On 5/17/12 5:00 PM, Asaf Bartov wrote:
Following up on the observation already made above, that Sue's well-received ALA talk has had little concrete impact (as far as we can tell) on libraries vis-a-vis Wikipedia, I'd say one hint for our new keynote would be this: we need to talk less about how Wikipedia works and why it's reliable [1], and more about librarianship in the 21st century including a genuine value proposition for the profession and their community. [2] Our prospective keynote should make concrete offers for collaboration about problems they care about today. We shouldn't expect them to snap to attention when we merely point out the large extent to which our missions are shared.
I like these points. Of course, as someone from the archives world, I'm still having a little trouble with the idea that libraries are being neglected. ;-) I think there is room for us to improve our messaging when it comes to libraries, though. Those libraries that we have worked with tend to be alike; we are best at appealing to academic or government libraries' special collections departments, but it is not clear what our message is to the vast majority of libraries and librarians. The main thing, broadly speaking, that archives and museums share in common is that they mostly have collections of historically significant, unique documents, while libraries mostly manage collections of commercially available material which they circulate to patrons. Sure, many libraries have special collections but these are typically small departments and often staffed by people with archival or preservation training.
What kinds of GLAM projects do we tend towards the most? Projects like content contributions, backstage passes, and editathons are basically predicated on unique collections, topic-area expertise on staff, or closed stack or work areas (the latter to a lesser extent). It's odd, because libraries are so ubiquitous, but we don't seem to be as sophisticated at thinking about what we have to offer libraries and what they have to offer us, and we are missing some opportunities to work with libraries where they are most interested. I think the most glaring areas are bibliographic records and programs. To take the first one: a few years ago, you would have thought that library catalogs were sacrosanct, but now in just about every online catalog you can tag, rate, review, comment, like, and tweet about a record. We need to find ways to integrate Wikipedia (and Wikisource and Commons) with library catalogs in ways that add real value to them.
But really, what do we want out of libraries? How do we want them to be working with us? How do we plan to benefit them? These are still open questions.
[2] While you make a good point about the poor state of articles on library science, particular libraries, and notable librarians -- it would mostly apply to library science students (as you say), but not to active librarians and decision-makers in the library world
Just a note: speaking as someone who's attended a library science graduate program in the US, I wouldn't even expect library science students to be much better at this. There are a few library science academics and PhD students, but most are getting professional degrees to become librarians. Most LIS students do not spend much time learning about library science history or even theory, except where it relates to actual practice. Nobody really cares about museum studies either; we care about the stuff in the museums.
Dominic