I have the phrase “just do it” associated with TimBL - certainly he was saying it at WWW in Banff during the semantic web workshops. (see, e.g. http://www.w3.org/2001/04/30-tbl). What I take this to mean is that if you spend too much time working out all the ways to do things the world moves on - and very rapidly.

The point for JISC/Bodleian tomorrow is that libraries have to be at the front of the web. Some are and particularly JISC. I’ve been very impressed with the things that JISC have been supporting - rapid innovation for part of a person for part of a year. Lightweight protcols. Developer Heaven - a solid week of geeks bashing information - Jim and Nico went and I’m envious.

Software is a new form of creativity. If we want to get our ideas across it’s often better to write a program than a document. That usen’t to be true - code development, distribution, compilers, licences were all killers for rapid development. But now the technology has risen to meet the expectations. I watch people craft ideas into web pages and services within hours (I’m only partially literate and it’s not the best use of my time). The technology has arrived to liberate the expression of much of scientific semantics.

“Just do it” means building something that may or may not work and may or may not take off. Like SAX, which we developed (through David Megginson) on the xml-dev list in a month. Like chemical/MIME which took me and Henry Rzepa an afternoon at the pub. Sure these are the exceptions - good code takes lots of work - JUMBO has taken 20 years. But Nick Day wrote CrystalEye in less than a year; Joe Townsend and Chris Waudby wrote the first OSCAR over two summers. Dan and Lee put together the C3DeR crystal repository over 2.5 months last summer and I’ll be showing it tomorrow.

Next time you are tempted to read another report or write another one why not “Just go out and do it”. It can be painful, but it can be great fun.

Landed a few hours ago and trying to get my ideas together for tomorrow.  There’s apparentyly over 170 participants (or at least respondees) who have returned queries for the panel. There needs to be some filtering or grouping as we can’t get through that number one-by-one.

I am going to demo some software as I think that software is now the new pen. I am always over-ambitious.

Some commenters have left substantial posts which deserve to be highlighted so I’m copylinking them without comment and in no order (Wordpress is hard enough)…

Martin Lewis March 31, 2009 at 8:44 pm (on Research STM libraries)…

Not sure if I can claim to be the first research library director to find my way to your excellent blog, but I wanted to comment if only to demonstrate to John MacColl that we’re not completely absent from the blogosphere!

Mark Leggott says: April 1, 2009 at 1:24 am (on COinS)

COinS is a great piece of technology. We recently embedded support for COinS in our institutional repository, which is largely metadata at this stage while we work with faculty to add open access content. You can give it a try at http://islandscholar.ca/. The system uses Drupal and Fedora. …

Lorcan Dempsey says: March 30, 2009 at 9:36 pm

You are probably aware of the catalog of Electronic Theses and Dissertations provided by NDLTD.

Catalog is available in a variety of ways, listed here:

http://www.ndltd.org/find

(PMR: Yes, and we are presenting at this year’s ETD at Pittsburgh)

Emilce Rees says: March 30, 2009 at 6:03 pm

Back to the Future ?

Why not focus on the “libraries of the past”, where subject librarians actually knew their collections, patrons were not bullied into using machines to issue their own books despite there being an issue desk (can you imagine if your supermarket did that), and we could hope that the people at the enquiry desk actually knew something or someone, instead of directing users somewhere else, and, if lucky, spoke English and were not there simply for decoration purposes ?…

Owen Stephens says: March 30, 2009 at 1:32 pm

I’m glad that more comment and feedback has been coming in, and I hope that on the day you will get a good response to your ‘provocation’

I’m sorry not to have commented earlier in the process - there is a lot to take in from what you’ve said, and only limited time (on my part) to respond. What follows is a ragbag of comments I’m afraid that responds to parts of what you have written.

Where to start? In terms of considering the historical perspective of libraries and what they are, I’m not sure you go back far enough (!) - it would be interesting to consider the origins of libraries (some general background at http://www.history-magazine.com/libraries.html and http://home.earthlink.net/~cyberresearcher/History.htm) …

Tom Roper March 30, 2009 at 12:16 pm

Roy T’s distinction between types of tech librarian is interesting. But I’m not sure what the beast is. If I may use the phrase beloved of clergymen in Private Eye, are we not all, in a very real sense, tech librarians? Would anyone applying for a post in a library in any sector of this great profession of ours stand a cat’s chance in hell of appointment if they could not demonstrate much more than a superficial acquaintance with social software, with the open access movement and repository management, with making resources available through electronic learning environments and so on?

John MacColl March 27, 2009 at 5:02 pm

I will be at the Oxford meeting next week, and look forward to your contribution on the panel. The fact that you have used a blog in advance to garner ideas, while no one else on the panel has done the same, does tend to bear out Peter Morgan’s comment about communication habits. Librarians who are in leadership positions, and so able to make the sort of changes which are undoubtedly necessary, feature very little in the blogosphere. Those librarians and information professionals who are active there are usually not able to make the changes, but increasingly have influence upon the leaders, so there is hope! Of course, there may also be a professional cultural reason for this. Academic libraries manage knowledge in the round. They are essentially interdisciplinary. The librarians who manage them instinctively wait for ideas from all quarters before taking action – again, for reasons Peter mentions. I’m not sure they can continue to behave in this way, but I think it is a professional instinct…

Dorothea Salo March 27, 2009 at 1:48 pm

[...]

Yes, library schools often do operate in a comfort zone. This is one danger of having a professional program taught and controlled by academics — I had a number of library-school professors who had never been librarians or archivists. Mileage varies, and several in the never-been-librarian crowd were marvelous teachers and thinkers — but they can only approach “the library of the future” secondhand, and that only if they keep in touch with practitioners. Which some, honestly, don’t.

I have taught an intro-to-library-tech course for two years, and as a practitioner, I do my level best to bring my students up to speed about current and emerging information issues. I teach copyright. I teach open access. I introduce data curation (not quite possible to “teach” that in an intro course!). I introduce social software and its discontents. I tell them about the infrastructure of the Web. I certainly tell them that they’re delusional if they think they’re going to waft gently into a nice cozy cradle of books for their entire careers.

It’s a start. I hope.

Jennifer says:

March 25, 2009 at 3:18 pm (Edit)

Peter, I’ve been reading your posts on libraries/librarians of the future and want to thank you for shaking me out of a comfort zone which it’s so easy to fall into. I understand your need to encourage debate among ULibrarians, but as an LIS student who is halfway through her program and interested in medical/science librarianship, I can’t help but see your provocative statements as a call to students like me who need to be better aware of the profession we’re walking into. I realize that may not have been your intended audience, but the “librarians of the future” who are being educated as we speak would do well to hear what you’ve been saying. I’ve tagged your blog for a class Twitter account and I’m hoping that others in my class are taking the time to read what you wrote and be shaken out of a comfort zone too. What I’m trying to get at is that I think having ULibrarians as your audience is limiting. Challenge the ones who are coming into the field and still starry-eyed enough to consider change that meets the needs of our clients/users/patrons.

First, you were exactly the audience I intended - thoughtful, constructive and prepared to speak your mind. I’m writing for anyone who happens across my blog or gets it relayed - not just ULibrarians. I’ll reply as if you and your fellow students are early in your career…

Young people are the future. Probably the most exciting part of my year is when we get ca 5 undergraduate students into our lab for the summer and they work on speculative projects for 2-3 months. Their enthusiasm and lack of perceived practice is a major strength. Nothing is impossible. They explore the future for us and much of what they have started has turned into more mature approaches.

Whatever a medical librarian is now it will be different in 5 years time. So you have to practice change on a daily basis. I know nothing of your course (and don’t want to intrude) but if it lets you and your colleagues explore new areas in a communal way go for it. In chemistry some of us have been building virtual worlds in Second Life - maybe there already is an equivalent for medicine - if not maybe it needs creating.

The new web is particularly important for medicine, which affects everyone’s lives. Many/most people will consult the web before they consult a physician. That is the patient’s medical library of the future. Find out how it works, see what you can do to build it, change it, etc. Medicine is particularly challenging because trust and quality are critical as lives depend on it.

Are you familiar with Medline and Pubmed? This is where the world’s primary reports of medical science appear. It’s overwhelming - thousands of new articles a day. We have to work out how to manage it to our advantage.

March 25, 2009 at 3:16 pm (Edit)

Hello Peter,

I think there are a number of reasons why librarian response has been muted. Like the others, I think its because of the question you asked: “Who are the librarians of the future?” At the risk of over-generalizing, librarians tend to think of the progressions of their field as occurring through organizations as opposed to through individuals. There’s no ‘i’ in library, so to speak.

That being said, I know a number of “librarians for the future”. One of them is Dan Chudnov, who - with others - developed the COinS convention to embed bibliographic metadata in HTML. He is also responsible for unAPI which I believe you are already familiar with. I particularly am fond of his credo: help people build their own libraries.

Another reason perhaps why there hasn’t been as much response as you had hoped is that libraries are grappling with their futures in their own constituencies. We are sadly feudal bunch in many ways. But that doesn’t mean we are indifferent to our future. For my own library-territory (academic libraries in Ontario, Canada), I helped write a report on developing a better platform for research needs called Scholr 2.0

Like William Gibson sort of said, the work towards the future library is here - its just not evenly distributed. Or, in this case, concentrated.

You’ll need to read Gaynor’s piece to understand the title. I’ll emphasize that fantasy - or virtual - worlds are part of the future of information. The culture is deeply ingrained into so much of our practice and has informed the emerging generation of tools and communities. Yes, we need heroes … and there is always “Conan the librarian”.

Gaynor Backhouse says:

March 25, 2009 at 1:46 pm (Edit)

I don’t know if this is of any use for your talk in Oxford, but the JISC Libraries of the Future campaign has just published this piece (http://librariesofthefuture.jiscinvolve.org/2009/03/25/holding-out-for-a-hero-technology-the-future-and-the-renaissance-of-the-university-librarian/) that they commissioned from me earlier this year. I don’t tweet, but happy to discuss if you think there’s anything interesting there.

Mita says:

One of the good things about working for JISC is that you often find yourself in interesting, but unexpected, places. In 2006 I found myself at a JISC Open Access conference in Oxford and as I have an abiding passion for libraries I inveigled my way into a group of librarians who were all talking about the changes facing their sector. At the time, TechWatch had just published a report on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), and one of the surprising conclusions was that libraries’ position as early adopters of RFID put librarians in a unique position to have a positive impact on the long-term development of the technology. More than this, the report argued that this influence could extend beyond efforts to develop interoperability and data standards, to address more general issues that are ‘in the public good’, such as privacy. So at the time of the conference I was brimming with enthusiasm for what I saw as a kind of renaissance for the role and significance of the librarian.

Unfortunately, I was in a minority of one. The general consensus seemed to be that, by and large, librarians conform to what has become almost a personality stereotype: kind, gentle custodians of books. Certainly not the type to want to assume the billowing mantle of public sector superhero. This surprised and worried me. It surprised me because I had thought that the increasing importance of the role of technology would have shaken things up a little and challenged the more traditional view of roles; it worried me because if it were true, then the future would be a difficult place for librarians to continue to demonstrate the value of their professional skills.

Now if, at this point, the urge to retreat to the safety of the stacks overwhelms you, I would ask you to hang back, just a while longer. Being the agent of change, albeit a powerful position to be in and perhaps an unwanted responsibility, could have its advantages. Whilst it means that you have to take control and set the agenda, perhaps more importantly, for people with orderly minds, it means you get to do the job properly. In the library of the future this could be a key differentiator. Why, after all, should Google have a monopoly on organising the world’s information? But in order to flourish in an increasingly techno-political world it will be necessary for libraries and librarians to not so much defend a corner as come out fighting. Perhaps, like Rupert Giles, it might even be necessary to spill a little demon blood.

I’m pleased to see there is considerable feedback today and to start with I’ll post Peter Morgan’s very thoughtful and useful comment in full. I’ll be seeing what I can distill out of it…

Hello Peter,

While as your sometime peripatetic librarian I can share your disappointment at the resounding silence from librarians, I don’t share your apparent surprise. I would interpret the silence, not as evidence that my fellow librarians don’t care or have nothing useful to contribute, but more simply as an indication that most librarians’ discussions of these issues - and the issues *are* discussed (maybe not enough, granted, but more than might be visible to you) - still typically take place outside the world of blogs and tweets, where only a minority of librarians are active in a medium that you use routinely. The trouble is that we tend to discuss them mainly with other librarians. Yes, it’s certainly legitimate to criticise librarians for not sharing the medium to better effect; but it doesn’t necessarily follow that we don’t care.

And is the world of, say, chemistry so very different? I recall an RSC informatics meeting a year or two back - you were a speaker - at which the chemistry bloggers present agreed that they belonged to a very select bunch of maybe a hundred worldwide, and were not representative of the more conservative chemistry research community as a whole.

Similarly, for every Peter Murray-Rust championing the cause of Open Access, Open Data, etc, we both know that there are many other chemists who appear reluctant to embrace such ideas but who have wish lists of their own. There are indeed librarians who venture out to explore scientists’ needs; but while some of us will have the good fortune to meet a PM-R, others will encounter less enlightened researchers. You can - and do - articulate very clearly what you want from a library, and so can your colleagues in the same lab, but you and they may have radically different agendas. This makes it hard to discern a clear consensus emerging even from the single discipline of chemistry, let alone from scientists en masse. How far is it reasonable or feasible for the peripatetic librarian to engage with each researcher and then prioritise the wish lists that emerge? Isn’t it at least as reasonable for the library to expect researchers to help the process along by trying to develop a consensus on what they require?

I see this as a real problem. It’s difficult for the library to justify the allocation of scarce resources to the development of a service customised to meet the needs of an articulate individual or small group (I’m thinking here of university libraries as I can’t speak for the smaller special libraries of the sort found in, for example, the pharma sector), and even more difficult to see how this could easily scale up across a whole science faculty. If the library does go for the customised approach it risks accusations that it’s ignoring the needs and wishes of a much larger community; and if instead it decides to develop more generic services for that wider community, then it may end up with a product that tries to be all things to all scientists and as result fails to satisfy anyone.

Then there’s the politics of university libraries. The library has to support a broad academic community across the whole university and can’t ignore its other user constituencies. Any significant and sustainable development of services to scientists will have to be resourced. If the resources have to be found from the existing budget, then other services and facilities may suffer. The library will have to judge how best to balance the needs of its different user groups, and its decisions can be influenced by lobbying from interested parties. If historians mount a vigorous defence of “their” library services and nothing is heard from scientists, it’s easy to see how the latter might suffer neglect as a result.

You’ve pointed out that scientists won’t approach the library and that the librarian has to make the approach. We have to break out of the vicious circle in which libraries don’t deliver what scientists want because they remain unclear as to what that might be, while scientists don’t see any point in telling the library what they want because they see themselves as victims of a history of neglect. I fully agree that librarians need to take a more proactive approach (and I know from personal experience how rewarding and stimulating the ensuing collaborations can be), but this alone is not enough. Part of the challenge facing librarians must be to reverse that situation, i.e. to create an environment in which scientists will instinctively and routinely make the initial approach when necessary, confident that the library will be receptive, able to supply librarians who can discuss and understand the scientists’ needs (simply giving us a list of more journals to which we should subscribe is *not* the answer), and willing to find resources that enable solutions to be delivered.

So my main, admittedly long-winded point, if you’ve managed to stick with me this far, is that the picture isn’t black & white. Much more effort is required from librarians, and your wake-up call will eventually percolate through to a wider library audience; but scientists also need to move towards us if we’re to bridge the gap. You made that move years ago, but you’ve left many of your fellow scientists a long way behind in your wake. How can we help them to catch up?

Can’t make it to Oxford on 2 April, I’m afraid - prior engagement - but I’ll download the proceedings.

Peter