ALA Midwinter 2007: Raising the Next-Gen Resource Sharing Librarian

Mary Hollerich, Audrey Huff, Michael Porter, and Michael Stephens spoke.

Mary Hollerich (National Library of Medicine):

• Spoke a little about kids today: different learning styles, tech savvy, collaborative, thriving on change, multitaskers, learning resource sharing on the job
• Resource sharing is more than just ILL: blurred boundaries with ILL, circulation, and acquisitions
• Expanded concept of resource sharing: lots of cooperation – in reference, collection development, cataloging, even storage facilities…
• Grad school wishlist: target audience: future managers of resource sharing products and services
• keepin it real: internships, assistantships, practicums
• She’d love to see online continuing education courses (hmm – SHE could do them using OPAL!)
• Also use listservs, blogs and wikis for discussion
• She’d also like to see a mentoring type program that pairs a “newbie” with a more experienced practitioner

Audrey Huff (Northwestern University School of Law):

A Next-Gen LIS graduate is:

• comfortable with technology and change
• a user of resources
• pro user and pro access
• aware of the professional forums available
• has collaborative experience – can work with teams

She took lots of reference classes, but there were no classes on access services (no ILL, circ, resource sharing classes) – where are the classes/issues relevant to resource sharing?

Her advice:

• do internships (become a practitioner as soon as possible)
• look at the literature

On the job: she’s looking for info – what works, how to use stats, how to understand patron expectations, understanding resource-sharing platforms and systems, etc… (me – all the stuff library school doesn’t teach!)

Michael Porter (WebJunction):

• The title on his powerpoint is “Gimme Gimme Gimme” – cool
• Libraries are two things: content and community

step 1: break down barriers

• institutional barriers
• personal fears… another type of barriers

step 2: show your true colors (went from black and white slide to a color slide – nice)

• sometimes hard to think about the “me” in “gimme” – it’s ok to think about ourselves – we want the same things

step 3: effectively use me…

• me is our users
• me is You, too!
• We can be librarians, and we can also be users…
• Lots of people here use Netflix – wow!
• Move from calling it ILL to calling it Fulfillment (that’s inserting a more customer service, corporate mentality into the library)
• Give me what I want
• be there for me when I want you – be available when needed
• give me my stuff the way I want it – content not container idea
• Be where the user is
• prove your importance to ME!
• Let ME do it myself! Unmediated ILL…

Michael Stephens (Dominican University):

Pondering the future…

• Cool new librarian titles
• Immersive Learning Librarian (the gaming librarian – wow)
• “we are looking for a librarian 2.0 in preparation for a library 2.0 world” – from a job ad
• Nextgen Librarian – at Wayne State University….
• talked about how the world has changed via web 2.0 stuff
• Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything … looks like a good book
• showed lots of examples of what libraries are doing to reach out in new ways
• “the trendspotting librarian” – we need to understand what’s coming next
• use wired, etc to trendspot – ads, articles
• the adaptive librarian: education flexible professionals, you have to be flexible
• the experience librarian – coolness.
• Experience – Lunds grocery store is reserving community rooms…
• the sharing librarian – we need to be open, decentralized, etc…
• we need to: learn to learn, adapt to change, etc…

ALA_MW_2007, MW2007, ala2007