The Lost Art of Finding Our Way Navigating in a New World Paul B. Gandel Syracuse University

Early Explorers Reference: The Lost Art of Finding Our Way by John Edward Huth

Exploring New Worlds Today….

More Changes on the Way

What’s Different?

“When everything and everyone becomes connected and complexity is free and innovation is both dirt cheap and can come from anywhere, the world of work changes” Thomas Freeman NY Times Sept 15, 2013 We have moved from an the age of information to the age of unlimited choices and possibilities

But listening is not enough! Asking the right question is also key

What is the future of libraries? Paul Gandel

What SHOULD be the future of libraries?

What should be the future of library buildings/spaces? Keith Richards in his home library

What should be the future of librarians? Source Pew Research

Why Should it Matter?

Problem

Purpose? The modern organization exists to provide a specific service to society Drucker The purpose of a business is not to make a profit! – Create customers marketing Innovation

Don’t Settle! Dream! Envision! "If I'd asked my customers what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse." --Henry Ford

Space?

But more than just pleasing A space to unite the confederacy… A space to continue the dialogue… Unique objects that delight… Technology may not be the most important element… Space no longer designed around books or collections but around users…

It’s All About Process

Creating Learning Spaces… Study Spaces Classrooms Gaming Studios Quiet Spaces! Gandel24 Make Spaces Compelling-- Configurable Spaces for Knowledge Creation And Don’t Forget Virtual Spaces!

Librarians? What is a profession? – Knowledge – Practices – Values

Our knowledge? Facilitating knowledge creation Not necessarily services, materials, or even answers But questions!

Discovery happens everywhere— not just in a library…or even in a university..

Execs at Google I/O lay out plan to end search as we know it. “The company laid out its plan for the future of search, talking about a search engine that not only answers your questions but has a conversation with you and offers information before you even ask for it.”

Librarians need to be part of the Discovery Process… How? Libraries and librarians need to organize around the new workflow of users We need to stop thinking about collections and scholarly output and start thinking about scholarly communication…

Organizing and Facilitating Knowledge Creation In the new world of massive-scale computing and information resources, facilitators are needed to work with researchers and students to identify the most effective analytical tools, data sets, and other resources to best achieve research skills. Gandel32

Big Data is Now Big!

Connecting the dots…. Resources used to be scarce and attention is abundant But now resources are abundant and attention is scarce

Future Searches Require Human Intervention

Practicing the Right Connections? Think globally act locally? Think locally act locally?

Aggregation Matters! Colleges and universities have long competed against one another, measuring themselves in comparison to each other and holding tightly to their idiosyncrasies as defining elements of their status. But today, the distribution and reuse of information digitally via the Internet is rapidly changing the game, rewarding those who instead aggregate and scale toward a common infrastructure. It is becoming increasingly clear that neither the challenges that confront colleges and universities nor the solutions to those challenges are unique to each institution. Chuck Henry and Brad Wheeler The game has changed Educause Review, March 20

Sustainability Over 50% of the books in most libraries never circulate There is a tremendous amount of redundancy both regionally and nationally in most areas of the world While we need to assure that materials are not lost, we also need to recognize the enormous opportunity to reduce redundancy and waste

Shared Collections, Infrastructure, Artifacts, and Strategy!

Make Strategic Alliances!

The Value Added Proposition Honesty Consistency

Peer Review?

Vitek Tracz approach

Pew Research

In the search for tomorrow—the next new thing—do we loose today? 50

Saving our history “Years ago, reducing the cost of managing paper and other physical records was the major concern. With electronic records, organizations are now storing terabytes and petabytes of content that is becoming very expensive to maintain, considering the cost of the storage media and the administrative costs, including backups.” – New environment for Records Management—Carl Weise Environment-for-Records-Management 51

Destroying information may be as problematic as preserving it… 52

Recipe for Success— Be Results Oriented! Define outcomes in the context of institutional mission Identify opportunities for real impact Measure results! Focus on outcomes not outputs! Be part of the conversation! 53

Building Not Just Trust but…

When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it. Henry Ford

Thanks…