Amy Glasmeier
Department of Urban Studies and Planning
MIT
Second Annual Social Sciences Librarians Boot Camp
Friday, June 1st , Tisch Library at Tufts University.
Getting to Librarian 3.0
The First Person Who Taught Us About Information Access was a
Librarian (Also the person who taught us our library voices!)
According to a 2002 study, 73%
of college students say they use the internet more
than they use the library for information research,
while only 9% say the opposite. More recently,
Cisco Connected World Technology Report from
2011 indicates that one of five students (21
percent)
have not even bought a physical book (excluding
textbooks required for class) in a bookstore in
more than two years – or ever.
http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2002/The-Internet-Goes-to-College.aspx
“This is one of the sobering truths these librarians,
representing a group of Illinois universities, have learned
over the course of a two-year, five-campus ethnographic
study examining how students view and use their campus
libraries: students rarely ask librarians for help, even
when they need it. The idea of a librarian as an academic
expert who is available to talk about assignments and
hold their hands through the research process is, in fact,
foreign to most students. Those who even have the word
"librarian" in their vocabularies often think library staff
are only good for pointing to different sections of the
stacks.”

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2011-08-22/StudyCollege-students-rarely-use-librarians-expertise/50094086/1
“Participatory culture doesn’t do away with
the need for authority, but it will privilege a
different kind of authority, a more
transparent, more engaged one. I believe
people still want a trusted voice they can
listen to, particularly in the digital realm.”
Rob Stein IMA Please Chime In: The Challenges and Opportunities of Participatory
Culturehttp://www.imamuseum.org/blog/2011/10/11/please-chime-in-thechallenges-and-opportunities-of-participatory-culture/
Conventional Modes of Behavior Are Being
Pressured to Change
You have people like Brian Mathews, Associate Dean for Learning &
Outreach at Virginia Tech, who runs a blog about designing better user
experiences and the pursuit of use-sensitive libraries say:
The library is a platform, not a place, website, or
person. Libraries need less assessment and more
R&D. Focus on relationship building instead of
service excellence and satisfaction. Don’t just copy &
paste from other libraries: invent! Grow your ideas:
Build, Measure, Learn, Iterate & Prototype. Plant
many seeds; nurture the ones that grow. Seize the
whitespace.
http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/theubiquitouslibrarian/
In Marketing Today’s Academic Library, Brian Mathews uses his vast
experience …
Most library marketing intended for undergraduates promotes the
collection, reference and instructional service, and occasional events such as
guest speakers or exhibits. The guiding principle of Marketing Today’s
Academic Library is that marketing should focus on the lifestyle of the user,
showcasing how the library fits within the daily life of the student.
Mathews’ personal and compelling presentation will assist readers in:
Challenging and rethinking their marketing strategies
Demonstrating their value through applied relevance
Focusing on the needs of the student and their expectations
Written in a concise and engaging manner that speaks to popular anxiety
points about new marketing techniques, this book is filled with tips and
strategies that academic librarians can use to communicate with students,
surpassing their expectations of their library experience.
http://www.alastore.ala.org/detail.aspx?id=2596
Libraries have already drifted too far down
the commercial path: Research and
educational values must be restored to their
primacy of place. "Good enough" and onestop shopping are no substitutes for
systematic research. Technology cannot
replace human expertise. The business world
has many valuable tools and resources to
offer, but libraries must insist that scholarly
requirements take precedence over
commercial interests.

Daniel Goldstein Arts, humanities, and social-science librarian at the University
of California at Davis http://chronicle.com/article/Library-Inc/124915/
Segue: New Patrons
and New Functions
Serve students in a different manner and
for different reasons: educated handholding
Provide support for faculty more
as colleagues and collaborators than as
purveyors of pre-specified items
The numbers of tenured and tenure-track
professors have sharply declined from
nearly one-half of the faculty to about onethird. Most courses in four-year colleges
and universities as well as community
colleges are now taught by contingent
faculty, including part-time adjuncts,
graduate students, and holders of full-time
nontenure-track positions.
25 years ago, a junior faculty member was
a lone researcher, with a small or nonexistent research budget.
Today, a junior faculty member is prepared
to conduct funded research, probably
works in a research group, and has a good
grasp of the job.
Science Transformation. New Modes of
Behavior and Roles
Four key developments will change the
way researchers interact with librarians
Data Capture, Curation, Analysis
Synthesis
More scientists are creating their
own data sets and NSF is requiring them to be
placed in the public domain.
Who is going to help them?
• Precision
• Confidentiality
Usability
Data structures
Meta data
Schema
Tables, the fields in each table, and the
relationships between fields and tables.
Data being captured (cell phone, crowd
sourcing, social media; satellites, sensors,
images), being processed by software with
knowledge or information stored on
computers.
Only after this process, far down the line of
production, does a scientist get involved in
analysis.
 The
first is the basic science
 Geography
 The
 We
second is geo-informatics
are applying computer science and
computer science capabilities to the
investigation of processes
A typical project with data capture,
curation, analysis, visualization,
representation, reporting, data
dissemination needs a person!
For big projects, the costs of all the datarelated expenses can be rolled into a big
budget, but for smaller single PI projects,
data management is a huge additional cost
 Software
tools are ridiculously simplistic
and well-worn
 Not
prepared for the big time or to
ensure data quality for future users
 Most
researchers use Excel and maybe
access to manage vast amounts of data
 New
tools for data retrieval
 Data
mining and analysis
 Meta
Analysis
 Synthesis
 The
world of integrated interoperability
 Full
texts and scientific data
 Ready-made
 Conference
journals
management will become
the new source for immediate books
 Who
is going to do all this matching,
compilation, synthesis and
dissemination?
 Researchers
are needed to do this and to
learn to do this; every project will be
different; new capabilities of compilation
developed all the time.
 Librarians
 My
worries turned to research
 My
hopes turn to your creativity
 My
dreams turn to an abiding goal:
provide the most for the most in the least
amount of time with the least amount of
effort
 New
skills
 New
collaborations
 New
technologies
 Can’t
 But
do it all yourselves
you can do it, you are doing it right
now--GIS