Library scan
7 Oct 2008
In today’s world – saturated with modern technology and immediate information – are libraries obsolete? Dr Alex Byrne believes not and says more than ever, libraries are vital and relevant in the electronic age.
What is the future of libraries? Do we still need to build and operate libraries when the world is wired and information just a few clicks away?
The birth of the internet and the constant evolution of technology have changed the information world as we know it. But within our global information society, it’s important to recognise the importance of libraries in realising fair and just access to information. Libraries bring people together; they stand for truth and reconciliation. Transcending time and place, libraries are houses of knowledge.
I pondered the library’s place as an information provider in this new electronic age during my decade in leadership positions with the peak international organisation for libraries and information services, the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA). When I completed my presidential term in August last year at the World Library and Information Congress in Durban, I was reminded of Mahatma Gandhi who was inspired to campaign for civil rights for Indians in South Africa and then lead the struggle for independence back in India. A similarly strong commitment to social justice inspires library staff in our work to preserve and make available the records of accumulated knowledge and wisdom of people throughout time.
Just as the struggle to achieve human rights for all inspired the reconstruction of our societies, the quest to express our professional values in all aspects of our practice leads us to reconsider the very modes of practice and the underlying constructs of our profession as knowledge keepers and librarians.
My IFLA years, as I refer to them, gave me the opportunity to see my profession practiced in many parts of the world and to lead the profession’s interventions in the World Summit on the Information Society from early 2002 to the end of 2005. In the Summit’s processes, the world’s governments charted principles and an agenda to guide themselves – and hence all of us – in grappling with the tremendous changes that have been wrought by the success of information technology. IT has changed almost everything we do, from running businesses, to shopping, to health and education.
And it has changed libraries profoundly.
From our first uses of punched cards and mainframe computers in the 1960s, we have developed sophisticated information delivery systems. Along the way we co-opted the information storage and retrieval systems that were developed to support the space race to give us the enormous range of databases that we offer today, including such behemoths as Science Direct and Web of Knowledge. Although we were using networks before the internet, we quickly found it invaluable, applying our skills to an increasingly wired world.
The UTS Library was the first to recognise the benefits of emerging technologies and implement SuperSearch, a combined journal and database search system that allows for individual resource information storage space. And again, the library is at the forefront with plans to use emerging Web 2.0 capabilities and services. The use of user-created content, ‘mashups’ to provide a conglomerate of web-based information accessed from a single, integrated tool, and access to book vendor systems beyond the current links in SuperSearch are all areas being explored. Rather than monolithic, proprietary operating systems with long development and software release cycles, the web itself can become the programmable, operating platform. Web 2.0 embodies simplicity, interactivity, and collective intelligence.
Now at the library, we deliver 90 per cent of our 33 000 individual journals plus some 50 000 e-books and many other digital resources via networked access 24/7. We work to make access as seamless as possible, which sometimes makes our part in the delivery almost invisible. When you search on Google Scholar and then link through to a full text scholarly article, it is generally the case that you can do so because the library has licensed access (at considerable cost to UTS!).
We like it like that because it means that UTS Library is where its clients are: in the lab or classroom, in an office or workplace, or at home. You no longer have to come to the library to get information, it’s all around us. But the library, through its networked delivery, helps to warrant the quality of the information obtained – the same can’t be said of everything you retrieve via a search engine. We are working on a new interface layer to enhance information access and to maintain UTS Library’s leadership in creating digital libraries.
But the digital library doesn’t eliminate the need for the physical library, for the library as place. Libraries are gateways to knowledge, and as we have seen at UTS, the library is more popular than ever. Built over the last summer, the new spaces on levels four and five provide silent, group and individual study areas and greater access to key resources such as computers and learning commons. The Blake Library is crowded with students ready to learn, ringing the changes between printed and digital books and journals. They apply themselves individually or work with friends on group projects in a true learning space – a space that promotes independent learning and uninhibited investigation.
Many of the libraries I saw during my IFLA years were not as richly endowed with a resource-rich learning environment as UTS, but all strive to enable the most qualified researcher, the hesitant student, the aspiring entrepreneur, the caring parent and the youngest child to discover for themselves and to experience the joy of learning and sharing information, ideas and opinions. We must continue to reconsider and reinvent our libraries in response to changing circumstances and needs while always remembering who they serve.
Libraries are vital to ensuring that the emerging information society will truly aspire to be for all and be fair and just for all. It is that goal that motivates my profession and is why I am sure that libraries will endure and will be – more than ever – valued as vital gateways to important information in this intensively wired world.
Dr Alex Byrne
University Librarian
Photographer: Joanne Saad
Tell us your news
RSS feed