There is an invitation-only event wrapping up today called Global Research Library 2020, co-convened by the University of Washington Libraries and Microsoft. In a time when academic libraries are experiencing the very disruptive change of the searchable, digitial, Internet environment, these sorts of events can be useful to help everyone get their bearings.
The Bielefeld Conference is another event, with invited speakers, that explores this space, it is bi-annual, the last one was the 8th International Bielefeld Conference in 2006. I haven't heard anything about the next one although it should be coming up in a few months (hint to conference organisers: I am available...)
Deepak posted a video on YouTube that I saw in Facebook, reacting to Jon Udell's posting about the GRL event. How's that for the linked participative web.
Udell says
The opportunities are abundantly clear to me, but what about risks? The only risk I can think of is maintaining status quo.
which is actually quite similar to my response to an interview question I just completed last night.
To me, research libraries need to identify the opportunities of the networked science environment, and be willing to cede roles in areas that are better handled by technology or by other organisations. There are still many roles for science libraries to play in terms of educational outreach, particularly into the "citizen science" communities and "citizen health-information" areas. There is a huge role in figuring out how to preserve a scientific record that can cross from YouTube to Facebook to two or three blogs in a since thread. And a huge role to play in helping to manage scientific data.
However, time is not going to stand still waiting for libraries to step up to the plate. What I heard from several people at SciFoo was basically (paraphrasing wildly) "we don't need to go to the library for books any more, so we don't even think about the library any more - we'd love them to be participants in the discussion, but they're either not there, or they're not willing to change perspectives from the old Temple of Books days".
My post with the single most traffic and response was "is the research library obsolete?"
I think ultimately the answer is "yes, unless it transforms itself into an e-science outreach organisation".
But that's my perspective as someone coming from outside the library, with a physics and computer science background - I'm not a librarian.
Deepak, that's the best I can come up with quickly... more thoughts on this throughout the week.
My categories for these kinds of postings is Academic Library Future.
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