century.

--Karen Schneider, in a February 14, 2005 post to her Internet blog. "The Freerange Librarian"