Movarec, J. (2012). The Future of Academic Libraries: An interview with Steven J. Bell. Education First. Retreived from http://www.educationfutures.com/2012/03/26/the-future-of-academic-libraries-an-interview-with-steven-j-bell/
Saturday, November 10, 2012
Academic Library Roles
Below is a chart depicting the historical, current, and future roles of the academic library. Do you think this is an accurate depiction?
Movarec, J. (2012). The Future of Academic Libraries: An interview with Steven J. Bell. Education First. Retreived from http://www.educationfutures.com/2012/03/26/the-future-of-academic-libraries-an-interview-with-steven-j-bell/
Movarec, J. (2012). The Future of Academic Libraries: An interview with Steven J. Bell. Education First. Retreived from http://www.educationfutures.com/2012/03/26/the-future-of-academic-libraries-an-interview-with-steven-j-bell/
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The only thing that I would say isn't entirely accurate on the chart is that service design will never settle and will/should always continue to shift with community needs.
ReplyDeleteI do not see Steven Bell's vision as a fact on how it will be the academic library in the future. I still believe on physical spaces and that the Universities will mantain control of part of their resources only for its students, not opening for the self-teaching knowmads.
ReplyDeleteThe section that I have the most trouble imagining is "Highly automated, mobile" reference being the future of reference librarianship in academic institutions. I can envision libraries providing more mobile reference options, but I do not think that "Highly automated" reference interactions will ever be able to adequately replace that benefits of a dynamic reference exchange. Perhaps budgetary constraints will require academic libraries to institute more automated reference services, but I think that would be detrimental to the quality of service.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Dallas that reference services in academic libraries will never become fully automated, for the main reason that computer reference interactions are nearly always inferior to in person or even phone interactions. No matter how convienent VR is for undergrads working on last minute research papers, it is nearly always much more difficult to lead them to or instruct them in the use of a source than it would be otherwise.
ReplyDeleteAlso, what is meant by the terms "blended librarian" and "knowmad"?
While reference librarians will continue to grow fewer and far between, I agree that there presence will become stronger in the virtual word and some need will persist to have them at an accessible location. I find phrasing like "highly-automated" to be worrisome in itself. You could argue this for any given point. I think we all tend to act a bit like robots on the job. With the way reference libraries rely on search engines nowadays, I'd even say that it is rather automated at the moment without getting into semantics.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I see wrong with this is the on demand part of collections. I think that is happening now and has happening in the past. All collections were "on demand" in a sense. If we needed or wanted something from a library our demand of it lead us to it. As for the physical form of items, it has and will continue to changed.
ReplyDeleteI also do not agree with libraries being embedded in academic institutions. Libraries are all around us and will continue to serve the needs of the many.
I do agree with librarians blending. We can see this today with most of us trying to attain knowledge and understanding in more than one sector of our program. The areas are becoming specialized but the need to expand our information knowledge base is causing us to blend specializations.