Internet Librarian

When last we met, I’d raised the idea that modern libraries have to be both somewhere and everywhere, familiarly obligated to house and preserve and maintain access to physical objects, provide venues for communal and community activity, and manifest the library profession’s values and importance in a constant and visible way. Those obligations persist—and I’d say become even more vital—in the digital realm, where what we do and stand for can be sadly lacking.

Onward. I’ve previously poked at the notion that people are increasingly multiply present, devoting bits of themselves to the “real” world, and other bits to text-messaging, social networking, Second Lifeing, cell-phoning, Twittering, IMing, and so on (Sept. 2007, p. 46). None of this seems likely to abate any time soon, and it’s hard to imagine there won’t be more ways to be soon. (Maybe the Be-In folks were on to something back in ’67.)

Put these two ideas together, and what do we get? That old chestnut: Be where users are (and support what they want and need). In a purely physical world, that means bookmobiles and branches and phone reference, inhabiting and sharing (and being) local community spaces. This is why academic libraries have traditionally been known as the “heart of the university” and why public libraries are usually right downtown or in busy areas.

Now that we have become hybrid entities, the same goes for digital spaces. When our clients can be almost anywhere—and often several places and presences—at once, the “library” must be there to meet them, on their own terms.

This all leads me, inevitably, inexorably, to two conclusions. First, it seems pretty clear from all this that there are now lots of people who are not getting library service in some (most? all?) of the places they inhabit.

A geographical metaphor might help—think of these new digital lands as new neighborhoods or campuses. If your institution annexed new territory, you’d immediately begin planning how to deploy your services to those meet the new people and needs. We’ve done a great job of migrating much of what we do to the Web, to our credit, and now we need a similar planning effort for this more nuanced set of digital environs.

A lower commitment

While that planning goes on, you might as well factor in something else. When people come to a library building, they have made an effort and a commitment and, by and large, they will see that through and do what they came to do.

In any digital environment, that commitment is much lower—and the competition is much keener. If people are searching your catalog or asking a question via chat and they get frustrated, bored, or unhappy, Amazon or Yahoo Answers or Google is a microsecond-click away, and there’s no constraint on their going poof.

So we have to be better online. Better, more compelling, more efficient, more effective, more attractive, to get ’em and keep ’em and serve ’em as we know only we can.

This idea may fill you either with excitement or dread—maybe both. It certainly means that the stakes have been raised, which I think we all sorta knew anyway.

Look at this column’s title again; it occurs to me it has two potential meanings in this context. When we achieve the first, the others will come…and that’s another story.