Michael Keller- This Magic Moment

Keller is the head of Stanford University Libraries.

Functions of librarians:

• Select materials (and resources).

• Provide intellectual access.

• Interpret and teach - reference services.

• Distribute information - collections.

• Preserve information - physical and cultural custodian.

• Do it ALL reliably and consistently.

Assets of librarians:

• Sense of mission - do socially important work.

• Staff with skills and expertise.

• Facilities and equipment.

• Collections - our own and access to others.

• Credibility and reputation.

• Money and goods and services for barter.

• Friends - boards, contributors, politicians.

Library Leadership and Stewardship - There is a tension between the views of

librarians. From below we are seen as big, bigger, best. The customer believes we

have everything digitized and already accessible - all the world's knowledge online in

one organized collection. From above we are seen as middle managers.

We must be good stewards and invest in our assets and be willing to take some risks.

Examples of investing in assets from Stanford University libraries:

• Technical services - reengineered to be more productive with less staff.

• High Wire Press - a response to the high cost of research journals.

• Purchasing - used to be spread among 4000 vendors. Concentrated

business and issue an RFP every 3 years to bring costs down.

New Factors

• New forms and genres of information, ideas and arguments should cause us to look

at how we are storing and archiving what is happening now, such as in chat rooms.

• New modes of intellectual access - can do a word search in full text and may be

able to search by meaning.

• New interpretive and instructive services - Ask Jeeves simulates a reference desk.

• New providers (competitors) are challenging our hegemony.

• More varied modes of distribution and new opportunities and limitations on

distribution of information. Some are lobbying now to get copyright laws changed to

gain more income.

• New preservation issues - how do we save bits and bytes, especially as data

formats change?

• New power, convenience and size of software tools.

• Convergence of information technology - laptop, cell phone, palm pilot.

• Global marketplace - national intellectual property regimes.

Old factors

Too little space, time and staff, insatiable demand and political issues. "Everyone has a

place at the table, but the table isn't going anywhere."

So far technology has:

• Increased circulation of materials

• Increased access to information (patients are finding treatments their doctors

don't know about.)

• Created information chaos (web is chaotic, libraries provide an ordered set of

information)

• Connected readers, building community of interest

• Created guerilla marketing

• Encouraged scientific and social progress

Some notions:

Always ask, "What's best for (your institution)?" and do a cost/benefit analysis.

Trust individuals more and make them responsible.

Form and dissolve task groups easily and reduce permanent committees

No turf.

Carpe diem - seize the day, live while you can, savor the moment.

Avoid empty relationships and lowest common denominator organization. Insist

on an organization that admits differences - we are not the same.

Big Tasks:

• Really teach information heuristic as a life long skill (hypothesis, search

strategy, search, evaluate results, apply).

• Truly and efficiently collaborate on logical regional and national collection

development.

• Develop and maintain collaboratively thousands of knowledge environments.

• Build system of recurrent responsibilities (for example, the half life of nuclear

warheads is 25,000 years - how do we keep information on these materials

so it's understandable?)

• Expand role of cultural custodians - every library has some focus/collection

that it should be custodian/keeper of. We don't realize the importance of the

culture we're living in every day.

Example - Signal Transduction Knowledge Environment

The goal was to create an information environment so well that it fills most/all of the

needs of individuals in that discipline. It is a digital library, database driven. It includes

abstracts of articles published elsewhere and articles commissioned specifically for

them. There is a virtual journal - 50 journals are searched and those that are relevant

are cited in the database. It has moderated chat rooms, lists of events and job

announcements, all in the Signal Transduction field.

They started with a focus on what the customer needs. High Wire Press was formed as

a response to the extremely high cost of research journals. It is an Internet publisher

that collaborates with lots of associations and publishers to publish articles online. Now

has 210 journals and gets 10-15 million hits a week.

Stanford-California State Library Institute on 21st Century Librarianship Summer 2000

Informal Notes by Susan Martimo Choi