Envisioning a 21st century library

This topic has come up everywhere lately. I have seen CFPs (call for papers), postings on library related listservs, and chatting amongst librarians in social networks. Below you will find my thoughts in progress on this topic.

The academic library of the 21st century will continue to have a need for reference services; however, they will be needed differently. Our current millennial generation users have already expressed their desire for electronic over print resources. Students (particularly undergraduate level) generally tend to begin their research with a search engine such as Google, rather than with library resources.

Today users are accessing the library from remote locations (chat service, telephone, e-mail), and I envision this type of need for remote service to only multiply in the 21st century. We will find that we need to go to the users, not vice versa where we have expected the users to come to us (physically to the reference desk in a library).

If students are currently jumping to Google as their starting place in research, then I believe we should be at Google to greet them. MIT has developed a Google application which adds the MIT Barton catalog to a Google homepage. The application is available at MIT Libraries’ Betas. I believe that MIT is on the right track developing tools like this. If students are not going to come to us, we need to go to them.

As always, we need to be customer oriented. We need to be friendly and helpful to each patron we come in contact with. By showing patrons that we are approachable and there to help them, we are encouraging them to come back to us in the future and also tell others of our services. I believe in the 21st century we will need to continue having a great customer service attitude, and possibly do so through new means – such as being helpful, friendly, and available in virtual environments.

Many believe that libraries should have profile pages on social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. I imagine the 21st century library continuing to have patrons using sites such as these, in addition to any new networking sites that develop down the road. If we plan to continue to use this in the future, I believe we need to think about using the site differently. As a library we should not have a profile page, but as individual librarians we should be available via these networks.

If a library wanted to befriend me on a social network I would most likely agree and make the library my friend. However, I would probably never look at the library’s profile page again. If a librarian who helped me at the reference desk or gave my class library instruction offered his or her profile URL, I may just take him or her up on that offer. Knowing the person makes a world of a difference on whether our friendship will be useful on the site, or “just another friend.” Knowing that I would have another means of contacting my librarian would be helpful. Plus, it could possibly help the librarian promote library services. If a friend saw that the librarian was commenting on a student’s Facebook page and assisting the student, that new student may just ask to also be the librarian’s friend and ask for help by the same means.

In the 21st century, our library may find that we need to market our services more than ever. Although technologies are pushing us towards becoming more virtual, we still need to maintain our physical presence. If patrons are in remote locations we need to find ways to bring them to the library. We will need to promote our services where the patrons are located – possibly advertisements on the desktop/ tables they work at; posters in academic departments; even possibly displaying advertisements on campus shuttle buses. If our students will be in remote locations, we need to be promoting our services where we can reach them.

I believe that due to the increase in use of technologies, and the easier it is for patrons to complete research by electronic means – we will need to have staff changes in the future. We will need specialists in areas to develop applications such as the Google application that MIT has in beta. We will need instructional designers to help us create our tutorials that are accessible remotely to patrons. We will need staff that has the expertise to take us to the patrons who are accessing the library from remote locations.