Here is a relevant excerpt from The ‘library of the future’ begins to emerge by Sue Dremann on Palo Alto Online this past Friday:
‘…In the library of the future, they say, librarians will take on new roles, space will be reconfigured to reflect new and broader purposes, and the ongoing digital revolution will birth a new kind of public institution that is no longer bound by bricks and mortar.
If librarians will need to reinvent themselves, it’s not because they are becoming obsolete, according to David Loertscher, a professor at San Jose State University School of Library and Information Science, the largest library-teaching school in the nation.
To the contrary: The library professional will be needed like never before to help with increasingly complicated searches of information, he said.
‘The problem is the quality of information. Who vets the information?’ he asked rhetorically.
Loertscher, who lectured this week at San Jose State University on ‘Should Libraries Evolve or Reinvent Themselves?,’ said that librarians of the future — in fact, even the present — will have to become equally comfortable in the tangible and the virtual worlds. To reach today’s plugged-in youth, for example, a real-time librarian will need to jump into a world created online…
Rather than shunning competition from the Internet, libraries will increasingly build online branches, where users can download information and technology 24/7. The online branch could provide an interface between users and the community — a kind of electronic village — where programs such as Kete, which can create digital museums, can serve as a yearbook of the community and where users can add visuals or videos to online conversations with software called Jing, Loertscher said…
But not all library visits in the future will be digital. There is still a place for the library as a community institution, but the primary role will shift to that of a cultural center that reflects a community’s heart and soul, according to Frey. Social-networking as well as learning environments are becoming central to the new library.
Specialized nooks and spaces offer a variety of social and educational experiences — or privacy. Classes, meetings, after-school tutoring and performances are already taking place in technology-training centers, conference rooms, teen zones, quiet study areas and even theaters in county libraries. Patrons at some libraries can even bring in food; in Belmont, staff invited a hot-dog vendor to dish up wieners in an adjacent courtyard…
A key to successful libraries involves making the spaces comfortable — think ‘living room’ — and taking down barriers to service, according to Melinda Cervantes, county librarian of Santa Clara County Library. The library has been rated No. 1 in the nation in its population category for several years by Hennen’s American Public Library ratings.
The county system took out large service desks, which patrons found intimidating, and added smaller kiosks and “perches,” she said. The library added multi-million-dollar automated check-in centers at its branches, eliminating the cumbersome check-in and sorting process and freeing up staff to attend to patrons’ needs.
Cervantes said the library has taken an aggressive approach to marketing and to discovering what library users want. Her staff tests new devices such as the Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader, iPods and other personal devices created by Silicon Valley companies. Staff members ‘play’ for six months with each device before choosing new products they think users will want to use. They conduct research to identify why non-users don’t have library cards, and teams go to schools and speak to clubs, she said…”
