Comments on: Is innovation all about technology?

By: Thinking Out Loud: Thought Leadership from an Enterprise Architect

Thinking Out Loud: Thought Leadership from an Enterprise Architect — Mon, 16 May 2005 10:12:16 +0000

Latest IT Buzzword: Innovation
Achieving service-level agreements in IT is no longer sufficient and our friend Nicholas Carr that stated IT doesn’t matter may actually be right as SLAs are essentially commodity plays. Today’s blog entry is on how enterprise architects and IT can…

By: Ryan

Ryan — Sat, 16 Apr 2005 01:25:14 +0000

All this yammering about tech-savvy versus primitivism, “give em what they want” vs “give em what they need” and so on, presumes a standard purpose for libraries in society. Chuck implies this purpose is “providing books and printed materials to readers” while Meredith seems to imply a more broad strategy of information technology (and books are an information technology — just read Harold Innis’s The Bias of Communication).

I’d like to challenge the presumption that libraries have a standard purpose. If you look at Canada (where I’m from), public libraries are a provincial responsibility and fall under a variety of departments from province to province. In Nova Scotia, it’s focus is education; in Alberta, it’s community services; in Ontario and Quebec, it’s culture. At the federal level, the library falls under a Department of Heritage.

In other words, the assumption that public libraries have a unified purpose in society is false. They are instruments — services that should do whatever it is that their governing institutions tell them to do, or they lose their funding. Their magic tool is organized information. Information is not a product, but a currency and Libraries hold no standard mandate from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. If the library is member-driven, it better do what the members want it to do. If it is privately funded, it better suit the funding criteria for the relevant institutions. If the institution says circ stats matter, then libraries should increase circ stats. Why? Because (right now) policy makers are more likely to see the problem that libraries are able to solve.

So, the issue is less a problem of “to tech or not to tech,” and more about whether powerful institutions (not just multinationals, but NGOs, governments, lobby groups) will trust the library profession with society’s most important socio-economic issues: the free (or not so free) access to information, education, and public assembly. Society’s education, which is directly related to productivity levels and, let’s face it, human happiness are some of the big issues that, quite frankly, might be better served by some other institution if public librarians don’t start to show some leadership in the world.

I’ve definitely heard librarians say things like “it’s all about the technology” and I’ve also heard librarians go on about how crazy all this technophilia is while they sit at a desk bored waiting for a student to get up off their computer and ask them a question. I say both of these librarians are not where it’s at. But these folk are so few and far between that if you want to take them on, you might as well build a scarecrow in your back yard and argue with that. These librarians are made of straw, as are both of your arguments.

True service leadership in libraries requires an understanding of community behavior, lifestyles and norms and the ability to find solutions that increase 1) knowledge 2) happiness or 3) the opportunity for equality.

This is not being user-focussed or “giving them what they want.” Nor is it about being society’s mom or dad. It’s about providing innovative solutions to real human problems using whatever model works.

By: Chuck0

Chuck0 — Fri, 15 Apr 2005 16:49:13 +0000

I definately never been part of the “give them what they want” crowd. In my view, this is one of the most odious memes to infect libraries in the past 25 years. This doesn’t mean that I’m an elitist or think I know better than my patrons (I don’t have any patrons). Giving people what they want has turned into “let’s put hundreds of copies on Harry Potter” on the shelves. Patrons may want to read Harry Potter, but public libraries shouldn’t be in the business of subsidizing the mainstream publishing industry. A smart librarian makes a few extra copies available of Harry Potter, but also understands that if people have to read the book immediately then they can go buy it. Money spent on “giving patrons what they want” has turned into pandering to patron’s needs for immediate gratification, at the expense fo the rest of the collection. What if most of your patrons “really want” books that aren’t on the shelves because your system bought 200 copies of Harry Potter? The books aren’t there to be discovered by your patrons. The “give them what they want” ideology also leads to a narrowing of our culture. Just look at what happened to publisher mid-lists when the corporate bookstore chains became popular. Look what happened to all of those indie bookstores which had great selections and knowledgeable staff. Public libraries have turned into Barnes and Noble. They suck.

“Many un-innovative public libraries I’ve been to are disinterested in reaching out to hard-to-reach groups (like teens, minorities, Spanish-speakers) with programming and marketing.”

This has nothing to do with innovation. These public libraries simply aren’t doing the things they should be doing. Innovation is a fetish with newness and uniqueness. You are complaining about libraries which aren’t doing the basics.