Annotated Resources

Always a River, Sometimes a Library

Soaring to Excellence

Note: This resource list was last updated 2 February 2006.

Anderson, Rick. "The library is dead; long live the library: why everything is different now and what we can do about it." Presentated as part of a MOLO videoconference, October 1, 2003.

(http://www2.library.unr.edu/anderson/molospeech.htm)

"A revolution took place with the advent of the World Wide Web, a graphical interface that would eventually turn the Internet from a tool for nerds and academics into what has been called, by various writers, 'the largest and fastest growing medium in the world,' 'the largest and most widely used information system ever constructed,' and 'the richest and most complete source of study material available. That we librarians should see such a development as a threat is understandable.

It is a threat – a threat to the traditional definition of a library, a threat to our usefulness as guides and instructors in the research process, and a threat to the coherence of copyright protections that provide incentives to authors and innovators in every field. So what will we do?"

Chad, Ken and Paul Miller. “Do Libraries Matter?: The Rise of Library 2.0.” White paper, November 2005.(http://www.talis.com/downloads/white_papers/DoLibrariesMatter.pdf)

“The library’s information provider crown is slipping. Justifiably or not, today libraries are increasingly viewed as outdated, with modern, Internet-based services, such as Amazon and Google, looking set to inherit the throne. Even so, at Talis, we believe that there is plenty of life left in the library yet. This survival demands change though. Inevitably, as the world advances, the library must also evolve and begin to deliver its services in the ways that its modern users expect. Library 2.0 is a concept of a very different library service that operates according to the expectations of today’s library users. In this vision, the library makes information available wherever and whenever the user requires it.”

Coffman, Steve. "What if you ran your library like a bookstore?"

American Libraries, Vol. 29, Issue 3, March 1, 1998.

"Let's stop pretending. If communities choose to manage their libraries like Barnes & Noble, they could get many of the amenities people find so attractive about the new superstores – great selection, convenient hours, comfortable surroundings, and friendly staff and for significantly less than they currently pay to operate a traditional library. Of course, the library might function a little differently than it does now. We would either need to limit the kinds of reference services and cataloging we offer or find better and less expensive ways of providing them. But, just how much are the differences between bookstores and today's libraries worth to our customers--those who have to foot the bill?"

Coffman, Steve. "Building Earth's largest library: driving into the future." Searcher, Vol. 7, Issue 3, March 1, 1999.

"Perhaps it's a good thing … that Amazon doesn't lend books, as well as sell them, or we librarians might be in really big trouble."

Deiss, Kathryn J. "Innovation and strategy: risk and choice in shaping user-centered libraries." Library Trends, v. 53, issue 1 (Summer 2004) p. 17-32.

"Innovation and strategic thinking are critical to any organization's future and have direct correlations to the organization's mission and purpose. ... Understanding customer readiness and need as well as patterns of behavior can afford perspectives on where, how, and when an innovation might suit an organization."

Frey, Thomas. “The Future of Libraries: Beginning the Great Transformation.” White paper, 2005.

(http://www.davinciinstitute.com/page.php?ID=120)

“We have transitioned from a time where information was scarce and precious to today where information is vast and readily available, and in many cases, free. …

We have put together ten key trends that are affecting the development of the next generation library. Rest assured that these are not the only trends, but ones that have been selected to give clear insight into the rapidly changing technologies and equally fast changing mindset of library patrons.”

Lynch, Clifford. “Where Do We Go from Here?: The Next Decade for Digital Libraries.” D-Lib Magazine, v. 11, issue 7/8 (July/August 2005) (http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july05/lynch/07lynch.html)

“’Digital libraries’: this oxymoronic phrase has attracted dreamers and engineers, visionaries and entrepreneurs, a diversity of social scientists, lawyers, scientists and technicians. And even, ironically, librarians – though some would argue that digital libraries have very little to do with libraries as institutions or the practice of librarianship. Others would argue that the issue of the future of libraries as social, cultural and community institutions, along with related questions about the character and treatment of what we have come to call "intellectual property" in our society, form perhaps the most central of the core questions within the discipline of digital libraries – and that these questions are too important to be left to librarians, who should be seen as nothing more than one group among a broad array of stakeholders.”

Riemer, John. (2005). "Rethinking How We Provide Bibliographic Services for the University of California."

This 80 page report can be seen and downloaded at:

http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/sopag/BSTF/Final.pdf

(Linda Slusar recommends printing the first 10 pages.)

“Society is in the midst of learning how to “be” in the information age. The advent of computers and the inclusion of the Web in our work and private lives have pushed innovations and embraced information and access in ways we can hardly imagine. We are living in a complex and challenging digital landscape that changes constantly. On the Library front, our bibliographic systems have not kept pace with this changing

Environment … The current Library catalog is poorly designed for the tasks of finding, discovering, and selecting the growing set of resources available in our libraries. … We offer a fragmented set of systems to search for published information (catalogs, A&I databases, full text journal sites, institutional repositories, etc) each with very different tools for identifying and obtaining materials. For the user, these distinctions are arbitrary.”

Tenopir, Carol. "Use and users of electronic library resources: an overview and analysis of recent research studies." CLIR Report, August, 2003.

(http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub120/contents.html)

"Summarizes and analyzes more than 200 recent research publications that focus on the use of electronic library resources (digital libraries and digital resources) and were published between 1995 and 2003. ... The goal of this report is to provide information that librarians can use to make important decisions about collections, services, and product design."

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