April
2-5,
2006
Federal Depository Library Conference
April
2-5,
2006
The keynote speaker at the Conference was Joseph Janes, a professor at the University of Washington's Information School. He was hugely entertaining, but also made many interesting and provocative points, drawing upon a sense of library history as well as a good grasp of the "brave new world" in which libraries, their users, and their larger publics, are now and will soon be living. His remarks applied to libraries and reference service in general, but all were pertinent to government information specialists and depository libraries in particular, as well. The major points of his talk, as amplified by discussions throughout the conference:
Public trust. One of our greatest assets. The public trusts libraries to be neutral, unbiased sources of information and places (physical and virtual) where they can gather, study, do research and find information and assistance in using it. We should do a better job of marketing this aspect of our institutions. "Save time, ask us." This is the motto of one of the Council members' reference departments (I think it was Duke). We save time and money for busy people by finding answers more quickly than they can on their own. The web, and Google, have made finding information both easier (because of keyword searching) and harder (because of the avalanche of material). Dr. Janes remarked that the average web search takes users 11 minutes. He pointed out how much we could accomplish in even a portion of that time. If we could effectively market ourselves as timesavers on this scale, we would have a secure place in the information future. Don't compete with Google. We can't compete at being cheap, fast, and "good enough." Our strengths lie in depth, quality, and evaluation of resources. Dr. Janes believes no reference services should be structured around ready reference any more. The internet can find answers to factual questions so much faster and cheaper than we can. We need to emphasize how we can do things that Google can't: answer complicated, nuanced questions, and evaluate the answers that Google comes up with. |
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Training. We can train non-government librarians to be government information providers, and can also train end-users to be better searchers. Virtual/Physical spaces. Dr. Janes said that library users in the virtual world need the same things that they do in the physical world: stuff, help and a space. We need to be able to provide stuff (information), help, and a space for our virtual users as well as our physical users. In other words, we need to be "where" they are. One practical suggestion that was made in this vein was to be sure a depository library graphic is on the main library web page, just as our sticker is by the doorways to our buildings. The main Blume Library page now has a notice of our depository status, if you want to see how we implemented this suggestion at St. Mary's. Library History Lessons. Dr. Janes remarked that discussions over how to serve (or whether to serve) remote library users echoes the discussions during the 1920's and 1930's about telephone reference. And he contends that a 1944 definition of reference service (I'm sorry I didn't make a note of the author) is still valid; it refers to finding information for users that they cannot find on their own. He says we do a great job of this, but we need to do a better job of articulating this strength, advertising and marketing it to our various publics. |
Future scenarios. The final session of the conference was an elaboration of the "future scenarios" that had been posted by the Depository Library Council. These speculations show both optimistic and pessimistic futures in which libraries (depositories in particular) are either marginalized or are important contributors to the nation's intellectual life. I submitted a scenario which draws on some of the topics discussed during the conference. As of April 18, it had not yet been posted, but it should be soon.
