Closing Remarks Academic Library 2.0

“The Case for Mutability: Library 2.0 and Implications for Academic Library Staffing, Organization, and Leadership”
James Neal, University Librarian & Vice President for Information Services, Columbia University

Link to presentation

Library 2.0 is all about mutability and fertility
• high levels of productivity
• growing and developing
• joint authority and responsibility
• being actively involved in a matter or event

Library 2.0 embraces
• rapid technology development and deployment
• professional maturation
• library role diversification (doing new things in new ways)
• complex relationships and information flows
• perpetual assessment
• challenges to the PTB (powers that be)
• low tolerance for management by cliché (not building library by cliché) but still making sure that ideas are solid
• boundary erosion (within and outside the library organization)

Hildreth on System Design applies to Library 2.0
• audience suitability (focus on audience)
• metaphorical/vocabulary consistency
• simplicity of design
• ease of navigation
• searching power
• User interface: physical, organization, communication space

Lib 2.0 is the ascendancy of individual and technology
• Decline of deference to authority
• Massively distributed collaboration
• Constant partial attention

Lib 2.0 does pose challenges to our library values:
• Intellectual freedom and privacy (sharing inquiries and information)
• Confidentiality
• Stability/Integrity – providing materials of integrity is what we do. How does this fit with 2.0?

Responding to user expectations - THEY WANT:
• Content
• Access
• Convenience
• New capabilities
• Participation
• Cost reduction
• Individual productivity
• Individual control

Library 2.0 presents opportunities for Marketing the Library:
• Matching capabilities with the needs and wants of the community that we serve
• Existing products to existing markets: Market penetration
• Existing products to new markets: Market extension
• New Products for Existing Markets: PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
• New Products for New Markets: DIVERSIFICATION

Enhance the student experience with Lib 2.0:
• Technology ubiquity
• Web based services
• Places for experiment and fun
• Privacy space
• Support services
• Information fluency (lifelong skills)
• Post grad access (lifelong skills)

Enhance faculty experience with Lib 2.0:
• Scholarship and research
• Collegiality
• Librarysupport
• Opportunities to experiment with technology

Rethinking library space planning
• Learning/social/collaborative spaces
• Flexibility and adaptability
• Less about physical space more about dynamic/digital space

Organizational preparation for 2.0
• Put in place maverick units and entrepreneurial enterprises in addition to the central planning and resource allocation systems
• Is too much time spent on planning and not on doing?
• “Is there enough communication and collaboration?

Leadership imperatives
• Succession imperative (new blood)
• Strategic imperative (requires new kinds of library leaders – openness to new ideas and new directions)
• Performance and business imperative (quality)

How to make Library 2.0 happen:
• Encouraging people to be creative
• Effective and caring mentorship
• Quality training programs
• Individual development plans
• Less planning more action
• Develop the workforce
• Employment strategies
• Retention strategies
• Leadership development

Closing comments:

It is our job to make quality convenient! Lib 2.0 is not just about Wikis and Blogs – it is about the opening of doors to the production of the web and inviting users to create their own content while all the while tolerating messiness.

People like to connect with others that are open. They want you to be socially aware. Don’t be scared.

There is a sense of chaos in this new future; and yet the things that 2.0 offers us are extraordinary opportunities to establish a new personality and relationship with our users and extending that relationship into new areas, etc.

Raised by Wolves: The New Generation of Feral Professionals In the Academic Library by James Neal: http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlevents/neal2-05.pdf