Libraries in a Google world

“need for libraries to reassert their identity as providers of balanced and significant information in a world reliant on Google”

About us

UTS Student population = 35,772 (EFTSL 23,345)

Library has 200+ computers

Information literacy:972 sessions reaching 21,768 clients

1 million+ door count p.a.

Image credits: Mal Booth http://www.flickr.com/photos/malbooth/5424230262/sizes/l/in/photostream/http://www.flickr.com/photos/malbooth/5451946449/

Collaboration

Knowledge

Culture

Where UTS library is heading

Graphic: Copyright UTS Library designed by Thomas Fethers

Culture

• Providing inspiration

• Adding context to the knowledge

• Recognising UTS achievements

• Neutral space

• Spaces for interaction

• Competitions

• Collections

Graphic: Copyright UTS Library designed by Thomas Fethers

Knowledge

• Exciting curiosity

• Search Discovery

• New service model

• New technology

Graphic: Copyright UTS Library designed by Thomas Fethers

Collaboration

• Inter-disciplinarity

• Community

• Joint projects

• Showcase work

Graphic: Copyright UTS Library designed by Thomas FethersChris Gaul UTS Artist in residence http://www.chrisgaul.net/utslibrary/

The post print world

• content curation • we spend too much time worrying about the containers of stuff • convening – anything that extends the learning commons into a thinking commons - and be a participant not

just a facilitator• nurturing in a consulting environment rather than training• beyond transactions to outcome based service design • build capacity: beyond rationing to abundance • encourage rather than limit use of the resources when it's all made electronic • we’re in the app business now• get to know our market base in terms of what people's needs are, so we can do predictive behavioural

modelling• a post print world we are not going to be in the information business, w will be in the transformation business • beyond information to transformation • sense making is the valuable part of what we do • we will be in the "meaning" business• as long as we keep focused on making meaning for people we will be fine

Notes from Joan Frye-Williams keynote @ Intelligent Information Symposium 2012Slides available here: http://intelligentinfo.com.au/sb_clients/intelligentinfo/docs/2012-Joan-Frye-Williams-Libraries-in-a-Post-Print-World.pdf

Cultural change• Planning day

• Sustainability

• Engagement

• Encourage creativity in staff

• Employing people who don’t know the rules

• Employ young people and ask their opinion

• Look outside the library for answers to problems

Information literacy• Play day

• Game based learning

• Mobile searching

• Google Skills

• YouTube screencasts

• Flexible delivery

• QR codes

• Social media

• Diigo

Information Literacy – the future

They like to watch

Image used under creative commons licence: http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelfitz/3490322415/sizes/o/in/photostream/

Future of the book - collections

• Libraries as book warehouses

• Access to computers & group work as a staple teaching practice

• Redesigning to create collaborative learning spaces

• Libraries weeding, discarding and/or storing offsite

• Non-government libraries particularly vulnerable

• Financial pressure to reduce physical holdings

Image: Katey Nicosiahttp://www.flickr.com/photos/41894194320@N01/839927986

• Students not such great readers

• Academics concerned at the demise of the book and its place in their students’ study patterns and lives

• Highly emotive issue for library staff and for clients

• Academic staff consultation

• Librarians as subject experts

• We need to manage and communicate this better!

..the Library … is clearing out books and magazines wholesale, on the assumption that students can find what they need online. The Library there is being gutted, and staff members are scrambling to store the books in their offices…Personal communication 4/6/12

Future of the book – collections #2

“The book of the future”

“The human mind will despair, perhaps of power to deal with the illimitable mass. May we hope that when things come to such a crisis, human labour of the literary sort may be in part superseded by machinery?”

“Machinery has done wonders, and when we think of what literature is becoming it is certainly to be wished that we could read it by machinery, and by machinery digest it.”

From The Pall Mall Gazette, September 15th, 1879