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| | The Temple and the PlayhousePublished on 20120201 In the heated (well, hopefully heated) discussions about the library some people like to toss up a conflict which I think is based on an imagined dichotomy. The library, some say, should not be an entertainment area. Beware of the book temple image is the response from others. These two standpoints are often seen as opposing each other. Those concerned by the “entertainment” branding, marked as highbrow elitists from the other party, are worried that the libraries are sinking in to the marshes as Disneyworld franchises with video games and Starbucks serving coffee and muffins being the main attractions. The other side, described as whimsical opportunists by the opponents, is afraid that the libraries, or at least that the perceived image of libraries, are turning in to dusty book containers. From my point of view I can´t see why modernisation of services like ...
...conflict with core library values like literacy, digital literacy, equal right to information and so on. It shouldn´t. Imagine having small theatre groups, poets, authors, storytellers performing every morning, every afternoon, and every evening at the library. Coffee daytime, wine at the evening. Or the other way around :-). Such a programme of activity would surely not, because of the content, shake the image of the literature temple but will transcend the library in to a literary entertainment theatre. There are endless possibilities of combining these programmes with workshops, book circles, virtual presentations, forums and so on. Of course a small library in a small town wouldn’t have the public to fill such an ambitious schema but the point I think is clear. The library could easily be the cultural playhouse of the town and still stick to the uttermost core values of the library pioneers of the old days.
Were you looking for me, or did we just happen to be in the same space?Published on 2011-12-02 Serendipity is sometimes a strange experience in a library: you walk around the shelves and suddenly find something that you weren't looking for but seems just right for you. There are a number of triggers of the happy accident of serendipity: the cover, the title, the blurb - and these apply to all library media. The triggers work differently with each of us too. The term was coined by Horace Walpole in a fairy tale called 'The Three Princes of Serendip' (1754)1. The Three Princes have been playing a part in the bringing together of library users and library materials for many years. So how do they produce pleasant surprises in our e-library environment? The aggregation of these sources is one of the challenges for libraries. We cannot just rely on literary wizard heroes working with the Princes of Serendip to bring us just the right thing at the right time. However, being in the same space isn’t the end of the story - there is still a challenge for libraries, aggregators, publishers and the manufacturers of e-book readers: for those of us who read at night, how will the e-book cope with us falling asleep? Will it sense that it needs to shut down and mark the page so that we don't have to remember where we had got to as we dozed off? And can it switch the light off too…?
It's not about revolutionPublished on 20110908 Iflas yearly conference is a fantastic place meeting librarians from all around the world. You seldom otherwise meet so many enthusiastic people in one spot as in the Ifla yearly conference. ALA summer conference have the same level of energy but is more homogenous, not so excitingly diverse. Somehow in the talks with librarians and listening to the presenters, this year, I got the feeling of a change of tide. From counteracting the imagined downfall of libraries with endless discussions of the role of the librarian now libraries seem to initiating a whole scale change of library work. But still with the basic values driving the change, like promoting literacy. So it's not about revolution. It's about restructuring. Restructuring the assets. The localities, the media and the staff. A restructure based on the new and developing media and communication landscape. A constant change paradigm with the users involved in the decision processes and also being part of the services. In one of the sessions Claudia Lux (Chief Librarian from Berlin) talked about her citys prospects including a new huge library and a cooperation with the ethnological museum and the museum of Humboldt University. Her theme is "Reinvent the library before the move". She says reinvent. That is very important. She is not talking about new roles, or a new playground. She is in to (anyway how I interpret it) that libraries should do what they are always doing but accommodate to the new environment. Especially interesting is how the library build their services around “breakpoints in life”. The library should be like a friend through all phases of the users life. Jaana Tyrni from Espo, Finland is talking about rethinking the service – look for the future and not the present. To give directions and not detail is part of the management idea. Judith Hare from Halifax is emphasizing the citizen participation in library design. And so it goes on. Maija Berndtsson from Helsinki, Finland is talking about changing the work from transaction orientated to communication and relations. The users are part of the transitions, the staffs abilities are recognized and it seems that libraries are now changing. Not the direction, not the content, but the ways of communication and with a new approach to the user. An all this underpinned with an understanding of constant change. We imagine that this themes will be discussed at the 3rd Axiell Symposium in London, 2-3 November 2011, http://www.axiell.com/london .
The concept of volunteers – how far can it be developed?Published on 2011-07-11 As the welfare society is under pressure and especially the cultural services, we can notice that a fierce debate often takes place within the cultural service world. A debate which is about surveillance or finding alternative ways of running a qualified service. In the United Kingdom the debate is most intense. It happens in the wake of The Big Society, which in its simplicity is about ”helping people to come together to improve their own lives. It’s about putting more power in people’s hands – a massive transfer of power from Whitehall to local communities.” And in the same breath as The Big Society has been announced, they talk about closure of an incredible amount of libraries. Let me just come up with a few examples: In the United Kingdom around 10 % of all libraries are under threat of closure. In Oxfordshire within a three years period - 21 out of 43 libraries are proposed to be run in a combination with staff and volunteers. There is a clear tendency that many libraries will move their activity to Community libraries – often run by volunteers. But is it only of the evil to have volunteers in the library sector? At a conference in Edinburgh this spring, Cath Anley – Head of Libraries & Archives, Kent County Council – succeeded in making me change my mind. In Kent they have a programme Time2Give which expresses that one of the main reasons for having volunteers is offering the volunteers to contribute and take over a new role in partnership with the educated staff. In Kent they had 1.639 volunteers in March 2010, who covered 28.343 hours a year – and at the library used the volunteers to do some of the jobs, they didn’t have staff for. They said that they were very much aware of the grey-zone between the educated staff and the volunteers and that the volunteers never would take over the key jobs for the skilled library staff. In Kent the volunteers read aloud in the children’s library, or they brought out books to the prisons – or some made the garden work. In Kent they looked at the volunteers as someone who could add value or extend the service at the public library. And at the same time the volunteers could get a fulfilling “employment”. What characterizes a volunteer is that the volunteer does the “work” without being paid and does it out of charitable or helpful choice. In other sectors as e.g. archives and museums we see that people are also volunteering in order to gain skills to advance their career – either to see whether they wish a career in that sector or to gain sufficient experience in their search for jobs. And this can raise some ethical questions – does it devaluate the job if the institution can find someone to do it for free? Pro and cons. Not an easy case and how will it all work? Will all these new community libraries with volunteers take over a new role in partnership with the educated staff? Or will the library concept be watered down? I think we will see a very scattered picture. Some libraries will continue to work and be the meeting point in the community. Many of the closure threatened branches might have been totally closed in a couple of years and then villages in the countryside would be culturally abandoned. The change in my mind was that you actually gave people new content in their life. They offer some hours a week at e.g the library to make charitable work – and achieve a better conscience. It will be interesting to follow the situation in the UK. How will the volunteer concept be developed? Will the volunteers “just” be a substitute for the library staffs? OR will it end as in Denmark, where more than 200 branches have been closed during the last couple of years – with no library service at all? Right now we see actually another backlash in Denmark, where libraries are opened without any staff in evenings or week-end’s thanks to the technology. A new tendency as a result of heavy cuts for some years. Or as they do in the small Danish council Ikast Brande use volunteers to help the users with the computers, the self service automats, lending out material etc. I know this is controversial and I am threading on shaky grounds. What do You think?
A Nightmare in PraguePublished on 21-6-2011 I was in this dream totally immersed in a presentation of how I had bought Raimer Maria Rilkes Prague Stories at the Globe bookstore in Prague and then went over to and ordered a Turkish coffee at the legendary Café Slavia. I opened the book, written 115 years ago and the first page is about artists and poets meeting at Café Slavia! In front of me sat 100 librarians from all over the world. And looked at me. Totally uninterested. Totally blank faces. With a hint of a superior ignorance in their eyes. I stumbled on my words, I desperately hoped to wake up. I tried to catch their interest with a challenge. A young women reads Bolanos The Wild Detectives and is enthusiastic about the style and content of the book. How could she find similar literary experiences!? The same ignorant faces. Totally blank. No reaction. I realized that I was not dreaming. I was at conference in Prague with “Linked Data” as the main theme. Those in front of me weren’t interested in what I had to say about literary experiences, they wanted to hear Linked data evangelists and I did not fulfill that role. Of course I am exaggerating in the above description of the event but I do hold on to that for now “Linked Data” is still going upwards on the hype ladder. There was even a blog after the meeting that wrote that I had some “spurious” questioning of the possibilities of “Linked Data”. Not that I did not agree that Linked Data is a possible and good way to connect data and to give the end user a better experience than we can manage today. But that I asked for set standards, ideas for how to populate the internet with the metadata, good algorithms for interpretation and lastly ideas on how it will be possible for the end user to interact with the aggregated metadata. It is really too easy, as it often is, to refer to isolated services of Linked Data (somewhat contradicts the whole idea) but, I agree, on the other hand it must start somewhere. And as I pointed out in the presentation; library catalogs and encyclopedias are good starting points. I could also say that the Bolano case above will not be saved by searches at Google, FB, Twitter or LibraryThing but that you may need library services which works with linked data to bring out the suggestion of the novels written by the Beat generation (Burroughs for example, or even better Kerouac).
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