Thing 15: future libraries will be staffed by robots

I read through Michael Stephens' Into a new world of librarianship and liked his idea that, in Library 2.0 "the Library is human," as it addresses the issue of a library as being a mere storage facility and distribution point for what is deemed worth collecting. A library, for me, should be responsive and helpful. We should endeavour to provide the service of collecting and providing access to knowledge in a way that is as inclusive as possible. Say what you like about marketing and brand image, but presenting a warm "human" face to customers will increase a library's profile, and increase the use of our services.

That's why it makes so much sense that Library 2.0 embraces Web2.0 technologies. Social networking sites, blogs, tag aggregators and so on are not just fancy technological tricks - they're something that is being adopted by customers/users in surprising numbers. It's still new at this point, but for a large amount of younger people these kinds of interfaces are the norm. As such they are unlikely to find much use in a library system which presents itself as static and top-down.

Of course, I'm not advocating we drop the cathedral and go all-out bazaar here. I'm simply suggesting that an awareness of the methods our customers use, and an integration of such, strikes me as an obvious next step for libraries.

It's Stephen's last point that I find most interesting - "Librarian 2.0 gets content." Content is easy to understand in the traditional, top-down, publisher to consumer model. It's user-generated content that I think it will be important to understand. The proliferation of, for example, user-submitted video on a site like YouTube, or even topic-related blogs are difficult to fit into a traditional model of libraries. Recoginising that often this is the sort of thing our customers will be seeking and dealing with is essential. Having an understanding of how such content can be accessed and used will be a valuable skill for librarians helping customers. An important part of this is to make such content readily available via library resources like the website and in-house computer systems.