Paula’s E-Musings

This week’s Chronicle of Higher Education has an intriguing article where eight academic librarians in their 20s and 30s responded  to questions about their impressions of libraries today and what the future might hold. At the same time that libraries are facing new challenges related to technology, information literacy and shrinking budgets, baby boomer librarians such as myself are starting to retire and being replaced with Gen Xers and Net Genners. Here’s what some of our younger librarian colleagues are saying:

The core values of libraries are will remain the same, as the physical and virtual services will change and complement each other. The book isn’t likely to go away and reference services are likely to stay, although the venue is changing to include digital and media services. Librarians will coexist and even complement the “amagoogle” information world that so many have embraced.  Creation of new ideas is expanding well beyond text to include a wide variety of digital media. (The above referenced article includes links to audio clips of the librarian responses.) A Library/Information Science is still important in the profession, but so is the need for a broad and deep understanding of IT.

After reading the article and listening to the librarian responses, I didn’t feel the essence of what they had to say was so very different than my own perspectives on libraries and their future — or that of fellow baby boomer librarians who have evolved with libraries and their changing environments.

Despite the fact that more than 90 percent of our students bring their own computers to campus, labs throughout campus are busier than ever.  Their use has not only increased but so have their numbers.  At SUNY Cortland the number of teaching labs has grown 42 percent in the past five years alone, from 28 (15 Windows and 13 Macintosh) to 37 (20 Windows and 17 Macintosh). In addition the number of smaller, special use labs has grown by 50 percent, from 22 to 33.  

A recent Educause Review article addresses the myth that because so many students bring their own computers to campus student labs are no longer needed. In fact at our campus the evolving curriculum incorporates more discipline-specific technologies and requires students to use sophisticated — and expensive — software applications. Since 2000 we have built eight new high-end media labs to support specific technology-intensive majors in Sports Management, New Communications Media, New Media, GIS and Professional Writing.  We have allocated separate funds to maintain these labs, which must be updated more frequently to reflect the ever-changing technologies.

Even though most of our students own computers, they are social beings and enjoy congregating in our late night labs — often IMing each other across the room. That’s not much different from my own college days when we dragged our heavy books from our dorm rooms to the library to engage in social interactions while we studied (or didn’t).

Today’s students are more likely to engage in group projects where they produce and present multimedia which they’ve developed collaboratively. What better place to assemble than in one of the labs that we’ve designed for flexibility and creativity? As the use of technology has become more sophisticated so have our labs. The need for labs is not likely to diminish; it will likely grow and continue to evolve.

I often feel like the pilot in this video clip who’s building his plane as he’s flying. Is it a coincidence that the video is an ad for a technology services company? I think not. A few weeks ago Warren Arbogast used the same metaphor in his Chronicle Tech Therapy Podcast where he spoke about the challenges of finding time to plan, work strategically,  and think globally while we all seem to be so busy putting out fires.  How do we remain proactive when we so often must react to many last minute requests from our constituents whose lack of IT planning becomes our 11th hour crisis?

I could especially relate to this podcast that addressed the need to plan and build “info”structure as important as building infrastructure. The podcast addressed the critical importance of effective PR and timely communications. Just recently I facilitated a meeting of IR leaders where we discussed these challenges that are affecting our organization. We’ve got so many great new initiatives and we’re offering innovative new services,  but how do we get the message out to faculty and students so they know what we’re doing?

 We all agreed that everyone gets bombarded with too many e-mails and is over-scheduled with meetings. Consequently our messages are unread and our open forums are unattended. Meawhile, the campus is surprised to learn that we have updated our classrooms and labs to Office 07 and they are unaware that we are webcasting campus lectures. We’re speaking but who is listening?

 There’s got to be more effective ways of communicating. Yes, less is more and images often speak louder than text. We know that just in time communication is needed and that we must use a variety of media to reach our diverse audiences.  We’ve agreed that we need to build our infostructure as carefully and strategically as we’ve built our infrastructure. Conversations have begun. So stay tuned as we develop a process to effectively convey just who we are and what we’re doing.

 PS The Tech Therapy podcasts are broadcast every other week and cover a wide array of timely and relevant topics. I highly recommend listening to them.