Roy Tennant The Academic Library in a Googlezon World

Where I’m Coming From Challenges are merely opportunities viewed from below There are three requirements for survival: –Having the right gear –Making the right decisions –Luck We have far to go but we have a good start, and many models to emulate and improve upon

Key Messages The game has changed We can no longer simply do what we’ve always been doing We must revisit our strategies & priorities… …and reallocate resources to fulfill those new strategies & priorities It may be painful, but it is certainly needed and overdue

Why We Must Get Our Act Together

How We Got in This Mess to Begin With

A Mini History of Library Automation Automation began in the back room: –Circulation –Cataloging (where we now rest comfortably on our laurels) –Acquisitions And moved into public areas almost as an afterthought (why do you think we call them OPACS?) Systems were optimized for librarians, not users Paper journal indexes were simply replaced with electronic versions Few accommodations for remote users were made

Key Problems Conflated management and discovery purposes Created (or allowed to be created) stovepipe information systems Rested on our laurels after card catalog retrospective conversion Slow to exploit new opportunities Reluctant to collaborate deeply on profession-wide level

What We Must Do

Expand our catalogs beyond MARC

Expand our search systems beyond our catalog

Library Discovery Systems Must encompass everything that may be appropriate for a particular audience or need Need to accommodate a continuum from a brief metadata record to the entire item [impact: acquisitions, cataloging, reference, systems] Must use weighting and ranking mechanisms to create more effective search results [impact: circulation, systems, cataloging, public services]

Build search systems with user needs in mind

Implications of All This You will not be doing tomorrow what you are doing today (resistance is futile) Better to participate in the change than to have it inflicted upon you Doing new things may mean not having to do other things you’ve grown to hate An exciting time that requires vision, imagination, and flexibility

In the End… Our ability to thrive is based on our ability to serve well the needs of specific audiences…

…and/or purposes