By on May 29, 2012
The future is vibrant—and it is working—in Colorado, where LJ
held its 12th Design Institute (DI), visited area libraries that
reflect and respond to their communities, and heard from both librarians
and architects about new library spaces for collaboration and creation.
It’s engaged in upstate New York, at Fayetteville Free Library (FFL).
There, Director Sue Considine and transliteracy development director
Lauren Britton have launched a Fab Lab for creation of physical
products—and those can be as high-tech as what comes out of a 3-D
MakerBot or as low-tech as the product and designs of a crochet group,
which can be made into a book to inspire others. (For more on maker
spaces, listen to the OCLC/LJ webinar, Made in a Library.)As many of us here at LJ gear up to attend the
American Library Association conference in Anaheim, it seems an
appropriate time to reflect on the future of libraries. To quote
political muckraker Lincoln Steffens, “I have seen the future, and it
works.” Unfortunately, Steffens was referring to the post–World War I
Soviet Union, and we all know how that turned out. I feel a bit more
confident, however, about the future I see.
It’s all-encompassing at Skokie Public Library in
Illinois, which has a digital media lab for adults, not just teens or
college students. It’s confirmed in LJ’s Patron Profiles (going
online soon, in print p. 50–51), which reports that power e-users
“aren’t choosing the web over coming to the library in person…they are
choosing to do both.”
The message is the same all over: libraries are not just
warehouses for books but places of creation and community. They’re not
just information sources but maker spaces and social spaces. They’re
places that “make us want to linger,” as MS&R architect Traci
Lesneski put it at the DI at Denver Public Library last month. When Dan
Meehan, HBM Architects, asked the roomful of librarians how many thought
their libraries would have 25, 50, or 75 percent fewer print books in
ten years, most hands shot up at 50 percent.
Librarians have already started planning for that
change. Like Considine, they’ve begun repurposing their collection
development dollars. “Lauren [Britton] came knocking at my door—she was a
circulation clerk—with her idea [for a maker space] at a time we were
looking at our budget,” says Considine, “examining what we do, what we
should not do…. We want to help the community create content, not merely
consume it…to provide access [to tools to achieve] their hopes, dreams,
aspirations…. Librarians do that every day already.”
The particulars may vary, but the thinking is the same.
Find out what your users want and “what they don’t even know they need,”
said Louise Schaper at the DI, channeling Steve Jobs. (Schaper is
project lead on LJ’s New Landmark Libraries; the latest round of winners, academic buildings, will be revealed in July.)
Despite all the talk of downsizing collections,
libraries aren’t abandoning the book brand, or the collection. Joseph
Sanchez (instructional designer at Auraria Library at the University of
Colorado, Denver; a panelist at both the DI and the OCLC/LJ webinar; and a 2011 LJ
Mover & Shaker) has helped lead development of the ebook purchase
(not license) model at Douglas County Libraries, CO (see “Momentum Builds for DCL’s Ebook Model,”).
His vision goes much further, with a collection development policy that
would add the audio, video, ebooks, and “physibles” (digital objects
that can become physical) that the library user creates to the library’s
holdings. It dovetails with Britton’s idea at FFL. “In a read/write
culture,” she says, “[library users] write their own book and make two
copies: one to take home, one to be cataloged.”
In Sanchez’s plan, library users/creators donate one
copy to the library of origin to be cataloged and circulated. They can
sell the digital file or product to other libraries at fair market
value. “Here’s thousands of libraries willing to distribute your
creation if you agree to sell, not license it,” says Sanchez.
With minds like these in the library field, it’s no wonder the future looks like it really does work.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Librarianship is a noble profession and we feel proud to be among Librarian Community. Regular visit to Library Soup Blog (http://library-soup.blogspot.com/) is essential for easy and smooth functioning of Librarianship and for the better know how and understanding of the Profession. So, Keep Browsing Library Soup Blog !!!
Cheers !!!!!