Digital Commonwealth: The Bridge to Library 2.0

1. Digital Commonwealth:The Bridge to Library 2.0 Marshall Keys, Ph.D. MDA Consulting POB 534 Nantucket MA 02554 marshallkeys@mindspring.com

2. Today: celebration and challenge Celebration: a new tool for adding value to the Commonwealth and for increasing the common wealth Challenges: • to ensure that these resources are known and accessible to people outside the institutions that create them • To use this portal as a tool for involving people in libraries and other cultural institutions

3. What I am going to talk about • Where we are • Where the Digital Commonwealth can lead us • What we have to deal with to get there • Who is leading the way • Permanent beta • Specifics from Elizabeth Thomsen this afternoon

4. Our problem (back in the day) “This is the library. This is where they keep the books.”

5. Library as warehouse

6. The problem now “This is the server farm. This is where they have the data” Machine-centric!

7. From book warehouse to data warehouse?

8. “What business are you in?” • Theodore Levitt, ”Marketing Myopia” Harvard Business Review, 1960 • The railroads thought they were in the railroad business. But people didn’t want to ride trains; they wanted to get to New York. • Are we still in the warehouse business? • How do you keep a repository from becoming a warehouse?

9. Three stages of technological revolutions • In the first stage, we automate what we do • In the second stage, we do things differently • In the third stage, we do different things

10. Web 2.0:Doing things differently and doing some different things • Tim O’Reilly, "Web 2.0 is the business revolution caused by the move to the internet as platform“ wikipedia 20071011 • Web-based services that facilitate collaboration between users • Not technological changes so much as changes in the ways people use the web

11. Digital Commonwealth: does things differently • A portal • Virtual collection • Aggregated • Web-based • Web-enabled • Facilitates use of new and existing collections • But does it do different things? • Does it facilitate collaboration?

12. Library 2.0 • Michael Casey LibraryCrunch c. 2004 • Libraries are at a crossroads where elements of Web 2.0 are applicable: • the need for libraries to adopt a strategy of constant change • promoting a participatory role for library users. Wikipedia 20071011

13. Library 2.0 from the technology point of view • Web-based libraries with full-featured OPACs • Open systems, not proprietary software • Access through multiple platforms: • Computer • PDA • Mobile phone

14. Library 2.0from the user’s point of view • User customizable services • Users involved in designing and implementing services • Library involved in building and supporting “communities”, groups of users with common interests

15. Library 2.0 from the librarian’s point of view • Beta is forever • Constant change replaces upgrade cycles • Continuously examine services • Ideas from peripheral fields integrated into library service models: e.g., Nordstrom service model • Be willing to replace services at any time

16. Assumptions and questions • The future of libraries depends on their ability to meet the emerging needs of users. • Who will those users be? • What are their emerging needs? • How will these needs differ from traditional needs? • How can libraries respond to them? • What does this have to do with the Digital Commonwealth?

17. Traditional Identification Acquisition Indexing Storage Dissemination 2.0 Creation Metadata Storage Distributed discovery and retrieval Library Roles

18. Academic libraries:Lynn Scott Cochrane Basic roles: • to purchase published materials; • to identify, preserve, and manage unique special collections and locally produced information resources • to make all these easily available to users. “ If the Academic Library Ceased to Exist, Would We Have to Invent It?” http://connect.educause.edu/library/abstract/IftheAcademicLibrary/40684

19. Rebalance! • Academic libraries should move to a 50-50 split of expenditure and time between these roles • Academic libraries should spend halftheir time and money on capturing, preserving, and distributing local materials, such as scholarly monographs, essays and articles, research reports, artworks, photographs, documentation of campus events, campus records, and so forth. • Why? these materials will never be available in the marketplace from vendors; they are the products of local efforts.

20. Public libraries • The library and the bank • The library and the church • The library and the lab • The library and the medical model • What about users?

21. If a tree falls in the forest . . . . • If a resource exists in a library . . . . • Digital Commonwealth is an answer

22. Doing different things: changing communities Race, class, language, culture, age and their influence on libraries

23. The aging population

24. “Who'll Sit at the Boomers' Desks?” By Fred Brock NYT Oct 12, 2003 The big baby-boom generation is starting to retire. There simply aren't enough workers behind them in the labor supply pipeline to fill their jobs. • See also “Coming Soon: The Vanishing Work Force, Eduardo Porter NYT Aug 29, 2004

25. So, the world comes here! • 28.4 million US residents (10%) in 2000 were immigrants: • 50% from Latin America • 26% from Asia • Hispanics: $928 billion in purchasing power http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/mexico/facts.html

26. The increasingly visible African American middle class “Breaking the Silence” Henry Louis Gates JR, NYT, Aug. 1, 2004 “Reality check: according to the 2000 census, there were more than 31,000 black physicians and surgeons, 33,000 black lawyers and 5,000 black dentists. Guess how many black athletes are playing professional basketball, football and baseball combined? About 1,400. In fact, there are more board-certified black cardiologists than there are black professional basketball players.”

27. The Google Nation

28. The Google Nation • Everyone under 25 has grown up in the world wide web • Everyone between 25 and 35 grew up with the internet • Everyone over 35 learned this stuff while we were busy living our lives. • What’s new to us is old to them

29. Best home office

30. Hedge fund workspace

31. The PC at 25 “The PC is no longer centre of the technological universe. You can do e-mail on a BlackBerry, plug your digital camera directly into your printer, download music directly to your phone, and call up Google or eBay on any device with a web browser—not just a PC.” “The PC’s 25th Birthday”, Economist, July 27, 2006

32. Changing users: “What’s a cassette?” Young woman to young man on the MBTA subway, Boston, January, 2002

33. Libraries are not central “Is that a library book over there? It’s got the plastic on it and the Dewey decimal number. “Wow!” “When was the last time you read a library book?” NYT Sept 15, 2002, 2, p.1

34. Or even necessary

35. Netflix for books

36. What is central?emerging users, dominant themes • Community • Portability • Personalization • Participation – Web 2.0

37. In uncertainty, we all seek community

38. Community for the Google Nation 60,000,000 users worldwide!

39. Technology: portability Always connected, 24/7!

40. Personalization: Pimp My Ride

41. Personalized ring tones: $5 billion

42. Personalized technology, ridiculous extremes

43. Participation: multimedia “Broadcast yourself. Watch and share your videos worldwide!”

44. Participation: Blogs

45. Michael Gorman on blogs "I don't always think people's opinions are worth reading," he says. "They should not be published. I really like the filtering that publishers do. You don't publish maundering.“ “What's the Difference Gorman vs. Stripling?” by John N. Berry III – LJ 3/15/2004

46. “You don’t get it, Daddy, because they’re not targeting you!”

47. Personalized information access Having it their way vs doing it our way • The concept of “Lean Consumption”Harvard Business Review March, 2005 • “using technology to reduce time and hassle for customers and get them what they want when they want it.”

48. Personalization: what users want • What I looked at before • What other people looking at the same topic looked at • What they think about what they looked at • What else I might like to look at based on what I am looking at now • The Amazon experience! • But what about privacy? • They don’t care about privacy!

49. Evolving information technology: the search for portability • Wireless networks are the current state of the art in library technology • Porting information to other platforms – phones, PDA’s, ultramobiles -- is the next

50. Old: “Everything is on the internet” New: “Everything is on the phone”