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QOTD: Barbara Fister
Quote of the day: Barbara Fister: In an age of austerity, survival is the name of the game, but it’s a rigged game and a distraction from what we’re here for. It’s how we ended up with a precarious faculty, a rented library, and indentured students. We need to focus further out, more broadly on […]
Can’t buy libraries love: FGI responds to Anderson’s Ithaka S+R issue brief “‘Can’t Buy Us Love'”
I just finished reading Rick Anderson's Ithaka S+R issue brief "'Can't Buy Us Love:' The Declining Importance of Library Books and the Rising Importance of Special Collections." it is not the most articulate argument for the future of libraries, but it certainly may be the best eulogy. Anderson's perspective bothered me so much that I jotted down a few thoughts to ponder in response. I wanted to post as a comment but it ran a little longer than Ithaka allows on their site. By all means, read Anderson's piece, and then my comments below. I'd love to hear what our readers think. Full citation: "'Can't Buy Us Love:' The Declining Importance of Library Books and the Rising Importance of Special Collections." Ithaka S+R Issue Brief. August 1, 2013. Rick Anderson, Interim Dean & University Librarian, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah. Here are a few thoughts to ponder: Continue reading
Litwin on librarians and search engines
Rory Litwin has a nice comment today over at Library Juice. He says he hates the slogan "Librarian: The Original Search Engine" because it confuses what librarians do with what search engines do. He suggests a better analogy would be: "Librarians are to search engines as astronomers are to telescopes."
People who don't know much about astronomy can get some use from a telescope, but we understand that with an astronomer's knowledge it can become much more powerful as a tool for discovery. We would not say, "Astronomers: The original telescope," and we wouldn't think for a second that that a slogan like that would be flattering to astronomers or supportive of the astronomy profession.But he goes further. Read the whole (short) post:
- You would not say, "Astronomers: The Original Telescope", by Rory Litwin, Library Juice, (November 30, 2012). ...a good slogan for the library profession should also encompass the other roles that librarians play in their institutions, as selectors, organizers, and preservers of information resources who have their communities in mind, and as the creators and maintainers of the systems and intellectual infrastructures that facilitate the connections between them.
The future of libraries and the value of libraries is content — including free content
Today I was re-reading an article from a few years ago and was struck by how prescient it was in providing a formula for the success of libraries. Here are some of its main points:
- Find a niche with growth potential (serve a community).
- Organize information to make it useful
- The internet is a distribution channel -- not a product (add value!)
- Turn words into math (sophisticated mathematical formulas can find patterns in content and make it more discoverable)
- Separate the signal from the noise (Type the word "jaguar" into Google's search engine and you'll get 64 million results. Fix this!)
- Computers can't do everything (humans indexers and editors make the difference that algorithms cannot)
- Print's not dead, it just needs online help
- Westlaw rises to legal publishing fame by selling free information, By Erin Carlyle, City Pages, (April 29, 2009).
What’s love got to do with it? further thoughts on libraries and collections #lovegate
September 27, 2013 / 2 Comments on What’s love got to do with it? further thoughts on libraries and collections #lovegate
What's love got to do with it? further thoughts on libraries and collections
[Also available as in PDF, EPub, and Mobi formats]Rick Anderson, in his Ithaka S+R "Issue Brief" paper, Can’t Buy Us Love: The Declining Importance of Library Books and the Rising Importance of Special Collections, proposes a radically different vision of the future of libraries in which libraries cede the organization, preservation, and curation of large areas of the information landscape to individuals and the private sector.
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