ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries Ju n e 1 9 9 6 /3 6 5 Conference Circuit Finding common ground: Creating a future lib ra ry By Steve McKinzie Harvard University’s first national library conference T ake Boston, birthplace of the nation’s free­dom, hub of the country’s intellectual life, and a city o f rich cultural diversity. Add Har­ vard University, gifted with one of the world’s largest library collections and home to some of the profession’s most creative librarians. Then combine it all with a clearheaded vision of how a national conference ought to be run and what you want it to accomplish. The resulting mix, a potent formula for suc­ cess by almost any standards, actually happened March 30–31 at the Charles Hotel in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Harvard University’s first national library conference, “Finding Common Ground: Creating a Library o f the Future without Dimin­ ishing the Library of the Past,” gathered together more than 350 participants from the U.S. and abroad to explore the direction that libraries and information services will take into the next century. The conference set the parameters of the debate surrounding that future. It also pro­ vided a clear vision of the challenges facing librarians. Attendees may not have gotten all the answers to their questions but they came away with a lot of insight and perspective. The conference boasted two major speak­ ers: Clifford Lynch (University of California-Ber­ keley) and Walt Crawford (RLG). It also pulled together nearly 60 contributed papers and ap­ proximately 30 demonstrated papers (Harvard’s term for poster sessions)— papers, sessions, and panels that were on the whole extraordinarily provocative and superbly executed. Com m unities: A decline of g e o g ra p h y Lynch set the stage for the conference in his keynote address by reminding his listeners that “libraries are social structures, organizations that relate to a certain mission and that exist within a social matrix.” They also serve a community. That definition of a library isn’t apt to change, Lynch insisted, but the notion of community can. There is a sort of growing “decline of ge­ ography,” he added. Public libraries may serve international clients and Internet communities may span continents. The task for libraries in this decline o f ge­ ography isn’t to function as gatekeepers for in­ formation, collections, or resources, but to pro­ vide value-added dimensions to data. People are going to need to understand what they are retrieving on the Web and what they’re finding in a database. That means that libraries need to be instructing users and to be finding ways, however daunting the task may seem, o f orga­ nizing and managing the resources of the In­ ternet, just as they have traditionally indexed and cataloged book collections. B reakin g m yths of the digital ag e In his all-co n feren ce speech, “Uncommon Knowledge, Myth Breaking for the Future,” Crawford spelled out what he thought were the major myths of the information age, false­ hoods that needed to be exposed so that we can get on with the business of making the right choices about the future. His remarks ech­ oed the themes of his and Michael Gorman’s recently published Futu re Libraries: Dream s, M adness a n d R eality (ALA, 1995). With a com­ mon sense persuasiveness and cool-headed de­ livery, Crawford tried to restore a measure of balance and sanity to the dialogue about the changes that libraries are apt to see in the com­ ing decades. For Crawford, the library o f to­ morrow won’t be all digital. The scholar’s uni­ versal workstation may never come, and the notion o f the demise of print has been as exag­ gerated as the death o f radio and river com­ Steυe M cKinzie is a librarian at Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania; e-m ail: m ckinzie@ dickinson.edu mailto:mckinzie@dickinson.edu 3 6 6 /C&RL News For C ra w fo rd , the lib ra ry of tom orrow w o n ’t be all digital. The scho lar’s universal w o rkstatio n m ay never com e, and . . . the dem ise of print has been a s ex ag g erated a s the death of radio and river com merce. merce, both booming businesses that are likely doing better than ever before. Direct access to inform ation The conference also featured several all-con­ ference panels. A publisher’s panel included Heather Cameron (ABC-CLIO), Sonja Gustafson (Microsoft), Ann Hartman (consultant), and Patricia Glass Schuman (Neal-Schuman), and reflected on the historic synergism between publishing and libraries, speculated on possible joint ventures between the two, and discussed developments in electronic publishing. Gustafson’s experience at Microsoft served as a case study o f how one major software pro­ ducer or publisher took advantage of some of the Internet’s potential. Over the last several years, Microsoft, with the aid o f Gustafson and her library staff, began to use the Web as a kind of online library for both company clients and organizational personnel. The company maintained an extensive product support ser­ vice for its customers, who downloaded infor­ mation at will. Clients examined products and obtained specific online help. For its employ­ ees, Microsoft’s Web library provided data on company policy and benefits. It also created individualized homepages for anyone in the organization who wanted one. Gustafson in­ sisted that she and her staff were in a sense using the Internet to disintermediate informa­ tion, to eliminate that often unnecessary middle party in the access of data. The company dis­ seminated information without tying up human resources. Clients and employees now had di­ rect access to what they need ed to know quicker and easier than ever before. Historic synergism Cameron and Hartman spoke more directly to specific questions surrounding publishers and publishing as they confronted the challenges o f the information age. Cameron argued that the risks in publishing are perhaps greater than ever before— a dimension in the industry that almost everyone feels acutely. It is an era of sweeping technological change. User expecta­ tions are high. Quality is very much in de­ mand— so much in demand, Cameron added, that many classic reference works o f the past wouldn’t begin to meet today’s high publish­ ing standards. In response to that demand, Hartman sug­ gested that libraries and publishers begin to explore ways in which they can encourage cooperation. The cooperation could manifest itself in a variety of ways. Libraries and pub­ lishers could even consider joint publishing ven­ tures. She envisioned a cooperation that could be mutually beneficial. Schuman agreed but suggested that librar­ ies and publishers really need to restore some of their historic synergism before they venture too boldly into the future. She insisted that there has been simply too much miscommunication and competition between the groups in recent years. The two should work in tandem. The country needs healthy publishing and healthy libraries. Closer cooperation could ensure the vibrancy o f both. A m a rria g e m ade in hea ve n or hell Contributed papers ranged from a description o f the University o f Arizona’s “Library As a Learning Organization” to an explanation o f the University o f Ohio’s attempts at “Migrating a Successful Information System to the W eb.” Several librarians from the University o f Akron offered perspectives on reference service and developments in document delivery in “Refer­ ence and Electronic Document Delivery: A Marriage Made in Heaven or Hell,” and Gre­ gory Wool of Iowa State discussed issues sur­ rounding enhanced online records with “Bib­ liographic Metadata: or, We Need a Client Server Cataloging Code.” Samples o f the many dem­ onstrated papers (or poster sessions) reflected a similar diversity. UC-San Diego, for instance, demonstrated a paper on computer animation; the University o f Illinois at Urbana-Champaign cataloged its work in preserving and securing electronic records; and a session from North­ western explored the relationship betw een building innovation and technological change. Ju n e 1 9 9 6 /3 6 7 Optim ism couched w ith concern A final panel served as a wrap-up session for the weekend. This group consisted of Barbara Ford (Virginia Commonwealth University), Paul Kobulnicky (University of Connecticut), and Susan Martin (Georgetown University). Martin said that she greeted the future with a kind of “optimism couched with concern.” She sensed a reassertion of the value of libraries through­ out the country. People are beginning to rec­ ognize again the part that libraries have played and could play in the general culture. They expect us above all else to support privacy is­ sues and to preserve the records of the past in whatever format available. Ford mirrored this optimism but argued that the real common ground of libraries was more than anything else our sense of “shared val­ ues.” The challenges facing libraries are cer­ tainly real enough. She noted that libraries will have to discover truly creative ways to inte­ grate traditional print mediums with digital sources, that we will all likely witness a great deal of restructuring, and that a lot of rethink­ ing about out our roles and what they are all about is certainly going to be on tomorrow’s agenda. But the fundamental missions of librar­ ies will remain unaltered. Our “shared values” will, more than anything, constitute our com­ mon ground, Ford said. W ild expectations met If one were to look for drawbacks in the con­ ference, the only one may have been its lim­ ited size. The Charles Hotel couldn’t accom­ modate a larger turnout and a good number of potential participants had to be turned away. Yet the smaller number of 350 had its advan­ tages. Interaction flourished and spirited ex­ changes and lively discussions followed many o f the sessions. Much of the success of the con­ ference can be attributed to the organizing ge­ nius of its cochairs: Harvard’s Caroline Kent and Cheryl LaGuardia. Harvard university librarian Richard De Gennaro summed up the overall effect and quality of the conference by confiding that it really came as something of a surprise. In toast­ ing the weekend he admitted, “The conference succeeded beyond any o f our wildest expecta­ tions.” “But then again,” he added, attempting to put that surprise in perspective, “you have to remember that we had pretty wild expectations to begin with.” ■