Libraries in Germany – Expert Discussion

The new, Web-based world of information poses some serious challenges – and not only for ‘digital immigrants’. Even traditional institutions are having to reinvent themselves, particularly if, as in the case of libraries, they have always dealt with information and knowledge as their ‘raw materials’.

The generation born around 1990, i.e. the one that is now coming of age, has no conscious memory of a world without mobile phones or Internet. Some sociologists call these people ‘digital natives’ – natives of a new digital world in which the older generations feel like ‘digital immigrants’. In prosperous, networked societies and, to a rapidly increasing extent, in countries like China and India, people have access to more information than ever before at the touch of a button. Above all, however, information users are taking on a more active role in electronic communication.

Never before has it been so easy to contact others, to exchange large volumes of information as and when one wants, to keep one another informed or to work together without restrictions of time or place. With these new possibilities, the internet provides libraries with great challenges.

Enhanced online catalogues

Many libraries had online catalogues back in the 1990s, but in most cases they were fairly inaccessible monoliths. There was no provision for associative discovery or stimulating ‘browsing’ along virtual bookshelves. A catalogue was designed to be a text-based, self-contained directory of the resources held by the institution in question. This concept is out of place now in an information environment in which large amounts of useful information relating to the catalogued resources (and, increasingly, even the resources themselves) are available online.

Today, for instance, many online catalogues display digitized book and CD covers. Articles taken from Wikipedia (a free encyclopaedia written collaboratively by large numbers of Internet users) that mention the book listed in the catalogue are displayed. An online catalogue might also mention whether mass digitization projects like Google Books have already published all or part of the text online. Many of these new kinds of information resources can be integrated into the catalogue, producing visible, clickable content links to other books in the catalogue.

In this process of revolutionizing online catalogues, the focus is on the active information user. For the user, the ability to set up one’s own book lists, one’s own comments and one’s own key words, sometimes even to manage one’s own personal copy of the publication as a PDF file, is something people are starting to expect – ideally with seamless access from the same location from which they find their information resources. In most cases, of course, this will be their computer and the Internet. Catalogues and other library database systems are therefore not only enabling users to view the information resources, but are increasingly becoming integrated virtual workbenches for information users.

With a few mouse clicks, users can compile information into lists, add tags (i.e. assign ad hoc key words) and import/export information into/from other systems. After all, hardly anyone will go to the trouble of setting up and using their own resource collection online if they cannot also move the information where they want it and do what they want with the data. The failure of Digital Rights Management (DRM) in the entertainment industry has shown that the attempt to restrict users and their information to their own PCs using artificial limits is unpopular and not very likely to succeed in the Internet age.

The world of open content

Increasingly, online content is freely accessible on the Internet. The major US educational establishments, for instance, are moving towards making lecture notes and video clips freely available under free licences. E-learning media can also be found in among the entertainment media on platforms like YouTube. Creative commons licences can be assigned to uploaded videos at the touch of a button, giving users not only free access but also all the right to use the media creatively, modify it and re-publish derivative work, in line with the Open Access concept. In today’s world of open content, libraries are discovering important new concepts and tasks.

Communities of libraries and library users

Social networking sites like Facebook and the copycat German service StudiVZ have become virtual meeting places for well over 100 million people worldwide. Users create personal profiles and make friends with other users, and can then follow what their friends say about themselves, write comments on their virtual ‘walls’ or simply chat.

Libraries are also experimenting with this medium. Having their own profile pages gives libraries a way of keeping people informed in a simple, concise, entertaining manner. Some library users have even added their library as a friend! In addition, virtual information services and even searchable library catalogues can be added within the Facebook platform using ‘widgets’. However, social networking sites are more than just fancy channels for traditional library marketing. They are in fact tools for local communities of librarians and library users. As such, they can, for instance, help support collaboration between a specialist library and the staff of the relevant university department.

Of course, all these concepts are not entirely new. Weblogs, for instance, were invented about ten years ago, in other words long before the current boom in social networking sites. A weblog, or blog, is an informal online diary, usually produced by one author, who regularly adds new entries. Many libraries and librarians have been writing their own blogs for years. In an ideal scenario, they help to give the library a ‘human voice’ and to create new interaction possibilities – blog posts can usually be commented on by readers. Some libraries are now using blogs to update the news section on their websites. This is practical because content can be created easily in a blog and then integrated and reused elsewhere by means of machine-readable feeds. Today, library services are becoming ‘Library 2.0’ services by taking themselves with their data and services into the online environments of information users. And they are continuing library traditions by making themselves available in many different locations in many different ways, supporting information users in their role as trustworthy pilots of the information seas.