Rethinking Research Libraries in the 21st Century

article here

Council on Library and Information Resources May/June 2008

Excerpts

HOW SHOULD WE be rethinking the research library in a swiftly changing information landscape?

In February, CLIR convened 25 leading librarians, publishers, faculty members, and information technology specialists to consider this question. Participants discussed the challenges and opportunities that libraries are likely to face in the next five to ten years, and how changes in scholarly communication will affect the future library. Essays by eight of the participants—Paul Courant, Andrew Dillon, Rick Luce, Stephen Nichols, Daphnee Rentfrow, Abby Smith, Kate Wittenberg, and Lee Zia—were circulated to participants in advance and provided background for the conversation.¹ CLIR will issue a full report of the meeting, including the background essays, later this summer.

A Vision for the 21st-Century Library

The breadth of the discussion underscored a critical point: the future of the research library cannot be considered apart from the future of the academy as a whole. Researchers are asking new questions and are developing new methodological approaches and intellectual strategies. These methods may entail new models of scholarly communication—for example, a greater reliance on data sets and multimedia presentations. This has profound consequences for academic publications because traditional printed books and journals cannot adequately capture these novel approaches. With the predicted rise in new forms of scholarship, the promotion-and-tenure process, which favors print publications (especially in the humanities), will need to be rethought. As these methods of communication change, the procedures, skills, and expertise that libraries need to manage them will change as well. With growing cross-disciplinary emphasis, it will also be necessary to reassess the organization of higher education—its departments, schools, and centers.

The research library in the 21st century will thus be profoundly influenced by the transformation of scholarship and research and by changes in the traditional organizational structures of a university.

Virtual library shelves

Begin forwarded message:

From: Tim Reynolds <graypennell@GMAIL.COM>
Date: June 24, 2008 9:20:54 AM EDT
To: “DIG_REF@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU” <DIG_REF@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU>
Subject: Re: [DIG_REF] Zoomi and your library OPAC
Reply-To: Discussion of digital reference services
<DIG_REF@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU>

Hi
I got this from another listserv but thought I would share it with
you all.
Pardon the cross posting.

http://zoomii.com/

Now imagine linking this system with your webcat instead of with Amazon.
People will now be able to virtual browse your shelves.

Thinkering spaces

Thinkering Spaces in Libraries

(also search..thinkering..at least 2 more posts)

By jenny

Today I saw one possible future for libraries, and it has me pretty excited. I can look back on my professional career and see a progression of advocating for shifting services to where our users are, making our spaces more collaborative, and reinvigorating libraries as the community center (regardless of type of library). It’s why [...]

Today, many of those pieces came together for me in a pretty amazing package that has the power to reimagine the library as third place, cross some digital divides, and integrate participatory culture into our service model. Even better, it involves people and books, not just technology. So what did I see today? A project called Thinkering Spaces, conceived of by some very smart people at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Institute of Design and funded by the MacArthur Foundation. After quite a bit of initial visioning and research, this group has built a prototype for a relatively cheap, portable, collaborative space that can be put up and taken down in libraries of any size on the fly.

The point is to bring spaces into libraries that let people collaborate around the content that already exists in in our buildings, add new content to the mix, mash it all up to create something new, and share it with the community. Rinse. Repeat. It’s a way to connect people with the physical world and help them make sense of it by interacting with and changing it. It’s another instance where the library adds value to the equation (the same way it does with books and now games), offering an experience you can’t replicate at home, borne of the community.

Not just playing games: At U-M, virtual-reality researchers are finding real-world uses

article

atricia Anderson was never big on computer games.

But walking a group through a demonstration on the virtual 3-D world called Second Life last week, Anderson told a small crowd she’s found a world of possibilities that virtual reality could have on health care.

“I see so much potential in Second Life,” the University of Michigan Emerging Technologies Librarian told the group. in the future. Almost exactly five years after the creation of Second Life, the development of Wolverine Island — U-M’s presence on the site – is nearly complete.

Applications: virtual medical situations/disaster preparedness