Today’s libraries, tomorrow’s users!
Marshall Keys, Ph.D.
MDA Consulting
POB 534 Nantucket MA 02554
marshallkeys@mindspring.com
My career in serials
• Rutgers University Library 1964-66
• “Head Boy”, Periodicals Department
• School of Information and Library Science
Library, UNC 1976
• Serials check in, claiming, binding
• Periodicals Department, University of
Mississippi, 1977-79
• My first assignment was ADDING 1300 new
titles to the periodical collection
Assumptions and questions
• The future of libraries depends on their
ability to meet the emerging needs of
users.
• Who will those users be?
• What are their emerging needs?
• How will these needs differ from traditional
needs?
• How can libraries respond to them?
Theory: chaotic transitions
• Graphic: growth (S) curves and chaotic
transitions
Theodore Modis Predictions 1992
Chaotic transitions and libraries
• No dominant technological model
– What are the tools that people will use to
access knowledge in ten years?
• No dominant business model
– How will content be distributed in ten years?
• No dominant intellectual model
– What is a library in 2006? What will it be in
2016?
Why these issues matter
“Successful organizations share a powerful
understanding of what rapid social and
economic change mean for consumers’
needs and wants.”
Nancy Koehn, Brand New, 2002
Chaotic transitions in demographics:
fragmentation
Steve Morris, Arbitron C.E.O.:
''People are dividing. Every age group, every
cultural group and every demographic group is
in the process of getting media packaged
expressly for its members.”
• How will this affect libraries?
• Your next local system will routinely support
multiple languages, just like ATM’s
• Serials: continued growth in resources collected
by libraries
Chaotic transitions in demographics 1:
the aging Boomers
Graphic:
Elderly men looking at
computers
• 330 Baby Boomers turn
60 every day this year!
• High need, high use
group
• From technically savvy to
completely naive
• Tax averse
• Competition between
“good things”
“Who'll Sit at the Boomers' Desks?”
• By Fred Brock NYT Oct 12, 2003
The big baby-boom generation is starting to
retire. There simply aren't enough
workers behind them in the labor
supply pipeline to fill their jobs.
• See also “Coming Soon: The Vanishing Work Force,
Eduardo Porter NYT Aug 29, 2004
Chaotic transitions in demographics 2:
the world comes here
Graphic:
Cover of guide for migrants
published by Mexican
government
•
28.4 million US residents
(10%) in 2000 were
immigrants:
– 50% from Latin America
– 26% from Asia
• Immigration:
– the average daily wage in
Mexico is $7;
– The average daily wage for
illegal workers in the US is
$70
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/mexico/facts.html
Accommodation or assimilation?
• Graphic:: woman in hijab
• Graphic:: French
headlines about
restricting Islam dress in
schools
• Graphic:: women in
burka
• Graphic:: Many women
in burka and veil
Changing needs: library services in
Somerville, MA
• Staff speak Chinese,
French, Italian,
Portuguese, and
Spanish.
• Story time in English,
Russian, German,
French, and Spanish.
• Children’s materials in
English, Chinese,
Portuguese, Spanish and
Vietnamese.
• Adult books in English,
Chinese, Portuguese,
French and Spanish.
• 18 foreign language
periodicals
• Adult beginning reading
materials, ESL materials,
and ESL classes
• Language requirement
for MLS
Ethnicity and culture:
“May I help you, Señor/a Martinez?”
• Leo Martinez
• Lydia Martinez/Lidia Martinez
• Maria Martinez
Staff: some cultural differences
in the workplace
• Sense of time:
A meeting at 9:30 AM
Dinner at 7:30
“Tomorrow” vs “mañana” vs “bukara”
“A New York minute,” ASAP, “I want it
yesterday!”
• Monochronous vs polychronous
societies
Chaotic transitions in demographics 3:
African-American diversity
• Graphic:: Inner city kids
in library
• Graphic:: African
American college
Republican
• A spectrum from Inner City kids to College
Republicans
• “America Beyond the Color Line” PBS
documentary with Henry Louis Gates 2002/2004
A quiz: Sag Harbor, Oak Bluffs,
and Jack and Jill
• Graphic:: Brown party in
Sag Harbor
• Graphic:: ladies
swimming in Oak Bluffs
The unknown demographic:
the Black upper class
• Graphic:
• Puffy Combs
• Graphic:: Chief
operating officer,
Genentech, Corp
“Breaking the Silence”
Henry Louis Gates JR, NYT, Aug. 1, 2004
“Reality check: according to the 2000 census,
there were more than 31,000 black physicians
and surgeons, 33,000 black lawyers and 5,000
black dentists.
Guess how many black athletes are playing
professional basketball, football and baseball
combined?
About 1,400.
In fact, there are more board-certified black
cardiologists than there are black professional
basketball players.”
Changing assumptions
about library service
• Serving African Americans is no longer
solely about serving poor communities
• Serving African Americans is no longer
solely about serving the underprivileged
• What are the opportunities and what are
the threats for libraries?
To serve people, you must know them:
attracting minorities to library work
• What professions and fields of
employment have been most successful in
attracting minorities?
• What do they do?
• What can librarianship do to emulate
them?
• Look to natural constituents
• Actively recruit
How do we create satisfying careers
for minorities?
• Fighting overt racism among staff and users
• Fighting casual racist assumptions:
– banished to the inner city?
– banished to the cataloging department?
• Fighting reverse or ethnic racism:
– “Acting White”
– Serb and Croat: “what started over there,
stays over there.”
Chaotic transitions in
demographics 4
Another country: thirteen to thirty
“What’s a cassette?”
Young woman to young man on
the MBTA subway, Boston,
January, 2001
Buzznet
• Graphic: Buzznet homepage with cowboy
boot collection
The blog mentality
• What I think is important
• What I think is important to other people
• Things are important because I think they are
important: the “whatever” corollary:
• If I don’t think it’s important, it isn’t important
• “Esse est percipi”:
• 51% of Bloggers are between 13 and 19, 90%
under 30
• Privacy is unimportant; community is important
• Bloggers are your users, your users-to-be, and
the next generation of library leaders!
Michael Gorman (pre ALA) on Blogs
• Graphic:
• Michael Gorman
looking wistful
"I don't always think
people's opinions are
worth reading," he
says. "They should
not be published. I
really like the filtering
that publishers do.
You don't publish
maundering.“
“What's the Difference Gorman vs.
Stripling?” by John N. Berry III –
LJ 3/15/2004
And Blaise Cronin,
Library School Dean
• Graphic: Blaise
Cronin
“Blogging is CB radio on
steroids. It’s all the rage.
The Web has become the
universal soapbox. No
voice need be unheard;
no whine denied oxygen.
It’s the fusion of vanity
publishing and the bully
pulpit. Every idea, no
matter how trite or crazy
can see the light of digital
day.”
New Yorker cartoon
“You don’t get it, Daddy,
because they’re not targeting
you!”
Not just Old Geezers:
“Back in the 1980’s,” says Emily Nussbaum,
“When I attended high school, there were
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
No cellphones
No answering machines
No “texting”
No MP3’s
No JPEG’s
No digital cameras
No file sharing software
No Worldwide Web”
“My so-called Blog”, Emily Nussbaum, NYT Magazine Jan 11, 2004
Emerging users, dominant themes
• Community
• Personalization
• Portable, ubiquitous technology
Community
• Graphic: friendster homepage
Community
• Graphic: thefacebook home page
Every parent’s worst fear
• Graphic: mySpace homepage
• 60,000,000 users worldwide
Suddenly looks benign
• Graphic: Boston Globe article “Wireless
firms move into social networking”
Community
• Graphic: Webshots homepage
Webshots College Parties
• Graphic: Webshots sample page with
“lingerie parties”
Community: YouTube
• Graphic: YouTube home page
You Tube
• Graphic: YouTube sample page with
illegal copyrighted items and salacious
photos
Community: Where!
• Graphic: Where! Homepage (photo
flashmob)
Personalization: Pimp My Ride
Personalization: HGTV
Ubiquitous technology
• Graphic: young man
with cell phone
• Graphic: Young man
kissing IPod
Ubiquitous technology
• Graphic: Slingbox -- cable television over
the internet device
Ubiquitous technology
• Graphic: Dish network portable movie
viewer
Ubiquitous technology:
Microsoft Origami
• Graphic: new MS handheld multimedia
computer
• “Ultra-mobile computing”
Personalized, portable technology
Ridiculous personalized technology
“Branded ubiquity”
• Every one of those items represents an
attempt to make money by responding to
and reinforcing a trend.
• The stakes: who will control the
interaction between gadgets?
• What will libraries do to respond to those
trends?
Buzznet depends on portable and
personalized communication
The phone up close: personalization
• Download ring tones that sound like the real
thing ($5 billion in 2005)
• Personalize your phone by saving your own
pictures as Wallpaper
• Jazz up your phone with full color pictures and
Wallpaper
• Interchangeable faceplates let you personalize
your phone to suit your style
• Marketing message: You are unique even
though you are just like everyone else
The phone up close:
information appliance
• Send and receive e-mail
• Send quick notes to your friends using text
messaging
• Send and receive AOL Instant Messages
• Look up your horoscope or local
information on movies, the music scene or
whatever!
• Marketing message: You are no longer
tied to old stuff like computers
The phone up close:
the phone ‘n’ more
• Use your phone as a modem
• Take pictures with the camera and send
them to any e-mail address or T-mobile
phone
• Marketing message: you are connected to
your friends through multimedia
• Nowhere does the advertisement mention
using the phone to talk to people!
Trends: camera phones
• Graphic: Family’s first
picture from
cameraphone
US camera phone sales
2005:
47% of all mobile
phones
70,000,000 camera
phones sold last year
in the US!
2 for 1 in Rich Square,
NC (pop 931)
Geoffrey Moore’s Model
Technology adoption
• Graphic: Innovators, early adopters, etc
• (Crossing the Chasm, 1991)
Metcalfe’s Law
N(N-1)
The value of a communication system grows
as the approximate square of the number
of participants
Robert Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet
And leads to
• Graphic: Lots of Japanese girls snapping
pictures with phones
A world of ubiquitous, multi-media communication
But wait, there’s more!
•
•
•
•
•
Video phone
Game phone
Music phone
Movie phone
“Momentum Is Gaining for Cell phones as
Credit Cards
– ”Matt Richtel NYT 1/10/05
Old: “Everything is on the internet”
• Graphic: Google SMS reference service
New: “Everything is on the phone”
Old: internet ready reference
• Graphic: Google Answers reference
service auction (set your own price)
New: telephone ready reference!
• Graphic: AQA UK reference service; any
question answered over the cell phone for
1 Pound ($1.70)
And now in the USA: for 49 cents!
• Graphic: Askmenow US telephone
refence for 49 cents!
The predictions business
"Video won't be able to hold on to
any market it captures after the
first six months. People will soon
get tired of staring at a plywood
box every night."
- Daryl F. Zanuck, 20th Century Fox, commenting on
television in 1946
What does it mean to libraries?
• Users for whom the phone is a/the primary
information appliance
– Phone interface to local systems and web based
information resources
– Reference through voice, text messaging
– Reference through camera phones: what’s the
difference between a photocopy and a photo?
• Users who are willing to pay for information –
delivered the way they want it!
• Bandwidth and graphical interface issues
Trends reflected in changing models of
acquiring information
• Graphic:; young woman
studying in stacks
• Graphic: kids together in
reading room
• Formal resources
• Authority
• Solitary activity
• Peer to peer
• Social networks
• Being in touch all the
time everywhere
What does it mean to society?
“Camera phones mean we're living in a world with
a million prying eyes. If you want to do
something bad, you'll have a million eyes on
you. You'd better get used to it.'
Clive Thompson “Remote Possibilities” NYT Magazine, 11/16/03
Flickr posts are often first news photos out of an
event. Newsweek, March xx, 2006
What does it mean
to the information industry?
“In Japan, bookstores complain of ''digital
shoplifting''; instead of buying magazines,
readers snap pictures of stories and bulkforward them to friends:
‘It's like a Napster thing -- anything you see
in the environment becomes something
you can easily capture and share.’”
Thompson; see also “Cell phone cams spreading mischief”, Yuri Kageyama,
Associated Press, July 10, 2003
Chaotic transitions in
intellectual property
‘It's like a Napster thing
-- anything you see in
the environment
becomes something
you can easily
capture and share.’
Industry responds with lawsuits
• Graphic: New York Post
“RIAA hits colleges with
lawsuits”
• Graphic: Technet
“Hackers shut down RIAA
website for five days”
Hackers respond by shutting down RIAA
website!
Industry responds with technology
• “RIAA uses digital fingerprints and
metadata" tags embedded within many
MP3 music files.” Boston Globe, Aug 28,
2003
• Publishers respond with DOI
• MPAA responds with “broadcast flags”
Boston Globe, 8/28/9003
Courts consistently
held against publishers
• “Canadian court prevents suits against music sharers”
• “US court: Software can't commit piracy”
Until the US Supreme Court!
• Graphic: US Supreme Court
Kids and the law
• Graphic: girl on beach
with pipe
• Graphic: boy with giant
joint
• Graphic: two girls with
marijuana seed pod, one
in underwear
But it’s moot anyway: Earth Station 5
• Graphic: former Earth Station 5 PtoP site
ES5’s competitive advantage
If not Jenin, then Vanuatu
Because the cat is out of the bag
• Graphic: cover of “Gray Album” by
Dangermouse
The medium is the message
• Graphic: Cover of
Beatles’ “White
Album”
• Graphic: Cover of
Jay Z’s “Black Album”
Chaotic transitions in
the information business
The content business
Elsevier stock price (US ADR’s) over the last ten years
The publishing industry responds :
consolidation
• Graphic: cover of
“Consolidation in the
US Publishing
Industry” ppublished
by RLG
Example: “Taylor and Francis Buys
Marcel Dekker for $138,600,000” in
November, 2003
Taylor & Francis: swallowed 2004
How venture capital works
“British Private Equity firms Cinven and Candover
buy Kluwer Academic for €600,000,000”
“Bertelsmann sells Springer to Cinven and
Candover for €1,100,000,000”
“Cinven Candover plan to sell Springer, Kluwer in
three years” May, 2003
Venture capitalists expect a 20% annualized return
on money invested in an established business
Chaotic technology: new stuff
coming down the road
New ways to find information
for new user expectations
Evolving information technology:
the search for portability
• Wireless networks are the current state
of the art in library technology
• Ubiquitous (“Ultra-mobile”) computing is
the next
• Where is the rest of the world going?
Old ways
• Graphic: “Ahead of its time” (end of Apple
Newton from Wall Street Journal)
New ways 2002
• Ovid in Hand
Innovative AirPac
“The tyranny of computing”
•
•
•
•
•
Input
Storage
Processor
Display
Output
All unified in a
single device:
desktop,
laptop,
PDA
whatever!
Distributed computing: input
Laptops add at least four
pounds to a backpack. So
students take notes on
hand-held computers with
foldout keyboards. At
Yale Divinity School,
Kristen Dunn uses a
Palm VX and a foldout
keyboard. ''It was the best
money I ever spent in
preparing for school.''
“Existential Essentials” by Melanie
D.G. Kaplan, NYT, 8/1/04
Distributed computing: input
• Siemens VKB (virtual
keyboard)
Distributed computing: storage
Distributed computing: storage
Distributed computing: processing
Distributed computing: processing
Linux for iPod
The issue: size vs content
• Graphic: “Amazing! A man who wants a 36”
screen wants
• Rich graphical interfaces versus miniaturization
• Bandwidth versus portability
Distributed computing: display
Distributed computing
Output
Evolving technology
New ways to find information
Old ways: portals
New ways: personalized portals
At RIT . . . about half the students have created
personalized versions of the [university’s] Web site.
“Students . . . don't go looking to find information. They
want information brought to them.” Shifted Librarian Feb 12, 2004
Old ways: search engines
New ways: personalized
search engines
Community: search engine
with social networking
Community, not privacy, is the message!
Community: social bookmarks
Community, not privacy!
Community: social cataloging
Community: social cataloging
The problem with peer-to-peer
• What if all your friends are stupid,
uninformed, or have lousy taste in media?
• Suspicions about Google and its algorithm
• GIGO?
Personalized information access
• Having it their way vs doing it our
way
• “Lean Consumption” Harvard Business
Review March, 2005
– “using technology to reduce time and hassle
for customers and get them what they want
when they want it.”
Personalized information access:
the Amazon experience
• What I looked at before
• What other people looking at the same
topic have looked at
• What they think about what they looked at
• What else I might like to look at based on
what I looked at this time
• But what about privacy? What about
ALA?
Tomorrow’s users and privacy
• Graphic: girls
behaving badly
flashing bras at
fraternity party
• Graphic: girls
behaving badly,
drinking in dorm in
underwear
And what about privacy?
• Graphic: NSA Project
Echelon listening facility
at Menwith Hill, Yorkshire
• Graphic: hand of student
who has had RFID chip
implanted to control
technology devices
• No expectation of
privacy because they
do not believe that it
exists in an electronic
environment
• If I view it or send it,
they will see it
• I don’t care
• Bounded rationality
Evolving technology
New ways to display information
Old Ways: local systems
Old ways: hit lists
New ways: knowledge maps
Knowledge maps:
Grokker and Anacubis
New ways: classification browsers
• Belmont Abbey
College
• Scholastica - a
Graphic: interface for
all holdings in LC
order
• Mapped to a stylized
bookshelf
• All formats appear in
the same place for
browsing
• Newest first
New ways: classification browser
New ways: context management
Emerging technology
• Graphic: Buncha guys sitting around playing
video games
Life beyond browsers
New ways: beyond browsers
“n 1999 [virtual stores] made no sense.
A 3-D store didn't fit with the people using the Internet
through a Web browser. They would rather just use the
two-dimensional store. The browser was a twodimensional medium. It still is.
But the world of gamers is generally 3-D. A 3-D store
doesn't seem like science fiction if the medium isn't the
browser and the hardware isn't a PC.”
• “2004: Beyond the Browser?” Jack Aaronson January 8, 2004
www.clickz.com/experts/crm/crm_strat/article.php/3296541
Beyond the browser meets
community toy: Playstation 2
To be everyone’s pal, show
up at American University
with a Sony PlayStation
2, pop in a game, open
your door and voila! ''It's
the one thing that made
my social life significantly
easier,'' says Steven
White. ''Crazy Taxi was
the game to have, or any
sports game, things
multiple people can play.”
“Existential Essentials” by Melanie
D.G. Kaplan, NYT, 8/1/04
From community toy to community tool:
Linux for XBox
From community toy to
community tool: PS2 supercomputer
• National Center for Supercomputer Applications
• The folks who brought you MOSAIC, father of Netscape,
grandfather of Internet Explorer
Portable community tool:
Portable Play Station
The predictions business
“Who the hell wants to hear
actors talk? Harry M. Warner,
Warner Brothers, 1927
Any time, any where, any way
Professor Joseph Turow, at Penn, sees little
difference between television and the Internet.
Nor do his students.
They watch ''The O.C.'' on their laptops, at home
on TiVo and by swapping the show (perhaps
illegally) through file-sharing.
The coming generation is accustomed to the
idea of watching or listening to anything on
any device that's nearby.
Turow said his generation ''still thinks of media in
compartmentalized ways.''
What does the library look like if
the medium isn’t a browser and
the hardware isn’t a PC?
What do libraries change to remain
relevant in a world in which
• Users expect information to be delivered
to them?
• Users expect technology and interfaces to
be highly personalized?
• Users care more about convenience and
community than privacy?
The library paradigm in transition
Defending the brand
Decline in funding
• Graphic: Boston Globe article “Don’t close the
door on libraries”
Despite the fact that more people are using libraries than ever
before, more than $80 million has been cut from public
library budgets in the past year alone [2004].
People profess to love libraries. But alas, libraries cannot
live on love alone.
We must be doing something wrong.
Decline in circulation
“In 1996-97, about 1,000,000 items were checked out of the University
[of Minnesota] Libraries. In 2002-03, that was down to about
773,000.”
“Library Borrowing Plunges in Scotland”
“Book lending falls 30% as libraries turn to technology. Government
spending remains static as budgets are focused on staff wages and
internet investment …. Jenifer Johnston Glasgow Herald 8/24/04
“ Libraries [in England] blamed for their own decline”
Report urges move from traditional book-lending centre to 'living room
of the city‘.
Fusty library authorities caught in the grip of traditional notions of the
book-lending centre, ruled by fines for late returns, have encouraged
a 17% national fall in library visits.” Martin Wainwright, 8/18/03 The Guardian
Our concerns
• Graphic: New Yorker cartoon of two spies
replacing lions on steps of New York
Public Library
Aren’t shared by everyone
• Graphic: headline from Quincy, MA,
Patriot-Ledger “Librarians Part of the
Problem” on use of libraries by 911
conspirators, other criminals
Important stakeholders are confused
“You know, when it comes down to it, I’m not
sure I know the role of an academic library
in an electronic environment.”
College president interviewed during a consulting assignment
So where are we?
We have new populations to serve
•
•
•
•
Some of whom don’t know what we do;
Some of whom don’t care what we do;
Some of whom can’t access what we do.
And we are being asked to do it with fewer
resources.
Our content providers
are caught between
• Complete disregard of any concept of
intellectual property among the young
– file sharing
• Growing revolt by content creators against
the established model
– PLOS, preprint servers, blogs, CD’s
• Refusal of major customers to accept the
existing business model
– The Big Deal
Libraries haven’t got any money
• All kinds of things are appearing on the
horizon that will cost lots of money,
• We don’t have any money,
• And vendors, with major troubles of their
own, cannot, will not, and should not
provide products or services at
unsustainable prices
We have a huge investment
in the status quo
We have huge investments – human and
financial – in technologies that are not at
the cutting edge;
We are rule-bound organizations in a society
with little respect for limits;
We are unwilling to enforce many limits of
which society does approve, but
We are professionally committed to other
ethical postures opposed to the present
environment
We are committed to a medium,
not a message
We remain identified with print when the
world can
– view DVD’s in their cars
– carry their music and video collections in their
pockets
– Search databases and view videos on their
cell phones
Does the American Medical Association
have a “Center for the Stethoscope” the
way we have a “Center for the Book”?
We are committed to places,
not to missions
•
•
•
•
Blockbuster vs Netflix
Borders vs Amazon
Civic monuments vs libraries
Central libraries vs branches
• We need to think hard about our
products, our services, our brand
The challenge?
How to reinvent libraries for a
digital way of life
The new user
• Graphic: photo of Charles Lax himself, found
many years after article through diligent
research!
Charles Lax, a venture capitalist, is sitting in a conference
near LA, but he isn’t all here. Out of one ear, he listens to a
live presentation while he surfs the Net on a wireless
laptop, occasionally checking his Blackberry for e-mail.
He flew from Boston and paid $2,000 to attend. But he can’t
unwire himself long enough to give the presenters his
complete focus.
If he did, he would face a fate worse than lack of productivity:
he would become bored.
“The Lure of Data,” Matt Richtel, NYT, July 7, 2003
Dilemma: the economics of attention
• Classic marketing issue: a wealth of
information creates a poverty of
attention
• Classic marketing responses:
– Personalization by profiling
– Customization
– Delivering the way they want it
The future
• The past: print-centric libraries
• The present: web-centric libraries
• The future: user-centric libraries?
– Customer focus, not organizational focus
– Not library technology but user technology
– What they have, not what we have
– What they want, not what we want to give
them
Creating a library for the millennial
generation: Susan Kent’s answer
• “The future for libraries is personalizing
service on a customer interest basis.”
• “The future focus of technology in libraries
will be promoting and delivering contentrich programming.”
• They have the technology; we need to
adapt to it
• Innovative electronic resource
management
A library accessible to user technology
• Desk top computer, Laptop, PDA,
Telephone, iPod, even game station
• Marketing message: “Any where, any
time, any way you want, your library is
there”
A library fully accessible to
user technology
• Circulation is an outdated measure of service
• Users who do not come to the library are not a
failure:
– “Treat all students like distance education students”
Ann Marie Casey, Central Michigan University
• Academic Message: Research from the dorm is
the norm!
• Public Message: Research from the car or
wherever you are!
A library that uses technology
to offer rich program content:
• Library resources accessible to PDAs,
telephones, emerging devices
– Local systems, indexes, full-text, video, audio
• Longer term: Open source library
resources accessible to all open source
devices including iPods, game players
“The future is here, it’s just not evenly
distributed” William Gibson
• Graphics: four library projects that are
already following the recommendations
made here
Our future, our challenge for the
next 20 years?
Shifting from what we know
to create library services
for a digital way of life
The Big Danger
• Graphic: Roz Chast cartoon of “The
Worry Tank”, people brainstorming ways to
be unhappy about the future!