Thinking about 2.0

This discovery exercise was one of the least technical yet most thought-provoking. I just started on the "23 Things" this Monday, so I was able to skip some things, backtrack, and finish some of the "earlier" exercises out of sequence. This exercise happens to be the second to the last thing I am attempting to complete in the "23 Things".

As suggested, I read the OCLC Next Space Newsletter – Web 2.0: Where will the next generation of the web it take libraries? When I read Rick Anderson's section, Away from the "icebergs," it reminded me of an engaging argument I took part in over a decade ago. The place was a graduate lib sci classroom and the point of contention was the question of "access vs. ownership". Anderson's term "just in case" collection immediately transported me to a place where my hair was dark and I was extremely passionate about the direction of my newly chosen profession.

In the early 90's, Lynx browsers were giving way to graphical Mosaic browsers. Paper and character-based indices were being eschewed and the fancy new full-text databases were in demand. I fondly remember the very first time I printed out a full-text article to a dot matrix printer. I guess we probably all remember our first time.

Always on the "access" side of the aisle, I argued that it would be ludicrous to continue to grow huge and largely duplicated collections when quality reproductions of materials within shared collections could be delivered through the Ethernet. I was convinced that collection development dollars would be more judiciously spent on resource sharing networks, digitization projects, online resources, and most of all, more publicly accessible terminals.

At that time, I viewed my classmates that supported "ownership" and the continued building of research collections as dinosaurs that were ultimately impeding the inevitable technological progression of the profession. More importantly these "ownership" fossils were building collections that would only be used by the faculty and a few doctoral-level students. True, these "serious" researchers were our "regulars"and their patronage was valued. I wondered out aloud, how could, how would, we be able to reach our "infrequents"? Specifically, I wanted to reach the freshmen, the Greeks, the newly-termed "returning non-traditional" students, and many other emerging new groups of campus. The closing argument, that I always espoused with great conviction, was "why would anyone want to even come to the library if they could access an article at 3:00 am from their dorm room?"

Anderson's term "just in case" collection made me think about a nearly fifteen year old "access vs. ownership" debate. I was now motivated to look for a similar arguments currently brewing in the Library 2.0 movement. It took about three minutes to find an interesting thread in this vein. I found it in an engaging post on the blog Library 2.0 and Academic Perspective. The post was titled 2.0 Librarians in 1.0 Libraries. This post references Ryan Deschamps' We Asked for 2.0 Libraries and We Got 2.0 Librarians and Michelle Boule's response We Got 2.0 Librarians, Not 2.0 Libraries.

My take is that Deschamps argues that the shelf life of the term Library 2.0 is about to expire and it is now time take an inventory of where we are as a profession.

He states "The success of library 2.0, as is to be expected, has been mixed. That was kind of the point anyway. Library 2.0 was, in part, a way of seeing success in failure — we had to learn to play, take risks, fail, and learn from the process. In short, the library 2.0 movement was not really about changing libraries, but changing librarians. Librarians needed our time in the sun, and now that we are getting our time. Now that we are popular, hopefully we will see that we need to clean our houses before we invite people in.

It appears that Boule believes that the Library 2.0 movement is stalling because most library organizations are stuck "1.0." organization structures and are generally slow to embrace change.
She states, "Library 2.0 has succeeded in nothing as well as creating a group of frustrated 2.0 Librarians. L2 has done a wonderful job of educating, enlightening, and invigorating librarians to be better, to do better, and to involve our patrons. We are reaching a critical mass of librarians who are excited about what is possible. The problem is that many of those librarians are stuck in 1.0 libraries."

and later, "2.0 Librarians usually end up leaving for somewhere better, more innovative. This is a great option if you are mobile and able to move. Not everyone can. This “brain drain” has resulted in a hand full of libraries doing really great stuff, a few more libraries sticking toes in the water, and the majority of libraries looking around in befuddlement. I would not be afraid to guess that in many 1.0 libraries, there are 2.0 librarians working behind the scenes and those librarians are tired."

I guess I want to relate my "access vs, ownership" debate to this 2.0 discussion in that I once believed that those crusty "ownership" dinosaurs were impeding the progress I was attempting to champion. I think the ownership folks were concerned that the people supporting the access position were impulsive radicals who very willing to discard baby junior with the bathwater. With a 10 year professional cushion, I would like to think that I have a more balanced approach to the old debate. I think the institution's population should dictate which side of the equation the library decides to pursue. In my opinion, a large ACRL library with a huge campus population is incumbent to build large print and electronic collections. Libraries that support scattered satellite campuses and a large distance populations may be wise to spend their dollars on the access that electronic resources can offer.

The access vs. ownership debate allowed people to initiate a dialog and begin forming opinions. I believe the technology matured to a point where it was no longer necessary for libraries/librarians to adopt on extreme position but decide on somewhere in the middle. Somewhere that supports the needs of their users. I think Boule and Deschamps discussion is similar. Technologies will continue to morph and change entirely, and I believe the Library 2.0 "change movement" focus really should not be so closely associated to the technologies that are used within libraries or what we label these technologies. I would like to think the 2.0 movement is bigger, it represents a change in thought. The 2.0 movement has allowed us as a profession to refocus and concentrate on the expressed needs of our populations and reduce institutional barriers when possible.

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