What Is Academic Libraries 2.0?
Susan Gibbon's The Academic Library and the Net Gen Student Explains
Jul 24, 2009
While much discourse has been made about “Library 2.0,” much of the literature has been from the public library viewpoint and has often revolved around Web 2.0 tools and trends. Gibbons recent publication, The Academic Library and the Net Gen Student: Making the Connections expands on this concept for a more inclusive look at libraries in universities, colleges, and higher education institutions.
Web 2.0 and Need for Technological Adaptation
In pointing out that the superior speed of technological innovation and change renders a constant flux of new tools to learn and develop, Gibbons argues that rather than struggling to keep up with change, academic librarians need to focus on aligning their culture, operations, services, and resources within an often conservative and rigid environment juxtaposed in a sea of technological change. In doing so, Gibbon points out five themes for best practices which libraries could become a model for other campus units.
Adopting an R & D Culture
Unlike in private industry, where research and development often implies business and competitive intelligence, academic libraries should focus on continually evaluating, examining, and assessing services, resources, and staffing to ensure that they meet the teaching, learning, and research needs of the whole the academic institution. R & D should be standard and part of the duties of library staff, with mechanisms to capture many of the ideas that materialize from “sandboxes” where experimentation can happen. In order to “think outside the box,” it is necessary new ideas emerge from outside academic librarianship.
Rethinking the “Library as Place”
No longer a space for just physical book collections, the academic library is a space for study, research, and a discourse of the disciplines – it should strive to be the “third place” as a social hub on campus. For instance, where food and drink policies were once rigidly restrictive, relaxing those policies and having a café would in many ways extend the library as a welcoming space for students as almost home away from dorm.
Accepting That the Library is Not the Virtual Place
Although many have argued that the library is increasingly moving to a digital, virtual online environment, the fact is that much of the subscription-based online content is not referred to by students and faculty as the first point of access for research as most still associate the library with physical collections. Libraries should instead look for ways to integrate their resources to university’s online course management portals, thus aligning library holdings with course reading lists.
Many of the Web 2.0 technologies already offer capabilities for this kind of access. As Gibbons argues, technology is no longer a barrier to access; rather, it’s the library that refuses to disaggregate and disengage from control of their content and services.
Supporting Authorship in the Digital Age
With the online web environment, most students are already used to remixing and repurposing content, so much so that the lines are blurred for copyright. With blogs, wikis, and other social media materials, it is no longer as easy as it once to distinguish between author and reader. As a result of open access and other copyright-friendly content, students are more apt to experimenting and embedding images, videos, and audio content into their work. With this requires a different mindset and methodology in collection management for academic libraries.
Understanding the Library's Users
Although libraries must change, they must align themselves with their communities, listening to the users. Short of hiring its own in-house anthropologist, libraries need to conduct cultural probes, field studies, case studies, surveys, and interviews to under their students populace. As Gibbons argues, academic librarians can no longer base their own college experiences onto today's students.
Gibbons' book exemplifies the development and emergence of a new academic library paradigm, one which extends beyond just Web 2.0 social media technologies and the existing information commons in order to blend these ideas around the evolution of a new generation – a Net Generation – of users who demand a different response to library collections and services. It's a book well worth reading.
 |
