Beyond the Horseless Carriage Reprofessionalizing Our Work

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Beyond the Horseless CarriageRe-professionalizing
Our Work

• Presentation to
• VALE Users Conference
• Maintaining Excellence in Tough Financial Times
  Through Resource Sharing
• 8 January 2003
• by Anne G. Lipow

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Glossary

• Digital vs. virtual
• Synchronous vs. asynchronous
• Client or Patron or Customer or User

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Where We Are (in brief)

• Weve been good at moving with the times
• Adopt new technologies
• Change our procedures
• Focus on the user
• NJ librarians are ahead of others
• Open attitudes
• Experimental environments
• The challenge
• Break the mold
• Go beyond the horseless carriage

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Why Break the Mold?Its a Different World Out
There

• Your clients fast-changing world
• Emerging technologies
• no keyboard, no mouse, no wires, no box
• Products and svcs are increasingly available to
  distant clients
• (groceries, stocks, matchmakers, and, of
  course, books and articles)
• Publishers are testing e-books
• Location time of day (or night) are irrelevant

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More trends

• Your clients have customer expectations
• Personalized, convenient, uncomplicated to use
• timely, accurate, accessible when they need
  you
• Labor-saving, preferably free
• Staffed with personable, trustworthy experts
• Your clients needing help have alternatives
• Ever-smarter search engines
• Commercial information reference services
• New economic models for distributing information
  are emerging

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Impact on LibrariesUse Patterns Are Changing

• Inverse relationship between use of the Internet
  and use of the library
• Circulation of non-fiction is declining
• Reference questions are declining
• Clients are getting their information from
  Internet resources
• and their questions answered from dot-com
  reference services

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Meet some ref-dot-coms

• Cyberlibraries
• Questia
• JonesKnowledge
• Live reference help
• allexperts.com or expertcentral.com (free)
• answers.google.com (fee varies)
• liveadvice.com (fee varies)
• keen.com (fee varies)
• webhelp.com (10.00 buys 10 requests)

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More changes . . .

• Walk-in traffic is different
• Satisficing is on the rise
• Funders ask
• Do you need all that space?
• or Is reference still needed?
• or Are you still needed?
• or even Is the library still needed?
• And too many of us have no clear answers

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The Task AheadRethink everything except

• Core values
• Equitable access to information
• Lifelong learning
• Dignity of the individual
• Right to know
• Intellectual and academic freedom
• Professional ethics

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Rethink everything else

• Mission
• Organizational structure
• Vocabulary
• Functions
• Jobs
• Where you work

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First Ask, Is what I do professional?

• Professional employee any employee engaged in
  work (From Lectric Law Library Lexicon)
• predominantly intellectual and varied in
  character as opposed to routine mental, manual,
  mechanical, or physical work
• involving the consistent exercise of discretion
  judgment in its performance
• of such a character that the output produced or
  the result accomplished cannot be standardized in
  relation to a given period of time

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Definition of professional employee (contd)

• Professional employee any employee engaged in
  work
• requiring knowledge of an advanced type
• in a field of science or learning customarily
  acquired by a prolonged course of specialized
  intellectual instruction and study
• in an institution of higher learning or a
  hospital
• as distinguished from a general academic
  education or from an apprenticeship or from
  training in the performance of routine mental,
  manual, or physical processes

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• Lectric Law Library Lexicon www.lectlaw.com/def.h
  tm

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SecondFocus on Yourself

• Make your work visible
• to yourself
• and to your users

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How? Examine every aspect of your work day

• Estimate the of your day spent doing
  professional work redesign work to increase it
• Move your participation in an activity up a level
• Re-conceptualize your work
• Become scarce
• Measure success in terms of new users
• Join the global society
• Focus on the distant user
• (and regard in-library users as distant)
• Institutionalize continuing education

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MeanwhileTake a New Look at Your Users

• Pay more attention to the faculty than to the
  students
• Cater to their preference for convenience
• Build a user-friendly e-branch of your library to
  be where you users are
• Serve special interest groups with special
  services
• Greet walk-in traffic at the door

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Recent observations by colleagues

• Our library instruction program appears to
  have made a small difference in the types of
  materials students chose and how they found
  them. (Emmons Martin, Coll. Res. Libs., Nov.
  2002)
• Our place in academia is seriously threatened by
  the Internet (Massey-Burzio, CRL News, Dec.
  2002)
• it is only within the last four or five years
  that Web site development tools have made it
  possible for developers without sophisticated
  technological training and experience to create
  Web sites. The art of Web site development is in
  its infancy. (Robins and Kelsey, ITAL, December
  2002)
• Perhaps there is a place in this new world for
  special library people, but not special
  libraries! (Gawne, unpublished paper, 2002)

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Models that Re-professionalize Us

• Slogans that represent a different image
• TAP INTO THE NETWORK
• Over 1100 locations. 20,000 professionals. All
  connected.
•  Kinko's has connected its over 1,100 locations,
  20,000 professionals
• and technology resources into a single, seamless
  network, to meet
• the demand of large and medium size businesses.
• Your best Internet connection is your librarian
• (Infopeople Project)
• Librarians office is not in the library
• Sabina Robertson (U of Melbourne)
• http//www.alia.org.au/conferences/alia2000/author
  s/robertson.sullivan.html

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Models (continued)

• Different types of libraries merge
• (Joint Use SJPL SJSU)
• A library merges with a non-library organization
  to provide expanded services
• Cerritos Public Library
• Fee services established to enable library to say
  Yes, we can
• NLCs Door-to-door delivery service
• http//www.nlc.gov.cn/dcylb/ehomepage.htm
• Staff recognizes the librarys programmatic
  approach to staff development
• Infopeople Project (infopeople.org)

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Even more models

• Move your job up a notch
• Library Terms That Users Understand
• http//www.jkup.net/terms.html
• The purpose of this site is to help library Web
  developers decide how to label key resources and
  services in such a way that most users can
  understand them well enough to make productive
  choices. (John Kupersmith)
• Focus on the faculty
• Use electronic reserves to serve faculty
• http//www.lib.berkeley.edu/ANTH/
• My job is to understand their processes and
  then work ours into theirs. (Suzanne Calpestri)
• A well-built e-library
• http//www.library.unlv.edu/

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7 Ways toReprofessionalize Librarianship

• Redefine professional work
• Become a scarce resource
• Spend more time analyzing redesigning services
  than delivering them
• Market, know the changing needs of your clientele
• Design instruction hand-in-glove with your
  clientele
• Create the needed service but dont appoint
  yourself to deliver it
• Share your job as well as your knowledge and
  resources

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To go beyond the horseless carriageA Different
Mindset Required

• Think Like Users Think/Expect
• Its the library thats remote. How to bring the
  library to users where they are?
• Goal Tiered services meeting differing needs
• Ill strive for equivalent service to distant and
• walk-in users

• Old Thinking to Discard
• How to bring the remote user into the library?
• Goal Expect/teach adults to find what they need
  themselves
• The walk-in client has priority over the one on
  the phone

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More Old Thinking to Discard
More New-Think

• Our library serves whoever comes through our
  doors
• The staff in my library are the best people to
  deal with our clients questions
• We provide the same wonderful service using new
  technology

• Our library is where our clientele are (and where
  they cant ignore its presence)
• Our clients are best served by professional help
  delivered when its needed, regardless of where
  that librarian or service is
• Weve gone beyond the horseless carriage and
  shaped a new image of libraries and librarians

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Your Turn!

• Think less
• The library is the heart of the campus
• Think more
• The campus library is the local node
• of an international network of libraries
• that serves this community