User-Driven Changes in the Future of Reference
John Gibson
Without the aid of a DeLorean or the assistance of Michael J. Fox, this chapter goes back to the past to understand the present and to speculate on the future. It is of course impossible to know exactly what the makeup of tomorrow’s library will be. However, using what is known about developing technologies, this chapter attempts to predict the course that libraries in general, and reference services in particular, will take in the years ahead, keeping firmly in mind this caveat: “Most stories set in the future are examinations of the present in glittery disguise” (Williams 2002, 79).
In 2002, this author presented at a conference at the University of Memphis; the topic was anonymous proxies and identity protection. At this conference, he began to develop a greater understanding of how innovation was a response to needs. The night before the conference, the attendees were given a brief tour of the improvements that the university was making in their classroom infrastructure. The tour guide noted several of the innovations that designers used in updating the campus. First, the floors were designed to handle high-speed fiber network connections. Second, the design of the classrooms exhibited a visually interesting use of space through its extension of the vertical lines of the rooms. One classroom in particular was exceptionally impressive; the layout of the new podium for this room was reminiscent of the Imperial Senate chamber in Star Wars. The acoustics were impeccable, and it was evident that much thought had been given to the needs of the faculty utilizing the space. Such attention to detail was evidence of how design elements were implemented in response to needs articulated by the students and faculty. Another example of this phenomenon of innovation in response to user need had to do with student computing. The Memphis students had requested quicker access to resources and more space in the classroom. Out of that need to improve available resources, there emerged state-of-the-art classrooms with high-end personal computers (PCs) and flexible floor plans to accommodate the students’ needs. The University of Memphis is just one example of this kind of needs assessment, planning, and design implementation that holds promise for the future of students, faculty, and information professionals engaged in higher education. This discussion examines such changes in areas like storage, access, and creation of resources, and their impact on the library as possible precursors of the next evolutionary point.
Until very recently in the history of libraries, information was bound to a specific place (the library) and a specific set of materials (the collection) and access was constrained by limitations of time (the schedule of the physical place). A librarian mediated the access and retrieval experience. At the close of the twentieth century, due to innovations in information storage and retrieval brought about by the Internet and personal computing, those boundaries were broken. With the information revolution came new challenges. Patrons’ information needs were, as they are now, the driving force for innovation. As libraries transitions from their brick-and-mortar past to their online future, assessment of and responses to the wants and needs of library patrons will be essential.
Reference and the Evolution of Technology
Historically libraries were envisioned as repositories of knowledge, dedicated to holding the thoughts and words of past generations. Until recently, due to limitations of space, librarians have often had to be selective about which resources would fill their buildings. Space restrictions were later offset by the age of the Internet, which provided new opportunities to store whole collections of data that would have been previously unthinkable. Reference librarians have made it their mission to teach patrons how to access and use digital resources (Woodward 2000). Librarianship, therefore, has appeared to take a new approach to dealing with change. Previously the library would expand local collections, but now many collections are globally accessible and easily shared. Some large collaborative projects have already helped to accelerate the transformation of the physical library. Examples include “the large digitization projects found in the Library of Congress’s American Memory program, the Cooperative Digitization Project, the California Digital Library, the Cooperative Online Resource Catalog (CORC) initiated by OCLC and Journal Storage (JSTOR)” (Intner and Johnson 2008, 112). The library of tomorrow is evolving from a “collect and protect” mentality to the “search and share” mode. “To help meet the new collaboration needs of a digital society,” libraries are responding in a number of ways, including offering distance education classrooms and teleconferencing centers (Woodward 2000, 121). The scope of change resulting from increased collaboration may someday prove to be the digital generation’s Gutenberg press, as real information is being streamed from libraries and data centers into the homes of researchers. Julie M. Still’s chapter in this book, “A History of Reference,” provides an in-depth overview of the history of reference services. However, to put into focus the relationship between librarians and users, a brief historical discussion is in order.
Problems relating to the management of information and making it available to users are as old as written language. One of the first tasks of librarians was preservation of resources for both current and future scholars. During the Dark Ages in Europe, collective stores of knowledge were threatened by bands of marauding hordes. Scholars attempted to save that information from destruction by copying it, archiving it, and protecting it. (One could argue that this is somewhat analogous to how modern librarians rescue unique materials through the curatorship of special collections.) During that chaotic time, much of the written knowledge of humanity, as suggested in Cahill’s (1995) How the Irish Saved Civilization, was forgotten or lost to fire and war:
As the Roman Empire fell, as all through Europe matted, unwashed barbarians descended on the Roman cities, looting artifacts and burning books, the Irish, who were just learning to read and write, took up the great labor of copying all of western literature—everything they could lay their hands on. (3)
Cahill suggested that if not for the troves of data stored away in scrolls and harvested from ancient writing by scholars, later civilizations could have been in the dark for a long time.
During the Age of Enlightenment, as the world of knowledge burgeoned, librarians struggled to keep pace with user needs with regard to access and retrieval. One such response was the French cataloging code of 1791. Library scholar Judith Hopkins (1992) stated that this code “was notable for two reasons: it was the first national cataloging code and it was the first code to provide for the use of cards in the cataloging process, with playing cards serving as the medium of choice” (1). Thus, this inventory management system, the card catalog, was the solution to the user need for a method to track and categorize information about library books. At the beginning of the computer age in the late twentieth century, a solution was needed to assist researchers in retrieving great stores of data—data that had grown exponentially and was straining against the constraints of the physical card catalog system. During this time, librarians began to use digital indexes and digital catalog systems, which eventually became searchable on the Internet at many libraries.
The following scenario is typical of the current library reference experience. A library user stops at a reference desk, either in person or virtually, to ask for help for a variety of reasons (academic, personal, work related, etc.). After speaking with a reference librarian, the patron is able to access and utilize a selection of resources. If the user is not at the library, he or she may be accessing the librarian’s expertise as well as the information using a PC or a mobile device. The user may access that data immediately, request that it be delivered in digital format, or request a physical artifact for delivery to the user’s library of choice. This process is an evolution from previous models; in the past, library users would have to wait for the physical delivery of items in print that were not immediately available. It should also be noted that libraries are not only a storehouse of data, as they were in the past, but also a retrieval service. While the tools for finding, requesting, and retrieving information have changed, the mission of the reference librarian remains the same: to make information accessible and to instruct users in how to utilize it to meet their needs.
Amid radical changes in how information is stored, accessed, and retrieved, many societal factors remain. The new horizon offers challenges and unique opportunities for librarians to address the evolving state of the library. The next section looks at the current state of reference librarianship concerning the needs of information access by current users.
Current Challenges and Innovations
The reference librarians of today face challenges in information access ranging from digital rights management (DRM), artificial intelligence in smart systems, and even the “deep web’s” isolation of data (i.e., information that is hidden out of reach of most search engines) to the problems associated with utilizing tools and utilities that frequently change.
Legislation and Regulation
Perhaps one of the biggest issues facing librarianship today is the onslaught of regulatory initiatives regarding the Internet, intellectual property, and DRM.
DRM is commonly defined as the set of technological protection measures (TPM) by which rights holders prevent the use of digital content they license in ways that could compromise the commercial value of their products. Restrictions on such uses as downloading, printing, saving and emailing content are encoded directly in the products or the hardware needed to use them and are therefore in immediate effect. (Kasprowski 2010, 49)
Digital rights issues are divisive. Opponents of increased restrictions argue that new technologies add new limitations that could be used to curtail the creation and sharing of information. “The opponents argue that DRM is not very effective in preventing piracy, but can prevent the legitimate users taking full advantage of the digital media” (Rayna and Striukova 2008, 110). Rayna and Striukova explained how DRM may make the acquisition of knowledge difficult if not impossible in the future when historians need to access the protected information. Proponents of the DRM movement argue that artists, authors, and corporations need safeguards to protect digital assets and intellectual property that belong to them.
To help users to work within the constraints of DRM, librarians must educate themselves about the various regulations, including limitations with regard to copyright and fair use. Many librarians who take a stand in opposition to DRM initiatives do so to prevent a future monopoly over intellectual content. There is also a concern about keeping information available to those users who could be disenfranchised by the “digital divide.” Information resources (databases, subscriptions, etc.) are expensive. An unintended consequence of DRM regulations, taken to an extreme, is that they may create an information disparity between the “haves” and the “have-nots.” This disparity may result not only due to economic factors (e.g., lack of a home PC and dependence on library computers) but also, as in the case of independent scholars, due to a lack of affiliation with a major research institution.
Artificial Intelligence
Libraries have many technologies at their disposal for delivering information and answering queries. “Smart response” artificial intelligence (AI) systems are being used to handle simple reference questions and requests. The Robeson Library at Rutgers University (www.libraries.rutgers.edu/robeson), for example, has a widget on its site called “Ask Gary.” “Gary” is an automated “reference librarian” who answers reference questions via the Artificial Intelligence Markup Language (AIML). Essentially, “Gary” can respond to a basic request by “reading” and interpreting the context of a question and assessing it against a database of frequently asked questions. When no answer is possible, Gary will then help the patron reach live help via phone, chat, or e-mail.
Since 2011, AI systems have been integrated into Google’s search function and into search products like Apple’s Siri. With AI, the research is becoming more active, deep, and insightful. AI software development started to change significantly around 2011 with the development of the new programming language named Dart, a brainchild of Google, which represented a major “behind the scenes” innovation. The goal of the developers of these AI tools initially was to take routine facts and tasks and handle them via audio commands or, in some cases, via visual gestures (as in the Microsoft Xbox Kinect and Nintendo Wii entertainment systems). The implications of how these developments could change library reference, particularly library-user interface, are profound.
Libraries now have tools to help find online sources previously unavailable by using massive computing resources in the “cloud.” The continued evolution of libraries will require both the user and information professional to have more familiarity with these tools; however, such mastery will enable the library user to spend more time in working on quality research and less time locating items buried deep inside databases that were often inaccessible. On the library side of the equation, library systems will need to invest in the supporting infrastructure and librarians will need to invest in the intellectual effort required for mastery of these tools. The technology will not remove the need for reference/research librarians but instead will utilize their analytical and teaching skills to enable users to be successful.
Crowd-Sourcing Information
The open source movement offers a nonproprietary and communal approach to the development of information resources and information tools; the movement advocates shared programming and information sharing. Data from storehouses like Wikipedia and operating systems like Linux has increased the amount of shared knowledge available. Creators of open source technologies have the mind-set that the greater collective will provide answers and resources that are more useful to more people, by harnessing the talents of many to focus on the same problems.
Wikipedia, the web-based encyclopedia, is a highly successful example of such a technique. Over time, the content of the articles is refined by input and fine-tuning by the masses of the resource’s users and editors. Wikipedia has, of course, some drawbacks. The entries in Wikipedia are not intended to be primary resources in academia; from time to time, content is subject to “poisoning” by people with contrary opinions on a matter. However, this group-editing initiative has proven to be a highly successful and reasonable approach to information dissemination. The information in Wikipedia provides a useful starting point, particularly so with well-documented entries (i.e., those with citations and outside links). As with any encyclopedia article, however, information should be verified and supplemented with other sources, particularly so if one is writing a scholarly or professional paper.
Google, the Internet search engine powerhouse, has expanded. Critics have branded it as a major challenge to libraries because it has similar goals as libraries, including the reference/research function (Chad and Miller 2005, 5). By the simple act of entering a search term, a user taps into the power of Google Books, Google Scholar, Google Images, as well as the treasure trove of information accessible on the web. Recognizing this power and ease of use, reference librarians are also figuring out how to utilize Google, how to instruct patrons on its effective use, and how to develop partnerships with the corporation. For example, a person may be seeking information on the island of Java. A Google search will yield some geographical information, but most of the initial hits will be about the programming language used to develop software. A librarian who is competent in customizing research queries and knowledgeable about the workings of Google and its search algorithms will be able to guide users through more efficient use of the power of this search tool. The sheer number of hits can be overwhelming to a student or a novice researcher. The librarian can serve as a guide in teaching and promoting information literacy skills: to steer these users to the correct tools (perhaps Google Scholar); to help the user create effective search queries; and to help the user verify the validity and/or the utility of the hits returned.
Technology
A number of technologies on the horizon will profoundly influence how information is delivered. In turn, these technologies will profoundly influence the interaction of reference librarians and end users. As an example, near-field wireless (NFW) communications is a technology that allows small devices to communicate with each other. PayPal can utilize wireless technology to perform transactions on some mobile smart devices. Such technology could expand to libraries; it might be adapted for patron material transactions and identity confirmation. Libraries are now expanding videoconferencing to remotely help support patrons despite distance barriers. The idea is that patrons who are unable to make it into the library buildings can still have an effective and positive reference experience. Currently, similar technology is now being used to support chat and other communication avenues. It might be that such technology, when combined with new research tools, will someday allow larger libraries to support satellite locations. As funding continues to decrease, many library systems will be challenged on how to meet growing demand for user services; new technologies may be able to provide greater efficiencies for offering system-wide information resources and services such as reference and instruction.
To meet the growing needs of the virtual library patron, librarians will likely turn even to communication resources available through the web. Social media can help people become more aware of changes and resources at libraries and can simultaneously reach a larger audience. One could argue that tools like Facebook and Twitter have made possible the ability to interact with patrons across the nation. The digital revolution continues to provide new tools for virtual communication. Technologies like QR (quick response) codes provide a sort of reality layer over virtual bookmarks—bar codes repurposed for a new generation. These bar codes allow businesses to extend their reach to customers anywhere they can envision a printable square. A QR code can contain metadata about a product that, when used with a reader, can help visualize resources on a computer or display screen. Libraries have adapted to social media sites, QR codes, and other technologies like self-scanning and self-checkout terminals, electronic book displays, and kiosks, and some have even created their own avatars, extending their digital assets by using the physical world’s information in the virtual world.
Conclusion
“Everything in this universe is perpetually in a state of change” (Aitchison 2001, 3). As can be gleaned from the proceeding discussion, the future of librarianship is one that encompasses new rules, technologies, and techniques that could eradicate old stereotypes about what a library is and what librarians do. The evolutionary changes in what constitutes a “library” and how that library interacts with its users will occur by refining what works and discarding that which does not. If the layout of all the future could be revealed in an “Ask Gary” query or by a question to Apple’s Siri, life would be transparent. Alas, there is not yet a crystal ball app for that.
REFERENCES
Aitchison, Jean. 2001. Language Change: Progress or Decay? New York: Cambridge University Press.
Cahill, Thomas. 1995. How the Irish Saved Cvilization: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe. New York: Anchor Books.
Chad, Ken, and Paul Miller. 2005. “Do Libraries Matter? The Rise of Library 2.0.” White Paper. Birmingham, UK: Talis. www.capita-libraries.co.uk/downloads/white_papers/DoLibrariesMatter.pdf.
Hopkins, Judith. 1992. “The 1791 French Cataloging Code and the Origins of the Card Catalog.” Libraries and Culture 27 (4): 378–404.
Intner, Sheila S., and Peggy Johnson. 2008. Fundamentals of Technical Services Management. Chicago: American Library Association.
Kasprowski, Rafal. 2010. “Perspectives on DRM: Between Digital Rights Management and Digital Restrictions Management.” Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 36 (3): 49–54.
Rayna, Thierry, and Ludmilla Striukova. 2008. “White Knight or Trojan Horse? The Consequences of Digital Rights Management for Consumers, Firms and Society.” Communications and Strategies 1 (69): 109–26.
Williams, Sam. 2002. Arguing A.I. New York: Random House.
Woodward, Jeannette. 2000. Countdown to a New Library: Managing the Building Project. Chicago: American Library Association.