by Helen Josephine, Silicon Valley Chapter, Science-Technology and Engineering Divisions

A report on the new “bookless engineering library” was included in “Morning Edition” on NPR in July 2010. After this report aired, library and literary blogs quickly began discussing the future and fate of libraries in the digital age—is it the wave of the future or the end of the world as we know it? We find that some of our student and faculty users prefer digital content to print, while others do not. The digital library is not the end of the book and print collections, but the beginning of something new and exciting.

After four years of planning, the new Engineering Library at Stanford University opened on August 9, 2010. The vision document for the new library, SEQ2 Library Vision: The Information Collaboratory informed not only the physical design of the new facility but the staffing, collection and service models as well. In addition to the challenge to replace the physical collection with digital content, three themes for the new library were called out in this document: high-touch human contact, mediation and subject expertise and mutability or continuous change and experimentation.
To achieve our goal of becoming a largely bookless library with access to all of the online resources required by one of the premier schools of Engineering in the world, the constant questions we asked of our vendors were—can we get it online?, can it be flexible?, can it be self-service? We anticipate that even more innovative information resources and devices will be available to us as we continue to evolve and experiment with new technologies, new services and new vendors.

One current experiment is our e-reader program, a combination of circulating e-readers and tethered e-readers (10 Kindle, 8 Sony Touch,1 Nook,1 iPad) with content selected by librarians. In addition to the content we have selected and purchased for the e-readers, we are also testing the ability to load and read content that we have licensed from e-book vendors that allow for unlimited content download. Student feedback on the project has been positive and the e-readers are always checked-out. The e-reader program is part of our mission to understand the information needs of the current and future students and to experiment with new technologies.

Our physical space is one-third the size of our former library, but the open floor plan of the new library and the foldable, stackable, moveable furniture allows multiple configurations within our 6,000 sq ft. space. Collaborative work areas for groups of 4 or more with tables pushed together, individual work at tables near the windows, as well as impromptu classroom seating for groups as large as 50 are all feasible. The technology in the library includes a 60”digital bulletin board for announcements of library events and information plus School of Engineering events and student projects, a rolling display cart housing a 60” monitor with touch capability, an information kiosk using a 23” touch screen computer for basic library information and a 3M RFID system for book self-check out and security.

When you define your library as a place for innovation and experimentation with information technology and digital content, the possible roles for librarians are limitless and the types of services offered are dynamic and ever-changing. This is a true definition of “future-ready.”

Helen Josephine is Head of the Frederick Emmons Terman Engineering Library (http://lib.stanford.edu/englib), part of the Jen-Hsun Huang Engineering Center at Stanford University.  She is a past-president of the Silicon Valley chapter of SLA and has been a member of SLA since 1999. She has also been active in many regional, state and national library groups, including the Arizona Online Users Group, California Academic and Research Libraries, and ALA.

by Jill Heinze, Virginia Chapter, CI Division

From my vantage point as a research analyst, I see novel-worthy tales play out daily in the form of mergers, lobbying, new product launches, bankruptcies, client wins and losses, and on and on. With all of the drama unfolding in the marketplace, how proficient are we at capturing that dynamism in our presentations and reports? If you’re like me, you could probably stand to become a better storyteller. Even more, if you listen to some observers, you have to become a respectable storyteller to be future-ready.

In his book A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink asserts, “When facts become so widely available and instantly accessible, each one becomes less valuable. What begins to matter is the ability to place these facts in context and to deliver them with emotional impact.” Skeptical? Consider the success of Freakonomics¸ the book that transformed a collection of dry statistics into possible explanations for how society works and become a bestseller.

When weaving your tales, try emulating what I consider to be the traits of a good storyteller:

Creates well-developed characters.

A talented storyteller knows the history of her characters, their emotional and physical make up, what motivates them, and how they will grow and evolve. Similarly, a business info pro could enhance research by communicating the back story and drivers influencing “characters” like companies, executives, politicians, and products, and include suggestions about how those characters could change or act in the future given certain market conditions.

Says enough, but not too much.

There are few things more tedious than reading a story that leaves nothing to the imagination. While I don’t suggest leaving out key details or making too many assumptions, I do recommend considering how you can say more with less. Sometimes a single descriptive adjective, a clear graph, or a powerful image can get the point across and even improve the audience’s retention.

Constructs a plot.

Stories have a beginning, middle, and end. If you feel you’re assembling a collection of facts but losing the point in the mix, step back and see how you can reorganize the information so that it has a logical, compelling progression and reinforces your main conclusions.

Displays unique insight.

The best authors examine everyday occurrences in a new light and discover something profound. Maybe you’re no Shakespeare, but sometimes it’s those little nuggets that are commonly overlooked that can add large amounts of value to your deliverables. Try looking for themes, outliers, contradictions, trends and anomalies to deepen your clients’ understanding of a topic.

A note of caution: Unlike fiction writers, info pros need to tell stories responsibly. If you exaggerate too much for dramatic effect, you could sacrifice your credibility and, even worse, support bad decision-making.

To get going on your page-turners, check out some of the suggestions in Pink’s book and start small. In my case, I’m making a concerted effort to use graphics to convey my meaning and ensuring that each of my PowerPoint slides paints a verbal and visual picture. The future-readiness of PowerPoint is, well, another story.

Jill Stover Heinze is a librarian, marketing research analyst, active member of SLA’s Competitive Intelligence Division (CID) and Virginia Chapter, and a proud member of her profession. She earned her M.S.L.S. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has worked in academic and business environments and is an invited presenter on library marketing topics. She is currently serving the CID as blog editor and is participating in the division’s annual conference planning.

by R. David Lankes, iSchool, Syracuse University

Why “what is the future of libraries” is a bad question, and a way to start an agenda.

Future Ready from R. David Lankes on Vimeo.

R. David Lankes is an associate professor at the iSchool as well as director of the Information Institute of Syracuse (IIS) which houses several high-profile research efforts, including the Educator’s Reference Desk and projects for NSF’s National Science Digital Library. Dr. Lankes co-founded the AskERIC project in 1992 and also founded the Virtual Reference Desk project and was the first fellow of the American Library Association’s Office for Information Technology Policy.

by Berika Williams, PR Chair 2011, IT Division/Web Services Librarian, UH-Victoria

I love this profession and I’m completely fulfilled in the work that I do. As information professionals, we adapt to emerging technologies surrounding the access to information we provide. As a result this poses fresh opportunities to organize, manage, represent, and access it.

I believe that being Future Ready is about knowing where your values lie and having goals, dreams, and pursuits that support them. I value the work that I do, time spent with family, friends, colleagues, giving back to the community, and being open to new skill sets and technologies. I am learning to say “no” to commitments, things, and even people that pull me away from my vision.

I am Future Ready at my job and beyond the office by being under the mentorship of those more experienced and absorbing as much training, knowledge, professional development (and interpersonal) skills to be truly successful as a newbie librarian. The greatest part is that this development is continuous and built on life-long learning.

We are service oriented, but we also enhance the goals and missions of organizations by providing consultation in being more efficient in information management. Many of us sit on the brink of technological developments and create new tools and systems that meet a variety of information needs. The versatility of our knowledge base provides immense value. This is why I love this profession.

Berika Williams is the web services librarian at the Victoria College/ University of Houston-Victoria Library. She is currently the PR chair for the Information Technology Division of SLA.

by Bill Fisher, Silicon Valley and Oregon Chapters, Leadership & Management, Business & Finance Divisions

Among the many responses this question may elicit, one that resonates with me is the idea that we need to understand and evaluate our heritage, our history and how we address our current circumstances. This outlook is influenced by an article I used this past Fall in preparing for a presentation on change. The article dealt with two major forest fires — one in 1949 and the second in 1994 and the inability of firefighters at both these fires to anticipate and respond to rapid change — they were not future ready. Thirteen firefighters died in the 1949 fire and fourteen died in the 1994 fire. As the title of the article (“Drop Your Tools”) suggests, these firefighters were not agile and paid the ultimate price for this lack of agility. The author defined tools very broadly to include the professional practices and patterns of thinking these firefighters took with them into the field as well as their axes, shovels and chainsaws.

As we look to be future ready as information professionals, as members of a professional association, or as members of both our work and non-work communities, we need to continually assess our tools and determine if they are viable for what lies ahead. No matter how well a tool has served us in the past, we need to be creative in using old tools in new/different ways as well as search for and perhaps develop new tools to remain relevant in the future.

Bill Fisher is an SLA Fellow and is Professor at the School of Library & Information Science, San Jose State University.  He has held numerous leadership positions at the chapter, division, and national level.

by Kim Dority, Rocky Mountain Chapter, Business & Finance Division

The best way to predict the future is to create it. – Alan Kay

Almost anyone who’s talked with Cindy Romaine about the Future Ready initiative will end up wanting to take that energy and strategic thinking to the next level: what is one thing that each of us can or will do in the coming year to help our careers – and the profession – become future ready?

Thinking about that question, I’ve realized that for me and possibly for many others in the information profession, the answer lies not in preparing for what the future may look like, but rather in going on the offensive to create the future we want.

How to do that? Well, some things we know already:

• Technology will continuously change what we do and how we do it
• Companies – if not entire industries – that once seemed paragons of stability will contract if not disappear
• Other companies – and industries – will spring up to take their place
• For both information professionals and those we work with, there will be innumerable threats and opportunities and often they will be one and the same, depending on what we look for and how we frame them
• Information  will continue to be a critical part of decision-making for individuals, companies, communities, and nations – but will undoubtedly be aggregated/formatted/delivered in ways barely imaginable today

Knowing these things, how might we go about creating our own futures?  I tend to believe Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter was on to something when he said that entrepreneurism brings about a wave of creative destruction that, as it destroys established ways of doing things, simultaneously opens up new opportunities for innovation and fresh solutions. The challenge: being on the right side of that wave…in other words, creating the future we want to have.

In an attempt to stay ahead of that cresting wave, and thus create my own professional future, some of the things I’ll be doing are:

• Systematically monitoring the industries of existing clients to identify anomalies that may evolve into emerging growth trends – or contracting lines of business – so I can respond strategically
• Checking out all “innovation” award winners in various categories such as those offered by Fast Company, Mashable.com, and Inc. magazine with an eye toward unusual ideas that could signal growth opportunities (who knew the “casual learning” industry was now a $9 billion/year powerhouse?!)
• Practicing identifying the hidden opportunity in every perceived “threat” situation
• Continually rethinking how I can create and/or provide information that offers high-impact value, knowing that my ability to do so will determine my continued professional viability

Bottom line: perhaps our best approach to being Future Ready is to start actively creating the future we want today.

Kim Dority is the founder of Dority & Associates, Inc., an information consultancy with expertise in research, writing, editing, information process design, and publishing. Ms. Dority is on the advisory board of the University of Denver’s Library and Information Science graduate program, where she also teaches as adjunct faculty. She is the author of numerous articles and several books on information, Rethinking Information Work (Libraries Unlimited, 2006).

Pam Sandlian Smith, Library Director, Anythink Libraries, Thornton, CO

 “Gone is the time when companies could react quietly by just managing their assets.  Gone is the time when the success of the future was modeled on the past.  Disruption is a way of unearthing new opportunities.  It means being nonconformist, unorthodox, rebellious. It means always trying to change the rules.  It means believing that a company can transform its future through the sheer power of an idea.”   

Jean-Marie Dru, Beyond Disruption: Changing the Rules in the Marketplace

When the future is uncertain, to some people the safest thing is either to do nothing new, or simply accelerate strategies that worked in the past.  As marketing genius, Jean-Marie Dru notes, our future success cannot be modeled on the past.  To be future ready requires a willingness to rethink the rules, to be disruptive.  To be future ready requires a willingness to invent a future, hopefully one that works better than the present or the past.

Imagining our future at Anythink Libraries required a team of people who were willing to abandon library structures that were not working for our customers, or were not sustainable in a world of limited resources.  It required a collaboration of people who had infinite trust in each other’s abilities and perspectives.  It required a willingness to live with ambiguity as we were challenged to find the right answer, not the first answer, or the safe answer, but the answer that fit the criteria of a new paradigm. 

Instead of designing a library for books, we designed a library for idea people.  A place for people to connect, interact, discover, even play with information.  Playing with ideas, creating a place to think, discover and honor one’s inherent sense of creativity required a rethinking of our roles and responsibilities.  Our internal manifesto indicates a responsibility very different from merely organizing information:

You are not just an employee, volunteer or board member.  You do not merely catalog books, organize periodicals and manage resources.  You are the gateway into the mind of the idea people who come to our facilities to find or fuel a spark.

Part Wizard, Part Genius, Part Explorer

It is your calling to trespass into the unknown and come back with a concrete piece someone can hold onto, turn over, and use to fuel their mind and soul.

As Anythinkers, we are becoming future ready by exploring the responsibility of being part wizard, part genius, part explorer.