Keepers of the Flame or Turners of the Faucet?

Over the last decade, public libraries have spent a great deal of time, effort and money to improve access to information and information technologies. This push has increased the amount of information available at even the smallest libraries exponentially. Our success in this area is one of sea changes in the history of the profession and institution.

It is at the height of success that one is most vulnerable and most likely to lose its way. Film directors often follow a modest success with an expensive flop. Apple planned to change not just the computer industry, but the world, while Intel made computers for the rest of us. Success can make an individual, company or institution forget its core values and purposes.

Our success in providing access is both a great accomplishment and a threat. Many librarians are now defining the profession and institution primarily in terms of access. After all, we have proven that we can do that and do it well. Defining ourselves this way is dangerous because access is vulnerable to privatization, undue emphasis on access shortchanges other professional principles and values, and the very mission of the library is being warped.

A recent article, Strategy and the new economics of information (Harvard Business Review, Sept-Oct 1997, p. 70), discusses the impact of information technologies on companies that depend upon having better information flow than their customers. In the private sector the results are disintermediation, fewer providers with smaller margins and a vulnerability of the information section of a company or industry to takeover by an outside force.

For example, one can now purchase life insurance without ever seeing an insurance agent. It is possible to do very creditable stock market research and manage a portfolio without ever coming into contact with a stock broker. Banks increasingly offer electronic access to even small customers. Forms and orders can be filled out on-line. Jobs and even whole divisions are being eliminated.

This disintermediation (removal of the middleman) reduces what had been a service to mere access. When there is little except price to distinguish between accesses providers, the pressure to lower costs is severe. Margins shrink, companies fail and choices decline. Like a demented version of Gresham’s Law, bad service drives out good. The result is the information equivalent of self-service gas stations.

Provision of access is also an inherently unstable business to be in. Anyone who once was proud of the speed and capabilities of a IIe or was on the Internet when archie and veronica were your only friends understands this. Local Internet providers come and go. Even major players, such as CompuServe, have seen major fluctuations.

At this time, libraries are Internet access points for the majority of people who do not have access at home. As the number of people with home connections increases, what will be left for libraries? If Internet access becomes as common as color TVs or telephones or is part of basic cable, will providing mere access even be a role for the library? When we promote provision of access as our raison d’être, we may well be heading down a dead end.

While access is a core value for the profession, it is not the only one. Public libraries are much more than free bookstores or cybercafes. Librarians’ claim to professional status and public funding rest much more soundly on our ability to select and catalog materials so as to serve our community and help them use that collection. Every focus group and survey demonstrates that this is what our community expects from us.

Selection is being undermined in many ways. Statements like "If I had the money and space, I would select everything" reduce librarians to less than bookstore clerks, unconcerned even about patron demand. Shared systems make local selection policies irrelevant. Full text databases place the magazine collection in the hands of private companies. The Internet is overwhelmed with commercial and personal sites that no library would select if they were on paper, but that we defend and even promote. That this damage is being eagerly sought by librarians would be ironic, if it were not so tragic.

Now that most libraries no longer "catalog" their materials, we need to come up with a new word for the process of placing an item in the right place. In each community and each library, there is a place to put an item that is most appropriate. This is really part of the selection process and involves a decision on target audience, intended use, age appropriateness and even the layout of the facility, while still allowing for a delicious serendipity. Automation has made it far too easy to just place a book on the shelf, without consciously deciding where it fits into the collection. Selecting the right book is useless if it is on the wrong shelf.

When we devalue selection, we weaken the profession’s voice on a wide range of subjects. If librarians would select everything, why not outsource the process? If maximizing circulation is our goal, how is our selection process different from that used by bookstores? If we are not making quality and suitability a part of the selection process, how can we defend a challenged title? If we proclaim that it is our goal to give children government-funded access to anything not proven obscene, what parent will trust us? If we don’t spend time in assigning locations, how then do we respond to complaints about age appropriateness?

The original mission for the public library was expounded in The Report of the Trustees of the Public Library of the City of Boston (1852). In rewriting mission statements for technology grants and discounts, we have wandered far from this seminal document. Recent planning models even recommend developing a mission statement based on existing or planned services, rather than developing services based on the library’s mission, further diluting attention to basic principles. What used to be library schools are now content to train bookstore supervisors and information managers, neither of which belong in a public library.

The Report of the Trustees... places the public library solidly on the same ground as other public education. Public elementary and secondary schools share a large portion of their mission with the public library. It takes a good public library to prepare children for school and it takes a good school to prepare young adults to profit from the public library. Librarians may doubt that they work in an educational institution, but our patrons, library boards and funding bodies don’t. By standing on these bedrock principles, the library can evolve with losing its mission.

The recently released Planning for Results stands this on its head. Libraries are encouraged to identify market niches, choose service responses, develop goals and then base their mission on those goals. This may be an appropriate process for a small business, but most small businesses fail. We forfeit our position at the center of our community when we choose to build on the shifting sands of market niches.

There are very few educational institutions left that are willing to be identified with the word "library". They are moving closer to high prestige computer science and business departments and away from their historical links with education. Most plan to produce "information managers", primarily for the private sector. Just how this is relevant to a school, public or academic library is not clear. The other career option seems to be managing a free bookstore/cybercafe/free speech outpost. How such an operation qualifies for government funding, except as an educational institution, is uncertain.

The next decade is a time of great opportunity and danger for public libraries. The average small public library now provides better access to current information than world leaders had twenty years ago. This wave of technology has not crested and almost unimaginable advances are in the offing. Despite, and because, of this, public libraries are tempted to stray from their mission, endangering their existence and potentially ending one of the great experiments in American history. If, as some predict, public libraries vanish, it will be primarily a suicide. The smoking gun will not be technology, but our own failure to articulate and focus on our unique mission.

Meet the One Librarian or Return to One Librarian's Opinion

03/17/02