Our Times, They Are A-Changin', but Are We?

Bob Dylan celebrated his 60th birthday last May. That means that those of us who grew up on his early music are in our 50s now. We librarians often like to think of ourselves as rebels, cutting edge, but are we, really? We spend too much time Walter Mittyizing our pasts when we ought to be Mittyizing our future. For librarians, Dylan's song, "The Times They Are A-Changin'" may be more apocalyptic today than in its heyday.

How so? Consider the following morality tale, drawn from Dylan's words but sung to the tune of our own lament. Let me hasten to apologize to the Tambourine Man for mangling his lines. Before everyone begins grousing, I doubt there are very many librarians who do not know the times have changed. What troubles me is very few of us are acting as if that has changed libraries at all.

On the contrary, most of us act as if everything is the same as it has always been. Five trends convince me that librarians are acting as if nothing has changed, and five trends appear to me to be fundamentally transforming, as in caterpillar-to-butterfly. Dylan's song strikes me as more useful to us today than in those embarrassing days when we wore bell-bottoms and beads. First, the trends that appear to me to say, The Times Are A-Changin', but Have Librarians Noticed?

1. Admit That the Web Waters Around Us Have Grown.
   We're all pretty much in denial, though we all talk the lingo. But let's face it: we continue to do everything pretty much the same way it was done by those who preceded us. Library work today is not materially different from library work in the 1920s. Oh sure, we use computers now, we talk about the net and the web, and we search online (so do all our patrons). But there has been no fundamental change either in what we do or why we do it. In some ways we're like Madison, WI, still living in the rebellious Sixties. We've reached stasis and are doing nothing to fashion our futures. Meanwhile, company after company emerges not only doing what we do but often doing it better.
2. Our Old, Comfortable Road Is Rapidly Agin'.
   The trouble is, we're stuck in a pre-postmodernist age while our world has become post-postmodernist. In other words, we're about two generations behind. If you don't believe me, ask any librarian you know to downsize their staff, then step back and watch the fireworks. Of course not every library is staff-heavy. But most of us still think bigger staff means better service. One of the many myths of library automation is that it requires more people, not fewer. Much of what we offer through our catalogs alone proves overkill for our clients. The reason this is important should be obvious. Since we can't find places to economize, others have. And if we continue to refuse to refashion ourselves in the image of the times, others will continue to do it for us. In fact, they already are.
3. Our Image Stands in the Doorway, Blocking the Hall.
   Our image is like the weather: everyone in the profession complains about it, but few do anything to change it. I've been in this profession for nearly 20 years now (I took off for a few years to complete additional academic training) and our image is the same. We're all still offended when we're stereotyped as bun-headed, dour octogenarians. But what, really, have we done to change that? What proactive, professional remaking have we pressed? And, no, I'm not impressed by the "@your library" campaign recently launched by our professional organization. It's too much hype and too little substance.
   By and large we're still waiting for someone else to change it. We have done little to improve our public image by remaining our bitchy selves. We complain about the bad stereotypes and then, lamentably, applaud equally bad ones that simply change the context (e.g., that buxom lass in Playboy). Surely there is some middle ground between octogenarians and porn stars? Perhaps there is a professional image lurking out there that will cause our constituents to delight in us. If not, then to borrow from Voltaire, we need to invent one.
4. For the Library That's Hurt Will Be the Library That's Stalled.
   Our buildings have changed very little in the last 100 years. For the most part, they are the same buildings with the same features, inter alia, computers added. As anyone who knows me will tell you, I am conservative by nature and do not want change when it isn't necessary. But with so much competition everywhere, we must begin rethinking everything if we're to be around later to think at all. We must revolutionize ourselves first and then our buildings.
5. Is Your Job to You Worth Savin'? As a profession, were main reactive more often than proactive. Throughout these tumultuous times, librarians have done little to recast the profession in a new way. Too often, we find ourselves assuming a role that we must "make work" rather than one we have made ourselves. What we must do is remake this profession as we know (or rather ought to know) it should be. If we continue to wait, we will be refashioned all right, but refashioned so that many of us may not make cut, if you read my drift.

Those are the trends that we contribute to our own unemployment. Here are five others that are not of our making but have an equally powerful force that militates against our future.

1. Your Patrons and Your Constituents Are Beyond Your Command.
   From the youngest to the oldest, the Internet is king to all we serve. We librarians all know what a joke this is, but we have done little to dispel it. Talk to any administrator, your board, a trustee, or your state or Congressional representative and you'll hear the same thing: "Everything is on the Internet." If you reply, "Not really," they usually rebut, "Perhaps not yet, but soon." People look to the Internet first for all their information needs. We know it's iffy, we know what dangers lurk there, and we know what challenges it offers. But we remain mute to this blaring and nonsensical charge. Let's face it, when we have a particularly difficult reference question, we do the same thing: rush to the Internet. It is not that this is wrong so much as it is self-defeating when we do so little to counteract the myth that everything is, or will be, on the Internet. We contribute to the notion of the Internet as a panacea by not educating our clientele better about its severe failings.
2. We'd Better Start Swimmin' Before We Sink Like So Many Stones.
   Call me an alarmist, but the words "libraries" and "obsolete" are being used far too often in the same sentence these days for my taste. If you spend any time out and about, you'll hear it repeated more often than not, like some devilish mantra: "Libraries are becoming obsolete." Then there are those who are too bold by half as they declare, gleefully, "Libraries are obsolete." Add to this the Stephen R. Portch (chancellor, University System of Georgia) show. He's making the rounds proclaiming that university presidents should not "build any more single-purpose buildings like a library."
   I was shocked by a recent exchange with a library colleague from another university. I mentioned that I had dealt with state officials who felt "No New Libraries" would be a good slogan for the 21st century because everything will soon be digitized. My fellow librarian not only dismissed the challenges digitization poses, but he agreed with the slogan! It's one thing when those who do not know better make know-nothing comments. You know a trend is catching on when you hear it repeated by those whom it will hurt the most.
3. Please Get Out of the New Road If You Can't Lend Your Hand.
   Many librarians breathed a sigh of relief when Questia laid off half its sales force in spring 2001, or when netLibrary talked about the difficulty of selling to libraries in a recent Chronicle of Higher Education piece. But these librarians missed the point. The point isn't that Questia may have bitten off more than it can chew, or that netLibrary can't make as many library sales as it would like. The point is that both exist at all. And Questia isn't alone. XanEdu, ebrary, and Jones e-global library are all out there, and they are trying, even if not manifestly, to take over "our" market. What librarians should be sweating is not whether Questia will make it or not. What we should be sweating is how many "Questias" will be on the horizon in five years. (If you're still doubtful, take a gander at Octavo. Things have come a long way, baby, where high-resolution digital cameras capture resolutions up to 10,600 x 12,800 pixels!)
   Granted, there's a lot that must be done to make companies like Questia succeed, and the venture capital isn't with the dot-coms any more. But hold that obituary for now. Not all these companies will go by the wayside, and there's still enough business interest to make some survive.
4. It'll Soon Shake Your Windows 2000 and Rattle Your Firewalls.
   Even if the consumer e-book market may already be going out of print, estimates for academic titles alone place it in the billions of dollars, or a 14% share, by next year. Because there are publishers out there pushing the envelope, librarians need to be "out there" pushing theirs. E-textbooks and more are coming, largely without librarians at the decision-making table.
5. Don't Criticize What You Can't Understand.
   Our clientele no longer hopes for web access—they demand it. Just ten years ago, students merely dreamed of libraries with web access. Today, that's the least of their expectations. Further, the post–Generation X-ers have grown up with the web. While you may be fiddling with that cumbersome e-book viewer, tomorrow's first-year college student has one in her bag. We've all seen those "Today's Entering Freshmen Were Born in 1982" e-mails about how new and fresh and utterly devoid of historical reference 18- to 20-year-olds are these days. What we may be missing, however, is that while we're all pretty print-confident, much of our clientele has grown print-allergic. I greatly lament this change, but even more I lament librarians' inaction.

So, what can we do? I do not presume to have all the answers. However, I do have a prescription that, with your help, might lead the way to a new library services future. I am not some ladator temporis acti [praiser of past times]. If our clientele feel they can live without us, it will be our own fault. But I refuse to go without making sure they know what they'll be missing. Herewith, three ways to map the stars in our cyberspace future.

1. We must reassess library services.
   This means from top to bottom. We must look at everything we do and, more importantly, why we do it. We must be willing to discard those things that our patrons do not care for. We must learn why, for example, patrons prefer to Ask Jeeves than Ask a Librarian. We must study why students prefer online access over print anything, even when the online access is inferior and the print solution remains at their elbows, unused.
   We do a lot of things in our libraries that, if we're honest, we do for ourselves because we've always done them and not for our patrons, who pay little or no attention to them. We must replace these "activities" with real service.
2. We must proactively seek value-added services.
   There's a rush to 24/7 reference services. This may or may not be the wave of the future, but it should be instructive that students really already have this on the web. Before we all rush out and spend thousands of dollars duplicating this service, why not concentrate on what students can only get from us, from our collections, and how that can be made available when students want it. A 24/7 reference service that combines all our talents nationwide might be something worth talking about. The Library of Congress Collaborative Digital Reference Service is close but just misses the mark. It strikes me as an Internet II: to be used by the rich, the famous, and the special. Having a person at the other end of a computer line who can "take over" your computer and manipulate it for you will only increase costs and drain resources elsewhere.
   What should instruct as much as it astonishes is how awful the web is at returning information and yet how gaga it leaves its users. Value-added services, i.e., services that are not easily replicated anywhere else, will be ones that help to preserve our futures.
3. Our future is being planned already. How much have you contributed to it?
   While ours is a noble profession, it is far too often one that is slow to act. Right now your future is being planned in the office of Dot.Com United, in digitizationuberalles, in Distance Education offices, and in IT offices all over the country. In other words, almost everywhere librarians aren't. Too many nonlibrarians are planning the library's future.
   It is too early to say what is in store for us. But it isn't too early to ask, "What the heck are we waiting for?" We should be at the vanguard, making the case on how to vivify services, revolutionize ourselves and our buildings, and remake our profession. Then we should be marketing that case to our constituents. Librarians have always been poor marketers. We have always felt our excellence should speak for itself. We are learning too often and too well how wrong we were. Now is the time to fashion 21st-century library services and then media-blitz our way to that future.
   There are those who will dismiss this as so much hot air, predicated on scare tactics. Others will see it as a warning that the times really are a-changin' and that we must lend a hand. Our futures—all of them—will be far more secure if we begin today to do whatever is necessary to affect the future of the library services our patrons deserve. If we do not, the fault of that failure, dear friends, will not be in our cyberstars but in ourselves.