h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi Hypoman,

Sorry it's taken so long to respond. I've done this in dribs and drabs whilst doing 75 other things at the same time. (Not that tha's a problem, you know how librarians can multi task

Anyway see what you think and let me know.
ICU2

Libraries

Let me start off by saying that the highly traditional -one might even say institutional view of libraries alluded to in your article are generally held by people who rarely if ever use a library. Certainly not the views held by any of the librarians or library users who have ever had the privilege of coming in contact with me.

Traditionally when you get right down to it libraries were pretty elitist institutions. (We could go right back to the library at Alexandria -which was not open to the public- and then to the more "modern" libraries of the 17th & 18th centuries where the books were actually chained to the wall!) I guess what I'm trying to say is that libraries in general have represented a pretty closed community - you know the drill, If you're not a member…this applies to community as well as academic/research libraries.

Modern libraries however, the ones that operate from a user perspective, are a far cry from the traditional institutional paradigm. Modern libraries are now designed to allow a community access to information, regardless of format.

Although librarians still see the need to catalogue and arrange information this is done with a view to making access and research of information easier for the user as opposed to the old belief that such activity is expressly designed to keep the user confused and unable to help himself.

The fact that more and more information is available in electronic format enables those libraries with the right infrastructure in place to more equitably share the available resources amongst their users.

The expansion of the net and its enthusiastic acceptance by libraries has meant that what was once a pretty static user community for any given library, is now expanding at an incredible rate. This however is a good thing since it is up to libraries and the people that work in them to ensure that the status does not remain quo in this information rich information poor society of ours.

Many libraries (we are in the process of doing it here) now offer their "virtual" users a virtual face through web sites. They may not be able to offer the loan of books through these sites but there is a lot more information available than what is available through books alone.

Through these sites libraries can provide a much wider user community with access to various journals and databases, (often in the comfort of their own homes) as well as other online information. Which they conveniently arrange on their sites in such a way that their users are able to find information on the internet a lot faster and with greater accuracy.

Librarians as a whole are not I think, an unhappy profession. Librarians are a frustrated profession as they have to cope with recalcitrant people who fail to have the vision that we as a profession have, consequently they can't see the important role that people with our kind of professional training need to play in the future.

Hi ICU!

Glad to see you managed to get a little time. Good comments, but a few interesting asides.

I agree with your idea that modern libraries are designed to impart information regardless of format - and TAFE libraries have long been somewhat ahead of the pack in that regard (I worked briefly in OTEN in 1992, and in Bankstown and Broken Hill TAFEs from 1992-1994) - but cataloging was ALWAYS designed to enable ease of access to that information. The combination of cataloging and shelving is what makes information accessible, unless you're trying to do it remotely, in which case it's only the cataloging that's really helpful!

The key words in this sentence: "The fact that more and more information is available in electronic format enables those libraries with the right infrastructure in place to more equitably share the available resources amongst their users." are "enables those libraries with the right infrastructure in place". Not many libraries have this infrastructure, and it is extraordinarily difficult to persuade others that it is a good idea, by and large. Without institutional backing, the library is still doomed to perform inadequately, and institutional backing leads to the sorts of "elitisms" you mentioned earlier.

The "virtual" faces of libraries have been developing for several years (I've been using the libraries of all the continents except Antarctica for at least the last two years!) but the total amount of information on the 'Net is still largely comprised of "meta-information": directories, indexes and reviews. This sort of information is what libraries specialise in producing and locating, so the enthusiastic acceptance of what the Internet has to offer is not that surprising from a library perspective. Finding real substantive information on the Internet which the users can use, and which you don't have to pay for, is still fairly difficult. Online journals, newspapers and digests abound, but for these the meta-information which characterises so much of the rest of the Internet is often sorely lacking (look at the Sydney Morning Herald, for example: online every day, but if you happen to want to read an article published last year, you have to pay them considerably more than you would have for the paper in which it was published!).

These are some of the information paradoxes of the Internet. They are also some of the things which lead to the "frustrations" you describe in the profession in general.

I also agree with the possibility that the 'Net can increase the user community of a given library, but it doesn't necessarily lead to better service for the users who are already there. When you're swimming upriver in flood season, you have to keep swimming pretty fast merely to stay in place! "Increasing the user community" is not a goal in itself: satisfying the needs of the users who do make use of the library is the goal - and I am still not sure, for all the improvements and additional information capabilities the Internet has brought, that libraries in general are able to do that using the Internet. Satisfying user needs demands time and attention from staff - the Internet can enable fewer staff to deal with more people, but it cannot replace real information service for those who need it, and the number of such users is increasing all the time...

Hi Hypoman,

Just have time for a quickie before I open the mad house...

I know that cataloguing was designed to enable ease of access and that is what it does for those of us who know how to navigate through LC subject headings. However for the untrained user (and belive me I see a lot of those) cataloguing has not quite achieved its objective. (I know that's why we're here right?) That's why a student can sit at the catalogue for 15 minutes and not find what they want but I can find it in the time it takes me to type. The imposition of a structured querry language does hinder the layperson just a tad. As for getting a call # and going to the shelves to retrieve the item required...I don't even want to go there. Sufice to say that not everyone understands that 004.etc is not the same as 400.etc. 'Nuf said!

Yes I know that it's hard to convince "the powers that be" that a certain IT infrastructure is absolutley necessary (I came to TAFE from an Uni library where there were 160 PCs for student research use, networked with Net access. At TAFE they thought 1 net PC per library was more than enough thank you very much!!!!) It's frustrating yes and the possibility of imposed elitisim is always present but thats just the way of the world and we just have to keep working against it.

Yes the net is full of meta-info but government and other large institutions do provide quite a bit of substantive info for free there are even a growing number of free e-journals available out there. The truth is out there Scully, you just have to look really hard to find it. Thats what we do for our clientel here as well as trying to provide some more substantial content produced in-house with our own students in mind.

I know what you mean about the Herald. We have the CD-ROM which comes out quarterly. We let people print out for free and anyone can just walk in off the street and use it, we'll even help them if they catch us in the right mood

In my experience satisfying the needs of ones users often leads to an increas in the number of said users. This has certainly been the case here.

Anyawy speaking of satisfied customers the woods are full of them at this very moment so I'd better go.

Ciao
ICU2 (Lucy)

Now, I'm not a librarian. I'm just a library user/ sometimes liaison (through the adult literacy program)/ and financial supporter (through copious overdue fines). I'll tell you what I think on cataloguing though... it doesn't matter how well you do it or what method you use if your patrons aren't at least semi-competent researchers.

The trend in education seems to be towards learning (and I really mean memorizing) copious amounts of data. It's a losing proposition considering the sheer immensity of knowledge out in our universe. The data is there to be had, though, and the emphasis should be placed more on training people to be researchers than on memorizing the two digit state abbreviations of each of the 50 United States and some of its territories. Even the Internet is daunting for those who just don't know how to look things up. Researching is a skill that can always be improved upon.

Librarians are expert researchers and there to help - bless them! The problem is that at most libraries I frequent, the poor librarians are so in demand that waits can be lengthy.

IMO, at least....

I know exactly where you're coming from on that score, BG. The waits are lengthy because not enough people are employed to do what we do, and not enough people are employed because the economic benefit of doing so is hard to quantify, and difficult to demonstrate objectively in any other way. As in all things, in librarianship the accountants are the only ones you are really allowed to try and satisfy.

The "research vs. memorization" thing is a fundamental problem that nobody has really even yet come to grips with. This site is a classic example of the deficiencies that this problem inspires. A lot of people know a lot of good places to be, but how do you even find the people? There are only so many directories and catalogs that people can make, and the search engine is not nearly powerful enough to allow you to find anything in particular unless you're very lucky. In spite of this, however, the site wants to be a 'research' tool, and is on the way to becoming so.

Even if the skills are available, lack of people power, and/or lack of facilities, can stymie the effort!