How Libraries and Librarians Survive Digital Slaughter: Survival instincts of library and information science professionals

How Libraries and Librarians Survive Digital Slaughter:

 Survival instincts of library and information science professionals

By Jitender Sharma, Librarian, NIILM-CMS, New Delhi

Abstract

With the emergence and new developments in Information Technology and further growth in digitalization collection along with low pricing of the technology, it was predicted that paper based libraries will cease to exist over a period of time in current shape and will be replaced by digital libraries with their control in the hands of IT skilled people. Librarians will lose their position and become irrelevant in the times to come. However, nothing of that sort has happened. Librarians had adapted themselves according to the changing times and learnt and practiced new skills and technologies and today libraries are more relevant than they were yesterday. This paper summarizes the IT and soft skills that have helped librarians to win this war.

Introduction:

Globalization has become the universal truth today. The tremendous growth and development in Information and Communication Technology has brought out significant changes in all disciplines of life throughout the world. It has simply become so simpler to communicate anybody in any part of the world. It is equally simpler to have access to information resources especially with easy and cheaper access to Internet. In such an environment, people often question the very existence and usefulness of a library. In fact with the emergence of digital and online resources, it was predicted that paper based libraries will vanish very soon from this globe at least in their current form.

Changes and advances in technology is an ongoing process and likely to be further faster, and perhaps less predictable, than ever. Broadband, Wi-Fi, mobile telephony, all contribute to the increasing speed and availability of direct internet communication. It is evident that an increasing number of people are worried that they cannot afford to keep up with advances in new technology, in a consumer market where the latest gadgets/ models may be declared redundant within a matter of months. Libraries have also witnessed and still facing this technology pressure. New technologies, software, electronic security systems, virtual libraries, online libraries and what not are emerging and implemented all over the world on regular basis. There are, on the contrary, poor and developing countries also, where other than metro cities and may be in some other cities which one can count on fingers, most of the libraries and their staff might not have even used a PC once in their lifetime. In such extreme end conditions, it is not exaggerated to say that such library may not see the future in the shape they are today and if at all they exist then they will be occupied by the IT professionals rather than the outdated library staff.

Quoting a bright undergraduate student words “I don’t need the library, it’s too big, complicated, and anyway, everything worth having is on the Internet”. This is just not a one person opinion but most of the young generation tries to look beyond library first to satisfy their information needs. They come to library only as a last resort and certainly not as their first preference.

The latest developments in digital technologies have opened new gateways for information publishers. Most of the publishers are now adopting to bring digitalized collection of their books, journals and other reading materials. Multiple simultaneous access of digitalized collection has made the library very purpose of stocking valuable collection as per users needs irrelevant and so the concept of library buildings and their design also. Fortunately, it is still expensive to digitalize the whole information world and cost of converting existing material and the barriers like copyright issues etc. still give the librarians space to breadth. However, how long can this continue? How a library, in real time, and with real money spent on it, and serving real people, deal with infinite possibilities of the digital age? This has really forced the library community to think somewhat differently about the value of the library and how to survive and outgrow the competition it faces from development in Information and Communication Technology.

Changing Paradigms:

Librarians have always been engaged in collecting, processing and organizing knowledge and serving the user in best possible form. Their roles have been regularly changing with social advancement. From custodian of books to the reference librarian, Information Officer in last century, moving to information navigator, information broker, information engineers and now reaching to global information provider and more importantly educator and trainer, Knowledge manager.

This has not happened overnight or just by coining new terminology to suit to today’s requirements. It happened due to hard work put by the librarians in learning and adopting new developments in the field and then to propagate them more convincingly to their clientele.

When we talk of Internet, all agree that Internet search engine is a miracle and an ocean of information but often you find more junk than useful information on the same. The search results are big in number but unstructured. Relevance is not guaranteed. Here librarians appetite for systematic, classified and authoritative management of resources comes as a handy tool and brings librarian a part of the game. Skill of classifying and organizing information is at the root of any successful web application and this has been one of the reasons for libraries and librarians’ existence and survival even in this dynamic ICT era.

Librarians have been able to do two things most. As usual, they have maintained and managed their collection, many of which they are and they will digitalize and deliver to their users. They are further providing their users help and assistance in finding, evaluating, and understanding the universe of information that the digital world has provided. They now spend less time and energy developing collections and much more to develop online guides to subjects, topics and resources. They now focus what volume of materials their users can access rather than what volume of material they own.

Here few of the John V Lombardi’s Rules given in his paper “Academic Libraries in a Digital Age” for Digital Survival are necessary to mention with due acknowledgement to the author. These rules are also being modified to suit topic’s requirements.

1. Contents are more important than objects. Hence librarians will have to become knowledge managers who understand and deliver the contents than just objects.
2. They will have to help users to find resources in vast sea of digital information rather than digitalizing a rare book.
3. If others are also working on the same digitalization project then let them finish first before you start and start from where they left. Do not start from scratch again.
4. If some one is having services that you need then buy it rather than investing it.
5. Constant change is the only buzzword in Digitalized world. What is most reliable will be obsolete in few years.
6. Join consortia and urge others to take the lead.
7. Invest in a unique product only when you have comparative advantage and someone else is willing to pay for it.

Librarians have understood the meaning and spirit by these rules to the best possible extent and they have emerged as Knowledge Managers who have the potential to assist libraries in capturing, collecting, organizing, and disseminating the collective memory and wisdom of reference librarians and helping them become more productive, effective, and customer service oriented. Knowledge management also helps libraries streamline their day-to-day operations, improve their visibility and involvement in the larger organization, and assume a leadership role in helping to capture the institutional memory.

As the old saying goes “When in Rome, behave like a Roman”. Familiarity with ICT tools and technologies has therefore made librarians relevant for today and tomorrow. Many librarians have learnt and practice the technologies like E-lists, Social groupings, Open source software and sites, Digitalization software, Blogs/Weblogs, RSS feed, Web 2.0, and so on. In abroad and India too, there are good number of examples set up by librarians who not only have mastered these skills but spread the word everywhere and offered their expertise and services for the betterment of profession.

Technology Skills:

Hand-on-experience on technology by today librarians has helped them overcoming the obsolescence in this technological era. Some of the technologies that now librarians are familiar with are briefly given below:

(1)         Electronic Mail List: E-mail list/LISTSERV is a popular mean of Internet communication. These are means of participating in electronic discussion on a particular topic with other interested persons throughout the world. These lists are generally moderated lists. One has to register once to that list in order to send or receive message from other group members. Librarians today are vigilant enough to know the e-mails lists of their clientele subject areas and scan them regularly to know the latest happenings to further educate their clientele. Collective strength of all members brings out solutions to even difficult issues and hence helps the members to adopt the solution as per their requirements.

(2)         E-Groups: These are also various electronic discussion groups for communicating information via the Internet. Messages are sent to a central location and posted for other members of the groups. For example, various groups are available on portal http://yahoogroups.com. Again one has to subscribe to these groups, which is generally free. Librarians now read, understand and forward the new information on continuous basis to its users depending upon their interest area.

(3)         Search Engines: In today’s world more than hundreds of search engines are available on the Internet each with its own search logic and give specific results. Librarians have either learnt or regularly learning use and individual applicability, loss/benefits of each search engine so that it is easier to explain the user right search engine for his or her search or even help with his search.

(4)               Blogs: Blog, short for Weblog, is a web site that contains brief entries arranged in reverse chronological order. Blogs are diverse, ranging from personal diaries to news sites that monitor developments on anything possible depending upon the purpose of the blog. Some blogs encourage interactivity between the writer and audience by allowing readers to post comments and questions about entries. Peter Suber’s blog is one of such relevant blogs which gives the most reliable information on open access movement in the world. These are easier to write contents without knowing anything about HTML or FTP etc. Today there will be thousands of blogs written by librarians on personal and professional matters and all these are available free of charge on Internet for others to take benefit.

(5)               RSS FEEDS:  RSS is a format for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites, including major news sites, news-oriented community sites, and personal blogs. But it's not just for news. Pretty much anything that can be broken down into discrete items can be syndicated via RSS, even the revision history of a book. Once information about each item is in RSS format, an RSS-aware program can check the feed for changes and react to the changes in an appropriate way. RSS-aware programs called news aggregators are popular in the blogging community. Many blogs make content available in RSS. A news aggregator can help user keeping up with all his favorite blogs by checking their RSS feeds and displaying new items from each of them. RSS can bring fresh daily updated contents to user home page from hundreds of providers who will give daily updated fresh content which suite user requirements. Librarians have been greatly benefited from RSS feeds and they also forward the same to their clientele.

(6)               Wikipedia: Wikipedia is a multilingual, web-based, free content encyclopedia project. It is written collaboratively by volunteers; its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the website. Wikipedia has approximately seven million articles in 251 languages. It is currently ranks among the top ten most-visited websites worldwide. Librarians have taken full advantage of such a vast sea of freely available information to serve its clientele and even contributed in editing and adding new knowledge for other’s benefits.

(7)               Open Source Software: Another very important feature that gives librarians strength to impress upon its users is Open-Source Software for which the underlying programming code is available to the users so that they may read it, make changes to it, and build new versions of the software incorporating their changes. It allows anyone with programming experience to revise and change the programming code to suit their individual needs. Open source code is typically created as a collaborative effort in which programmers improve upon the code and share the changes within the community. The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a widely-used free software license. The GPL grants the recipients of a computer program the rights of the free software definition and uses copyleft option to ensure the freedoms are preserved, even when the work is changed or added to. It is the single most popular license for free and open-source software. Librarians have successfully adopted open-access software and developed very useful databases rather than using commercial software for the same and hence saved the cost to organizations and helped in further development and publicity of the open-access software.

(8)               Open-Archiving Sites: Along with the open source software, the most beneficial feature of today technological world is open-archiving movement going over the world. Lot of the research material that was earlier under commercial domain only is available freely under open-archiving system wherein anybody with Internet access can use the same without money. Today, librarians keep a close vigil of all such possible sources relevant to their users profile and provide both the information and contents to its users. This has helped in boosting the image of library overall.

(9)               Knowledge Management: Although existing in its crude form in libraries always but today Knowledge Management is not just to manage library or handle online databases or collection, storage, and classification of documents. KM is directly related to the productivity of organization which includes, centralization of all the organizational Knowledge assets, make them accessible to all, organizational learning to expand the horizons of human mind and reap those innovations for the growth of organization by means of providing customer satisfaction at the utmost. The shift from distributing information to managing and disseminating knowledge is becoming an important factor next to labour, capital and natural resources. It is evolving into intellectual assets. With their deep understanding of understanding clientele needs, structuring and repackaging information and services delivery capabilities, librarians have started assuming the responsibilities of knowledge manager as well.

(10)           Web-Designing: Today web-designing tools are not new to librarians. Rather most of the librarians know the basics of web-designing and have guided and suggested the contents for a dynamic website related with not only library but with organization as well even if they don’t do the designing part. Further they regularly help in adding and editing the contents of the website. With librarians help, now the website are enriched with contents having free resources links that may be of use to its clientele. This has helped the users a great way and they look forward to library websites for their information needs quite regularly.

(11)           Web 2.0: Web 2.0 is a phrase coined by O'Reilly Media in 2004 and it refers to a perceived second-generation of Web-based services that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users. It does not refer to an update to Internet or World Wide Web technical standards, but to changes in the ways those standards are used. Actually the phrase "Web 2.0" hints at an improved form of the World Wide Web; advocates suggest that technologies such as weblogs, social bookmarking, wikis, podcasts, RSS feeds (and other forms of many-to-many publishing), social software, Web APIs, Web standards and online Web services imply a significant change in web usage. Librarians use Internet in most productive ways and use all its technologies to a great extent in extracting and providing information to their clientele.

Soft Skills:

Librarians have now left behind the era when they were taught only classification, cataloguing, subject headings, shelving, issue /return and inventory management in library schools. Today the priorities even in library schools are on developing soft skills that help the librarians to deal effectively with their clientele. Few of the library schools have made lot of innovations in their programmes to suit to today requirements. The emphasis is to develop soft skills other than the mandatory courses and IT skills that are required in this competitive world. Few of the soft skills that have been gradually adopted by the successful librarians and if not then required to be paid attention immediately for professional growth and survival are briefly described below:

1. Communication Skills: One of the pre-requisites if the librarians have to stay in race in spite of all odds is the full control of both verbal and written communication skills. The library job is no more a passive job but it requires regular and frequent interaction with its clientele and here the communication tools come handy and help in impressing upon the users your worth. Librarians are often required to report to their authorities and poor communication skills can spoil the entire party.

2. Embracing Change Skills: Librarians must be able to adapt themselves with changing technologies and clientele requirements. Their services abilities and strategies must also change in tune with users needs. It is very important to understand that each client is different and so are his or her requirements, hence, librarians should also be prepared to change service strategy as per the user requirements.

3. Project Management Skills: Librarian must know the art of taking a project from scratch or an idea level to the finishing line. Art of delegating tasks to colleagues and working as a team is the need of hour. Project management skills from conceptualization to Execution are necessary for survival.

4. Leadership Skills: To be successful, librarians are required to have excellent leadership quality. Then only they can develop a team and face any challenge or condition put before them while serving their users.

5. Interpersonal Skills: Library work involves public dealing to the greatest possible extent and hence librarian should be a master of interpersonal skills. Relationships with customers (users, staff, authorities, vendors etc.) at individual levels do help in smooth functioning of library.

6. Marketing Skills: Librarian should learn the art of marketing. It is essential to promote and marketing library services. Even to convince your own management or authorities about any new development plan for library one has to master at marketing. Librarians must understand that they themselves will have to make efforts for showing library and its existence relevant in the eyes of all its stakeholders.

These technology and soft skills are just indicative and certainly not exhaustive. But these skills have helped librarians to work and proved their worth even in adverse conditions. It has to clearly understood that library traditional knowledge and IT/Soft skills are not a substitute but complementary to each other. It is the combination of all these skills that has made possible for librarians to survive the digital slaughter.

It is, therefore, imperative that all librarians who have not adapted themselves till now will have to strengthen their information technology and other soft skills following examples set up by the pioneer librarians who have proved over a period of time that libraries are just not there by virtue but they deserve that place today and will continue to stand and serve the users in all the times to come.

Conclusion:

It is not that librarians have not to concentrate on their basic skills but at the same time it is equally important that they have to learn and adopt the information technology and digitalization skills. They shall have to regularly use the Internet features in more and more useful way for effective searching, processing and dissemination of knowledge. Of course here, their basic classification skills will be crucial in finding relevant information from such a vast sea of unstructured information.

Librarians over the last decade have proved that they know how to win the survival race in spite of tough competition from IT professionals and in spite of many pundits predicting the extinction of libraries and the paper book culture as the world grows more and more digitalized. It is now the need of hour that such survival instincts should not only restrict to the bigger libraries and few librarians who have earned a name for themselves but it should reach to every nook and corner of the country i.e. to the smallest possible library. More and more training programmes on regular basis should be organized especially in rural part of the country both for librarians and users as well and public participation both in terms of money and moral one should be encouraged so that our libraries stand firm and tall and remain relevant in the years to come.

References:

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9. Wikepedia

Author Details:

Working as Librarian at NIILM since its inception, Mr. Jitender Sharma is an alumnus of University of Delhi and has done double Post Graduation, first in Physics and then in Library and Information Science. He has overall working experience of over twelve years plus. He has served the prestigious institutions in country like DESIDOC (Ministry of Defence), DEVELOPMENT ALTERNATIVES (a leading NGO) and NIILM-CMS. He is a prolific author and has written several research papers. He has wide association with most of the reputed organizations engaged in development of Library and Information Science field in the country. He is the founder member and Treasurer for Management Libraries Network (MANLIBNET). His interest areas include use of Information Technology in libraries to provide best services to the users.

Jitender Sharma