R.E.M’s (Berry, Buck, Mills & Stipe, 1987) lyric summarises the popular “doomsday” perception, that there is a pending obsolescence of libraries, and that indeed, libraries are “in danger” (New Straits Times Press, 2009) of becoming extinct. Acknowledgement must go to the anonymous journalist who got trapped by the rhetoric, about how libraries ‘must’ and ‘have to’ do ‘something’ to flout this inevitable end to libraries. Heath, in fact argues against this pending obsolescence, and takes a milder, less hysterical view on how libraries, academic and research libraries, in particular, can meet the real world challenges of the ‘Digital world”. This reader agrees with Heath’s viewpoint, that libraries should in fact be “embracing the technological tools of information discovery and stay focused on facilitating critical inquiry” (Heath, 2009, p. 519).
This review will attempt to provide commentary and critique on Heath’s key points.
Heath adopts a “devil’s advocate” standpoint, in which he attempts to use the popular propensity of humankind to adopt a dichotomous, black and white, or polar opposite view of the world. This view, according to Halmari (2009) is one upon which political rhetoric is often based. Thus it has an enormous emotive power, which lends itself to this “doomsday” mentality. By adopting the negative consequence of the dichotomous view, that the web will cause libraries to become obsolete, Heath tries to demonstrate, through a ‘catalog of… directions’ that the University of Texas library is taking, the ludicrousness of such a view. Heath succeeds in making his point, however it feels somewhat laboured and circuitous. This reader feels that it is not explicitly made clear, how strong Heath’s standpoint is, until his concluding words. It is then that it becomes obvious that he is in fact rejecting the dichotomous view and advocating a more complex view, in which the future possibilities are endless, and that we (librarians), can choose to make an effort to ‘make things better than they might have been’ (Heath, 2009)
Heath provides a clear summary of threats posed by web and digital technologies to the library’s sister professions, which aides in ‘documenting the global conversations’ surrounding these professions. However, this reader felt that the time spent exploring these issues took the spotlight away from the critical issue at the crux of this article, which was to demonstrate the possible solutions for libraries to successfully navigate the digital world.
These solutions were described by using the University of Texas library as a case study. There are however, some further questions that are raised.
For example: Heath raises the point that “very few users would find asking a librarian to be a preferred method of locating information” (Perceptions 2005 in Heath, 2009). He goes on to cite the anecdotal evidence that “too frequently, students come to our reference desks because our navigation systems have failed them” (p. 527) This in fact could be an assumption that Heath is making, that “the culprit in every case is the web” (p. 534). The reader understands that Heath is playing the devil’s advocate, and that he is arguing against the fact that the culprit is the web, for the most part, but could the nature of how people access information be masking the real problem, in the instance of the reference desk example he uses? Could it be, that since information is now digital, and the web is now the main mode for accessing information, it appears that the queries, cited by Heath, are due to these systems failing them, but in fact are actually due to the age-old problem of students struggling to construct effective searches? A review of the literature by Gunter, Rowlands and Nicholas (2009) showed that this indeed could be the case. They suggest that it is easy to attribute students’ tendency to construct searches using natural language to search engines which promote this, such as Ask.com. However, the literature shows that this searching behaviour actually predated the internet (Gunter, Rowlands and Nicholas, 2009). It is not clear from the evidence cited in Heath (2009) that this was not the case. Personal experience of information-seeking behaviour by first, second and third year undergraduates, corroborated that students are still very interested in seeking assistance from a librarian at a reference desk. Regardless of this, the strategies that the University of Texas library have put in place to mitigate the effects of their perceived problem contributes to the idea that there are a variety of traditional and non-traditional modes, through which patrons can access the library for assistance. For example, Mack, Behler, Roberts & Rimland (2007) found that Facebook became a surprising avenue through which students asked the most references queries, compared to other avenues (eg email, in-person) in a semester-long survey of reference queries. By increasing the presence of the library in places where students reside, the library can reach more students.(Markgren, 2008).
Further critiques of Heath’s article include the lack of explanation or contextualisation of some of the examples cited, with regards to how libraries can survive in the digital world. For example: the movement of the library’s focus away from the physical collection- to store material offsite, in order to make room for interactive learning spaces. Here Heath is referring to the trend towards library interactive lounge spaces, or learning commons, which are a response to the shift towards learning as a social process and “engagement expressed through interactive team work” (Oblinger & Oblinger, 2005 in Somerville & Collins, 2008), but it is up to the reader to infer this is the reason why material is being stored offsite. Heath’s complete lack of discussion of this significant trend, and how it relates to the digital world, is an important oversight.
To conclude, Heath provides an extensive overview of the current situation in which the library and it’s sister professions find themselves in, with regards to the digital world. By citing some useful, positive steps that one University library has taken, has shown that it is not all doom and gloom for libraries in the digital world.
Other links
- The discussion about natural language searching, got me thinking about the idea of the semantic web. Check out Wolfram Alpha, which is a "computational knowledge engine", which demonstrates the direction in which web 3.0 (the semantic web) is going.
- Check out this blog post on librarians and web 3.0, by Allan Cho, who is a librarian at the University of British Columbia's Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.
References
- Berry, B., Buck, P., Mills, M., & Stipe, M. (1987). It’s the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine). [R.E.M.] On Document [CD]. United States: I.R.S Records.
- Gunter, B., Rowlands, I., & Nicholas, D. (2009). The google generation : are ICT innovations changing information-seeking behaviour? Oxford: Chandos Publishing.
- Halmari, H. (2009). The dichotomous rheteric of Ronald Reagan. Multilingua- Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication, 12(2), 143-176. doi: 10.1515/mult.1993.12.2.143
- Heath, F. (2009). Documenting the Global Conversation: Relevancy of Libraries in a Digital World. Journal of Library Administration, 49(5), 519-532.
- New Straits Times Press (2008). Libraries at risk of being obsolete. New Straits Times Press, p. 22.
- Mack, D., Behler, A., Roberts, B., & Rimland, E. (2007). Reaching students with Facebook: data and best practices. Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship, 8(2), http://southernlibrarianship.icaap.org/content/v08n02/mack_d01.html
- Markgren, S. (2008). Reaching out to GenY: Adapting library roles and policies to meet the information needs of the next generation. In J.R. Kennedy, L. Vardaman, & G.B McCabe (Eds.) Our new public, a changing clientele: bewildering issues or new challenges for managing libraries (pp. 46-54). Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited.
- Somerville, M. , & Collins, L. (2008). Collaborative design: a learner-centered library planning approach. The Electronic Library, 26(6), 803-820.
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