Intermediate Consumers

Google, Yahoo!, Amazon.... For many users, these services are the first and last resort for research. Because of their gravitational pull, we are rightly preoccupied with their impact on library services.

Information not in Google or Yahoo! is off-web, hidden behind yet another interface. Information on-web turns up in a search engine results list. Search engines are central to people's flow, whether it is workflow, learnflow, researchflow, or musicflow. Library collections and services should be available within those flows.

However, searching on the open web is only one, albeit important, workflow. Learners may also spend much time in a learning management system. Or web users may rely heavily on an RSS aggregator. We will probably see personal information environments get richer—witness the development of the Microsoft Research Pane, which allows users to use reference sources or con-duct a web search without leaving a document.

These workflows raise a major issue as we move forward with library systems. Increasingly, users will be supported in their various workflows by systems environments. These systems will become the consumers of library services. Students might like to search for relevant materials from within the learning management system. Researchers might like to insert searches or document links within the lab book.

End users will still make use of library services in person; however, the model in which library services are consumed by a system that supports a user workflow will become increasingly important. Intermediate consumers of library services will include the learning management system, the enterprise portal, the RSS aggregator, and the search engine

So librarians must ask: How do I expose services to a search engine, a learning management system, or an RSS aggregator? We must think seriously about the types of services we make available and how we make them available.

Take the example of search engines, which are making us think much more seriously about the difference among discovery (finding what objects of interest exist), location (identifying what services exist in relation to those objects), and fulfillment (consuming one of those services). For example, we might discover that something exists in Google but then be passed to a variety of location and fulfillment services (buy from Amazon, buy from used bookseller, locate in a nearby library through Open Worldcat, be directed to a local catalog by a resolver routing service).

Academic libraries are challenged to integrate the Google Scholar article discovery experience with the library location and fulfillment experience. How will users who discover an article in Google Scholar be connected to a service that allows them access to an authorized library copy?

This way of thinking moves us toward a more service-oriented perspective, a modular approach that encourages flexibility. However, we must first consider other issues. For example, what services should we expose? How should a library be visible in a learning management system, in Yahoo! or Google, in an RSS aggregator, or in a university portal? Perhaps we offer a search of individual databases, or a single search across multiple sources. How do we communicate what is being offered? We may want to offer an interlibrary loan (ILL) service or virtual reference. What do these services look like outside of the context of the library web site? How do we communicate the library brand, or do we try at all?

We are moving beyond our shared sense of library services, encapsulated in the integrated library system and the organizational patterns of the last 15 years or so. This is the environment of technical services, public services, and more. We now recognize that we need better ways of framing and naming our new environment so that we can clearly talk to these intermediate consumer communities about library services and the value they create.