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Graduate School of Library and Information Science University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 112 LIS Building 501 E. Daniel Street Champaign, Illinois 61820-6211 U.S.A. It is possible to recognize two distinct phases in the application of technology to libraries. In the first, the essential raw materials with which libraries deal -- books, periodicals and other publications -- remain in traditional print-on-paper forms. Technology is used to variously manipulate electronic records for these items and also to facilitate their movement (e.g., through fax). This phase has been in place, to some extent at least, for about thirty years. In the second phase, the raw materials themselves are in electronic form. Through the acquisition of resources on CD-ROM, and other electronic forms, and through access to publications via the Internet, libraries are now in the early stages of the second phase. Although some librarians still refuse to accept it (see Crawford and Gorman, 1995, as a prime example), it seems clear that, in the future, libraries will be dealing less and less with print on paper and more and more with publications in electronic form.[2] If this is so, and if most members of the public can access electronic resources for themselves, through workstations in the home or office, what role will remain for the library and what role for the librarian as information specialist? While Birdsall (1994) is persuasive in his argument that the main allure of the library is as a place, the fact remains that remote use of library resources is becoming increasingly feasible and increasingly common. If people do not need to visit libraries, will they really be needed? Views on the future of the library range from one extreme to the other, along a kind of continuum: 1. Libraries will not be needed at all. 2. Libraries will become nothing more than switching centers. 3. Libraries will be switching centers but will build indexes and other tools to facilitate access to network resources. 4. Libraries will take on important new roles in building databases, creating new information composites, and possibly in some electronic publishing activities. 5. Libraries will remain important as places that people visit, at least in the foreseeable future. Many writers have warned that the library must change rather radically, and take on new responsibilities if it is to survive in a largely electronic publishing environment. Ungern-Sternberg and Lindquist (1995) put it this way: ...researchers potentially can access information resources from all over the world without even entering the library. This could be devastating for the library in its role as information provider unless it actively takes part in the changing reality. Scientific communication can take place in networks outside the library, and the increased offerings of databases can make the library a small and marginal part of the whole network. (Page 396) Lowry (1995) believes that libraries will survive if they concentrate on building a "virtual library infrastructure." To do this, they must (a) provide the technologies required to make information readily accessible to the community served, (b) create the body of electronic information that users need, and (c) solve the policy and legal (e.g., copyright) problems that now impede access to and distribution of information. Holt (1995) recognizes that support to remote users is becoming increasingly important, but he also believes that the public library is needed as a place, even in a largely electronic world -- for example, to provide Internet access for those "without home or office computers." His library has already established "equity sites" to give underprivileged groups remote access to library resources and services (Holt, 1993). Although Atkinson (1990), among others, has warned against it, some see the library of the future as nothing more than a kind of switching center in a network environment. Presumably, as a mere switching center, it would subsidize access to information for the community served (in itself, perhaps, a major justification for its existence) and would provide technological support (e.g., gateways) for this access; library staff members might also help users to identify the electronic resources they should access. Others (e.g., Kilgour, 1993) see the library as primarily a witching center but with an important value-added function of building indexes to network resources. The indexes would be designed to facilitate access to the resources most likely to be of interest and value locally. In this role, the library would perform functions similar to those performed in the days before open access collections and cooperative/centralized cataloging -- e.g., providing annotations in the catalog and tailoring subject cataloging to local needs. Holt (1995) believes that this type of value-added role is as important for the public library as it is for academic and special libraries: ...public library staff can save time for their constituents by organizing the mass of electronic information available on local, national and international servers ...[and] can develop electronic guides to help searchers through the metadata and megafiles with which they must deal online. (Page 555-556) He specifically mentions the importance of providing annotations for users, and sees the public library as an information clearinghouse staffed with "information agents." Atkinson (1990) strongly believes that librarians must go beyond this. They must facilitate access to information by building databases of importance locally through downloading from network resources, and they must be prepared to create new composite documents, as needed by users, through the drawing of text and graphics from different places in the network. He also believes that the academic library may have an important role to play in scholarly publishing if this is taken over by the academic establishment.[3]. To play a major part in electronic scholarly publishing, of course, the academic library must enter into partnerships with other entities on campus, most obviously the computer centers and university presses (Bryant, 1994). The building of electronic databases, particularly those that provide access to locally unique resources, is frequently mentioned as an activity that will become increasingly important in libraries of all types, including public libraries (Holt, 1993, 1995; Doman, 1994). While the majority of librarians seem confident that the library will survive as an institution, this view is not necessarily shared by others. For example, Arms (1994), an academic administrator, questions: . . . whether existing library organizations have the flexibility to fulfill this role [facilitating access to the universe of electronic information resources] and whether the electronic library will develop within or outside traditional libraries . . . By a strange paradox, good information has never been more important than it is today, yet the university library is declining in importance relative to other information sources. Personal computing, electronic networks, and desktop publishing allow an individual to create materials and distribute them in ways that bypass the traditional publisher and the library. (Page 168) Woodward (1995) points to the fact that the new campus of California State University at Monterey Bay will not have a library building. She quotes the University Chancellor as saying "You simply don't have to build a traditional library these days."[4] Atkinson (1993a) believes that academic libraries will find themselves competing with publishers and other information providers in a predominantly online environment. He urges that libraries need to learn as much as possible about scholarly publishing and that they must concentrate on "personalizing and humanizing relationships with their users." One can make a case for the fact that large academic libraries are in danger of breaking down because they tend to be organized according to a model that is no longer relevant to the modern world of scholarship. The most obvious example is the departmental library structure, which tends to conform to disciplinary boundaries; this structure is becoming less and less useful to research that is becoming more and more interdisciplinary. The increasing interdisciplinarity of research, along with increasing levels of collaboration (frequently involving different departments, institutions or even countries), can be better served by collections of resources that are temporary -- compiled to support a particular research project during its lifetime only. Clearly, the building of such temporary "libraries" is much easier in an electronic environment because resources can be drawn extensively from different parts of the network and organized (i.e., classified, indexed) in a way that is optimal to support a particular project.[5] The network-accessible electronic library, of course, also facilitates inter-institutional and international research (Qin, 1996). Future of the Librarian
Some writers believe that the future of the librarian, as information specialist, is more secure than that of the library, as institution, since communication networks make it increasingly possible for librarians to function outside the library.[6] For example, Eagle (1992) has said: The library of the future will likely be an on-line network of librarians -- generalists and specialists. Each...will be expert in . . . indexes and searching. Each will be connected and linked to massive computer databases. (Page 99) This view is echoed by Drabenstott (1994) and by Anders et al. (1992), among others. Drabenstott states: A few reference staff will be physically present in the library building to assist users in person in collection navigation. Most reference staff will be posted on the network where they will respond to user calls for assistance by monitoring a user's ongoing search. Such calls could come from users who are navigating digital libraries from workstations in their home, dormitory rooms, or offices . . .Staff could work out of their homes because they would use he capabilities of the information network to interact with users . . . Public library environments would feature itinerant reference staff whose duties resemble today's information brokers. (Pages 168-169) Anders et al. put it this way: When everyone is plugged in, the librarian becomes the 'gateway'. . . Presently, there are so many gateways that one needs a gateway to the gateways. This is the librarian's job -- to interpret the means of access. . . The gateway librarian, who advises on the best route to information and interprets the language of access, will have job security for years to come. (Page 40) The continued importance of the librarian as intermediary between users and information is widely accepted, whether that professional works within a library or outside it (Birchall et al., 1994). Kong (1995) claims that this role has become even more important as electronic resources proliferate: . . . reference librarians and the services they provide, are needed more now than at any other time in the past due to the increasingly [sic] popularity and complexity of such resources as the Internet in the automated reference environment. (Page 14) But some believe that the librarian must be an interpreter of information, not just an intermediary (Hunt, 1995; Scepanski, 1996). Hitchingham (1996) is one library director who believes in the importance of involvement in "filtering" and "sense-making" for users. Electronic technology has had another important effect -- it has reduced the need for many of the librarian's traditional services, since the initiation of interlibrary lending and the searching of electronic databases, both those accessible through networks and those in CD-ROM form, are activities that are now being taken over by library users themselves. Consequently, librarians are seeking new professional roles, and some see themselves as performing as knowledge engineers. Knowledge engineering may seem a rather pretentious term but it does give something of the flavor of what some see as the future of the profession: the librarian as builder of better tools -- better online catalogs, better interfaces to online resources, and better databases. In other words, these librarians see themselves as increasingly involved in the design and construction of information systems rather than as mere users of systems created by others. Perhaps the ultimate manifestation of this is the work going on in some libraries to develop expert systems. Views expressed in the literature concerning the knowledge engineering role of the librarian include the following: Librarians would engage . . . in developing the new systems and services of the virtual library, such as gateways, user interfaces, search and retrieval systems, tools for navigating the networks, and document delivery systems. (Von Wahlde and Schiller, 1993, page 23) and Librarians could develop expert systems to provide reference assistance to users when reference staff are not available or nearby, to capture knowledge of staff subject specialists when they are not available, to accommodate many users at the same time, to provide bibliographic instruction (Drabenstott, 1994, page 139). It is especially encouraging to see that such views on the changing nature of librarianship are not exclusively the domain of academia. Holt (1993), the director of a large public library system, puts it this way: ...many library professionals will become as adept in programming hyperlink or utilizing artificial intelligence to speed researchers through the information maze as they are now in shelving by LC or Dewey (Page 25) LaGuardia (1995) is forceful in claiming that information system design is the really important function that librarians must perform: Reference librarians are the natural designers of the new tools for information organization, access, retrieval, and distribution: these are the functions we do best. As the information age has advanced over the past 20 years, we have been busily staffing desks at the expense of devising new tools for organization and accessing information. (Page 9) A similar sentiment is expressed by Brin and Cochran (1994): Librarians should become responsible for the creation and operation of systems which facilitate access, communication, and education for information management. This will involve more reference-by-appointment and more direct work with faculty and graduate students while providing less block-scheduling of librarians at the reference desks. (Page 212) Others agree with Atkinson that the librarian of the future should be heavily involved in the repackaging of information and even in a form of electronic publishing -- drawing electronic resources from different parts of the network, downloading them to local storage and creating new electronic resources through the synthesis of existing ones. For example, DeBuse (1988) has said: Some librarians will become hypertext engineers. . . They will provide intellectual connections between the works of different authors or convert linear publications to hypermedia publications. (Page 17) Even if they do not explicitly advocate the "knowledge engineer" future, others strongly believe that the librarian must be more active in at least shaping the design of information systems (e.g., Smalley, 1994) and in evaluating new information technologies for users (Raitt, 1993). In other words, librarians can and should shape the future (Swan, 1993). Perhaps the most prevalent view, however, is that the librarian's major future role will be that of a teacher -- instructing people in how to exploit information resources effectively, and Lewis (1995) suggests that this function is too important to be a mere part-time activity: Instruction in the use of the electronic library must become a central part of the core curriculum of the university. This will require that the teaching not be done as an add on to the duties of reference librarians. It must be done as part of regular teaching loads, by regular faculty. It is advisable that many, if not most, of these faculty should be librarians. (Page 12) In a somewhat similar vein, Scepanski (1996) suggests that academic librarians and teaching faculty will become more alike in their activities. Most librarians seem confident that the profession can adapt itself to take on these various new activities, although some are less sure: Increasingly we will need to become aware of and use tools that come from outside of the library. This will test the adaptability of staff, will require a significant upgrading of the skills of most librarians and will mean that professionals who are not librarians will have to be offered positions along side, or in place of, librarians. (Lewis, 1995, page 12) At the very least, these new responsibilities mean that we need today, and will continue to need, a rather different approach to education for the profession. The focus of the curriculum can no longer remain the library as an institution, and the activities and services of that institution, because the information professionals of today and tomorrow need an understanding of the complete cycle by which information is transferred from producer to consumer and of their own potential roles in this cycle (Lancaster, 1994). Arms (1994) has issued the strongest warning: It is clear . . . that the training of librarians must change dramatically . . . The new libraries will have to draw talent and expertise from a great range of disciplines. Yet, today, almost every library needlessly restricts its choices by requiring an MLS degree from candidates for professional positions. (Page 168) The implications of such a statement, coming from an academic administrator, are clear: the profession must change or it will be replaced by others. Some librarians have issued their own warnings along the same lines. Sweeney (1994) puts it as follows: Professional librarians are defined by their knowledge, skills, ethics, and performance, not by what tasks they do or do not do. If a person says that they will not do something required to operate a post-hierarchical library, they are probably not a team player. Professionals are also not defined by the M.L.S. degree but by performance. The M.L.S. degree does attract people who are already interested in a library career but in no way provides an indication of that person's suitability for a truly professional position in a post-hierarchical library. Professionals are performers, highly skilled with a wide body of knowledge serving other people. The M.L.S. degree is the beginning of the process. There are fewer and fewer positions in the post-hierarchical library for people who have limited knowledge and skills. People with limited knowledge and skills cannot contribute as much nor are they flexible enough to accomplish a higher percentage of the tasks required. Low level knowledge workers moving around paper or books will disappear in the future library. (Page 89) He emphasizes that the library leader must be a "strategist with a vision, a plan, and the will to achieve it" and that all professional staff members must be generalists as well as specialists: Because of the need for more knowledge, skills, and education, it might seem apparent that libraries need more specialists in narrower and narrower subject areas. There is, however, a contrasting need for libraries to be highly responsive and flexible. This means that all employees must simultaneously possess excellent specialized knowledge, skills, and education and "own" an entire process, delivering services and adapting quickly to meet customer needs. Every specialist in the post-hierarchical library must be a flexible generalist. Specialization must be augmented with even better team-playing skills. The specialist is not only a person with special skills but a person who can and must contribute with other more common skills outside of the specialty. The specialist must be able to see the entire process, the organization, and have some basic practical understanding of all the different tasks to compliment [sic] their special skills. Each new librarian is both a specialist and a generalist possessing much more knowledge and expertise than was required in the traditional library. The addition of smarter technology has actually raised the need for a higher core level of common knowledge. (Page 72) Sweeney seems to assume that the librarians of the future will continue to work in institutions that are in some sense "libraries" although, as we have seen, others predict a de-institutionalization of the professional expertise. What this suggests at this point is that the future of the librarian, as information specialist, appears to be a lot more secure than the future of the library as place, and some scholars expect the intermediary role to move from the library to elsewhere in the information distribution chain. For example, Odlyzko (1995) claims: If the review journals evolve the way I project, . . . they will provide directly to scholars all the services that libraries used to. With immediate electronic access to all the information in a field, with navigating tools, reviews, and other aids, a few dozen librarians and scholars at review journals might be able to substitute for a thousand reference librarians. (Page 120) Such naive statements are disturbing for they show that some scholars both completely underestimate the problems involved in providing effective intellectual access to information and show little appreciation of the important role that research libraries continue to play in improving such access. Technology has certainly had a major impact on the library and the work of the librarian, but it does not diminish the need for human expertise. The real professional expertise of librarians lies in the role they can play as information consultants or information counsellors, and there will exist a need for such individuals for a very long time to come. Footnotes
[1] This paper is based partly on chapters in a forthcoming book: TECHNOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT IN LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE, by F. W. Lancaster and B. Sandore (University of Illinois, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, 1997, in press). [2] This raises the important question of "... to what extent libraries can afford to commit resources to both print access services and to electronic resources and for how long a time." (Fiscella and Proctor, 1995, p. 457). [3] Elsewhere, however, he (Atkinson, 1993b) questions whether scholarly publishing in the conventional sense really has a future: Will formal publication survive the online age? It need not necessarily. All scholarly communication could conceivably take place through the kind of information interchanges we now see on the network discussion lists. (Page 206) Such an informal approach to the distribution of scholarly information electronically is discussed in detail in Okerson and O'Donnell (1995). [4] A recent book by Bazillion and Braun (1995) claims to deal with the design of buildings that will allow libraries to serve as "high-tech gateways." However, their approach is conservative rather than adventurous. [5] One can also argue that a library of physical artifacts, organized according to schemes that assume that a book will always be classified in one place, is of little use to modern research which really demands libraries that can be re-organized to reflect changing perspectives, interests and needs. [6] Bauwens (1993) has introduced the term "cybrarian" to refer to a librarian working in an electronic environment. [7] On the other hand, Scepanski (1996) quotes another academic administrator as believing that librarians can be "transformational leaders" in the transition to an increasingly electronic environment. References Anders, V. et al. A glimpse into a crystal ball: academic libraries in the year 2000. WILSON LIBRARY BULLETIN, 67(2), 1992, 36-40. Arms, W. Y. The institutional implications of electronic information. LEONARDO, 27, 1994, 165-169. Atkinson, R. The coming contest. COLLEGE & RESEARCH LIBRARIES, 54, 1993a, 458-460. Atkinson, R. Networks, hypertext, and academic information services: some longer-range implications. COLLEGE & RESEARCH LIBRARIES, 54, 1993b, 199-215. Atkinson, R. Text mutability and collection administration. LIBRARY ACQUISITIONS: PRACTICE & THEORY, 14, 1990, 355-358. Bauwens, M. The emergence of the cybrarian: a new organisational model for corporate libraries. BUSINESS INFORMATION REVIEW, 9(4), 1993, 65-67. Bazillion, R. J. and Braun, C. ACADEMIC LIBRARIES AS HIGH-TECH GATEWAYS. Chicago, American Library Association, 1995. Birchall, A. et al. Knowledge automation and the need for intermediaries. JOURNAL OF LIBRARIANSHIP AND INFORMATION SCIENCE, 26, 1994, 181-192. Birdsall, W. F. THE MYTH OF THE ELECTRONIC LIBRARY: LIBRARIANSHIP AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN AMERICA. Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, 1994. Brin, B. and Cochran, E. Access and ownership in the academic environment: one library's progress report. JOURNAL OF ACADEMIC LIBRARIANSHIP, 20, 1994, 207-212. Crawford, W. and Gorman, M. FUTURE LIBRARIES: DREAMS, MADNESS & REALITY. Chicago, IL, American Library Association, 1995. DeBuse, R. So that's a book ... advancing technology and the library. INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND LIBRARIES, 7, 1988, 7-18. Doman, D. MAGGIE'S PLACE: connecting with the community at the Pikes Peak Library District. In: EMERGING COMMUNITIES: INTEGRATING NETWORKED INFORMATION INTO LIBRARY SERVICES; ed. by A. P. Bishop, pp. 32-38. Champaign-Urbana, University of Illinois, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, 1994. Drabenstott, K. M. ANALYTICAL REVIEW OF THE LIBRARY OF THE FUTURE. Washington, DC, Council on Library Resources, 1994. Eagle, M. The librarian of the future: image storage and transmission. In: (proceedings of the Seventh Meeting on) INTEGRATED ONLINE LIBRARY SYSTEMS, pp. 99-103. Medford, NJ, Learned Information, 1992. Fiscella, J. B. and Proctor, E. An approach to assessing faculty use of locally loaded databases. COLLEGE & RESEARCH LIBRARIES, 56, 1995, 446-458. Hitchingham, E. Collection management in light of electronic publishing. INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND LIBRARIES, 15, 1996, 38-41. Holt, G. E. Computers and public libraries: the future is now. OCLC NEWSLETTER, No. 206, November/December, 1993, 24-25. Holt, G. E. On becoming essential: an agenda for quality in twenty-first century public libraries. LIBRARY TRENDS, 44, 1995, 545-571. Hunt, P. J. Interpreters as well as gatherers: the librarian of tomorrow...today. SPECIAL LIBRARIES, 86, 1995, 195-204. Kilgour, F. G. The metamorphosis of libraries during the foreseeable future. In: LIBRARIES AND THE FUTURE: ESSAYS ON THE LIBRARY IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY; ed. by F. W. Lancaster, pp. 131-146. New York, Haworth Press, 1993. Kong, L. M. Reference service evolved. JOURNAL OF ACADEMIC LIBRARIANSHIP, 21, 1995, 13-14. LaGuardia, C. DESK SET revisited: reference librarians, reality, & research systems' design. JOURNAL OF ACADEMIC LIBRARIANSHIP, 21, 1995, 7-9. Lancaster, F. W. The curriculum of information science in developed and developing countries. LIBRI, 44, 1994, 201-205. Lewis, D. W. Traditional reference is dead, now let's move on to important questions. JOURNAL OF ACADEMIC LIBRARIANSHIP, 21, 1995, 10-12. Lowry, C. B. Putting the pieces together -- essential technologies for the virtual library. JOURNAL OF ACADEMIC LIBRARIANSHIP, 21, 1995, 297-300. Odlyzko, A. M. Tragic loss or good riddance? The impending demise of traditional scholarly journals. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN-COMPUTER STUDIES, 42, 1995, 71-122. Okerson, A. S. and O'Donnell, J. J., eds. SCHOLARLY JOURNALS AT THE CROSSROADS: A SUBVERSIVE PROPOSAL FOR ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING. Washington, DC, Association of Research Libraries, 1995. Qin, J. LEVELS AND TYPES OF COLLABORATION IN INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH IN THE SCIENCES. Doctoral dissertation. Urbana-Champaign, University of Illinois, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, 1996. Raitt, D. The library of the future. In: LIBRARIES AND THE FUTURE: ESSAYS ON THE LIBRARY IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY; ed. by F. W. Lancaster, pp. 61-72. New York, Haworth Press, 1993. Scepanski, J. M. Public services in a telecommuting world. INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND LIBRARIES, 15, 1996, 41-44. Smalley, T. N. Computer systems in libraries: have we considered the tradeoffs? JOURNAL OF ACADEMIC LIBRARIANSHIP, 19, 1994, 356-361. Swan, J. The electronic straitjacket. LIBRARY JOURNAL, 118(17), 1993, 41-44. Sweeney, R. T. Leadership in the post-hierarchical library. LIBRARY TRENDS, 43, 1994, 62-94. Ungern-Sternberg, S. von and Lindquist, M. The impact of electronic journals on library functions. JOURNAL OF INFORMATION SCIENCE, 21, 1995, 396-401. Von Wahlde, B. and Schiller, N. Creating the virtual library: strategic issues. In: THE VIRTUAL LIBRARY: VISIONS AND REALITIES; ed. by L.M. Saunders, pp. 15-46. Westport, CT, Meckler, 1993. Woodward, J. A. Auto aces or accident victims: librarians on the info superhighway. AMERICAN LIBRARIES, 26, 1995, 1016-1018.
Abstract
Based on the assumption that the distribution of information, especially scholarly information, will increasingly occur in digital form using the resources of the Internet and its successors, this paper looks at the possible implications for the library and for the librarian.
Frederick W. Lancaster Graduate School of Library and Information Science University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Urbana, Illinois, U.S.A. F. Wilfrid Lancaster is Professor Emeritus in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois where he has taught courses relating to information transfer, bibliometrics, bibliographic organization and the evaluation of library and information services. He continues to serve as editor of Library Trends. He was appointed University Scholar for the period 1989-1992. He is the author of ten books, six of which have received national awards, and has three times received Fulbright felowships for research and teaching abroad. From the American Society for Information Science he has received both the Award of Merit and the Outstanding Information Science Teacher award. Professor Lancaster has been involved in a wide range of consulting activities, including service for Unesco and other agencies of the United Nations. He has recently completed projects relating to the effectiveness of subject access in on-line catalogs and in CD-ROM databases and is now working on the evaluation of an expert system in subject indexing, as well as on a new book - "Technology and Management in Libraries".
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