The Internet Is A-Changing and We Need To Adapt | From the Bell Tower
Steven Bell, Associate University Librarian, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA
Jul 8, 2010What if we stopped forcing users come to the library's site? There may be a better approach to serving the academic community online.
Since the advent of web browsers, the dominant design of the academic library website is one clearly influenced by an overwhelming desire to connect users to electronic resources such as library catalogs and aggregator databases. Those links are supplemented by a variety of other types of information that we think is important, such as our mission statement, but is perhaps of less interest to those user community members.
If there is any one overarching design principle it is to cram as much as possible on that library homepage, lest any content be forgotten. Academic librarians have paid little attention to this basic design concept: make things simple and accessible by taking away everything that is unnecessary.
Last year I wrote an essay over at Inside Higher Ed advocating that academic librarians rethink the purpose and value of their websites, and whether those traditional designs still made sense. The gist of the essay was that our sites need to focus on who we are and what we do, and obsess less about the content we own.
The desired goal is creating connections with those in our community and building relationships with them, not simply serving as a gateway to content. Connecting the user with content remains an essential function, but there are just better ways to do that now. New technologies allow us to broadly distribute and integrate links to the content into the users' learning and research spaces; we no longer need to force them to come to our site if all they want to do is connect to electronic resources.
Not sure what to call it
The ways we leverage web technology to deliver library services must change as the nature of the web itself changes. According to an expert on such things, John Doerr, the Internet is changing and our academic library web presence will need to adapt. No, it's not the semantic web for which we need to prepare, but a social/mobile/commercial web.
Picture what we have now, but on steroids. Doerr, a well-known venture capitalist behind innovators such as Google, Amazon, and Zynga, talked at the 2010 TechCrunch Disrupt conference. Technology Review's Erica Naone's coverage described his thoughts:
The new wave of "the Internet is a combination of social, mobile, and some new kinds of commerce". Though Doerr says he's still searching for a name for the change he sees, he ranks it on a level with the introduction of the personal computer and the rise of the Internet.
The key, he says, is that smart phones change everything. These devices know who you are and where you are, and they're always connected. To Doerr, this is the key to shifting the Web from being about documents and websites to being about people, places, and relationships.
That last sentence is along the lines of what I was attempting to point out with the essay in Inside Higher Ed. The technology is changing, user expectations are changing, and it's going to be about much more than just content.
You might be thinking that Doerr's vision sounds like Web 2.0-ish, but focused on delivering that experience to a smartphone. I think it can be more than that. In fact, it suggests that the entire library website should be disaggregated so that component pieces are distributed, and that each academic librarian establishes a much greater individual presence so that he or she is integrated into the social/mobile Internet.
Though he has no good name for it, what Doerr describes is also creating change in the world of learning. This Graham Attwell essay on the future of learning fits in well with Doerr's vision. Just as the Internet is becoming more individualistic, tailored by and to each individual with his or her multiple devices, apps, and social connections, Attwell writes, student learning will increasingly move away from "traditional industrial systems" to what he calls the "personal learning environment" (PLE).
Personal librarian websites
In the future, if we care less about documents and more about relationships, it suggests that each librarian needs his or her own web presence to connect with the community, not so much in social spaces but learning and research spaces. It's true that many academic librarians already have their own personal sites, but those often are limited to professional content that is career oriented, such as a provision of a CV or a list of presentations and articles.
The librarian website I'm envisioning is an outreach tool, much more a resource for personalized learning and research services. It will enable students and faculty to get content, but also deliver tools and techniques that blend into their personal web spaces. Oh, and of course, it has to adapt to mobile devices.
What if we simply abandoned the entire idea that an academic library website needs a monolithic, be everything to everyone design? What if we instead re-imagined it as a loosely coupled collection of individualized websites—or call them "web presences"—designed and driven by academic librarians as a reflection of their personal outreach?
In a way, this sounds a bit like LibGuides, a system that allows librarians to build highly customizable web portals that they individually maintain. These more individualistic creations have more capacity to integrate with the social/mobile/commercial web. While that might sound like I'm advocating for dozens of different silos, the technology should allow for these individual websites to connect and share with each other and other learning support professionals at our institutions.
Maybe not tomorrow
If you think this all sounds a bit farfetched or half-baked, you may be right. While it's important to tackle concrete issues like student debt or textbook costs, we need to stretch our imagination every so often, and what better vehicle for that than the Internet and our very own websites?
All the indicators point to a future Internet that may bear little resemblance to the one with which we are now so comfortable. Academic librarians have continuously succeeded in leveraging web technology to benefit the user community. Doerr's vision should challenge us to imagine new and better ways of designing sites that accomplish what we all want—being essential resources for user community members who know us, know our content and know how to use it.
Steven Bell is Associate University Librarian, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA. For more from Steven visit his blogs, Kept-Up Academic Librarian, ACRLog and Designing Better Libraries or visit his website.
