Library debate continues across the UK
Jisc’s Libraries of the Future debate at Oxford’s Bodleian Library last week has sparked conversations across the country. Offering up the notion of the librarian of the future as the ‘data warrior’, this debate raised important questions, including:
- Will libraries retain any physical form in the future?
- With improved data-enabled phones, will libraries be wherever that phone is, streaming data on request?
- To what extent will partnerships and the shared care of books, information and digital preservation develop?
The answers to these and many other points are captured in the comprehensive blog coverage, with the key messages of several presenters provided below.
Dr Sarah Thomas, the Bodleian's librarian and director of Oxford University Library Services, questioned a time-scale which claimed that libraries would be extinct by 2018. She stated instead that a ‘reinterpretation of the ways in which libraries meet users’ needs will inform the library of the future, which will be vibrant and interactive. It will include buildings, books and people, but will be transformed by the way people use technology.’ Thomas believes that libraries need to draw on their radical pasts, in order to develop relevant, integrated futures.
Speaker Professor Robert Darnton, director of Harvard University Library, championed the value and skills of the librarian as information manager or intermediary. Concerning people’s use of the Internet, he noted a lack of evaluative skills, stating: ‘Younger generations believe that all information is online, and that all information is equal. They think the first [Google] entry is the truest and best. They need librarians to help as knowledge managers.’
'What is happening in the world is bypassing university libraries’ - Professor Peter Murray-Rust.
Professor Peter Murray-Rust spoke about research libraries from a practising scientist’s point of view. He claimed that ‘what is happening in the world is bypassing university libraries’, adding that, for many, universities’ science, technical and medical libraries were largely ‘irrelevant’, with the relevant information now online.
Trying to incite the passion of next-generation librarians, Murray-Rust continued: ‘I have called for librarians and particularly young people to be revolutionary. To try to change the world. If they are not aggressively trying to change the world, they won’t end up in the library of the future.’ His closing remarks were that people should ‘just get out there and do it’.
To find out more about what libraries need to consider to remain relevant to society’s new search and consumption paradigms, visit the Libraries of the Future campaign pages. Featuring blogs and comments posted in the social networking world to live-streamed coverage and podcast interviews with high profile presenters, catch up online, today.