The Network Reshapes the Library: Lorcan Dempsey on Libraries, Service, and Networks

Citation

Barbie Keiser (2015), "The Network Reshapes the Library: Lorcan Dempsey on Libraries, Service, and Networks", Library Management, Vol. 36 No. 6/7, pp. 538-541. https://doi.org/10.1108/LM-06-2015-0039

This book is a compilation of the most significant blog posts drawn from 1,869 written between October 2003 and August 2013 on Lorcan Dempsey’s Weblog on libraries, services, and networks (http://orweblog.oclc.org). Dempsey (Vice President, OCLC Research and Chief Strategist) is a perceptive individual who has documented the evolution of thought concerning the intersection of libraries, publishing, and technology. In this capacity, Dempsey attends many conferences; his blog posts summarize not only Dempsey’s presentations, but also observations on the presentations of others. Dempsey reads widely and uses works in adjacent fields as springboards for expanded observations and opinions. Each work mentioned in a blog is cited at the end of the blog; the book’s editor has thoughtfully included each URL so that readers can easily access the article that spurred Dempsey to write the original post. (There are even notes to let the reader know on which page the detail pertinent to the blog post is located.)

Each blog post reprinted in this book is titled, dated (with the URL so that the reader can get to the archived blog post), and tagged as either Noteworthy (i.e. “a post that has a particular influence above and beyond the norm”) or Coinage, “where a turn of phrase employed in the post has caught on in the larger profession” (p. xii). Editor Kenneth J. Varnum (Web Systems Manager at the University of Michigan Library) could have made his life easy by presenting the posts in chronological order. Instead, he’s arranged the selections by topic, with the last chapter reserved for Dempsey himself to select his “Picks.”

The posts in Chapter 1, “Networked Resources,” deal with how “libraries structure their systems, their data, and their access protocols to ensure that the promise of the network organization will be fulfilled” (p. 1). In this chapter, Dempsey gives the reader some general thoughts on access in the era of Google’s mass digitization effort, approaches to collective management, and “stitching costs,” that is, the high and often hidden costs related to mapping and linking data in a legacy system to data in another repository or in emerging systems. Blog posts included in this chapter deal with mobile, “network as a service,” structuring relationships within the catalog and linking data from a local record. Dempsey has us rethinking “records” as “entities” as we strive to relate library resources to other resources within the knowledge organization.

Chapter 2 deals with the “Network Organization,” integrating individual libraries with others (e.g. regional collectives) and beyond. Across the nation or around the globe, “data and items should flow speedily.” For this to happen, “organizational and administrative characteristics of libraries in the context of large-scale networked resource availability” will need to change (p. 19).

The author has a clever way with words, coining phrases that then catch on, or identifying phrases already in use in another context and adapting them to the realm of libraries and information. These reveal themselves throughout this volume, in titles of blog posts, or sprinkled liberally throughout. Here are a few plum choices from Chapter 2 that stuck with me on this first reading:

• library logistics;

• recombinance and remixing;

• the plural shopping experience;

• proliferation of portals;

• location-based service;

• platform as a resource;

• aligning horizontal and vertical services;

• “What future patterns of storage and delivery are optimal”;

• aggregation of supply and aggregation of demand;

• “Folks want to have what was discovered delivered, to get as well as find”;

• diffusion and concentration;

• three ways of interacting with resources in a social context: conversation, connection, context;

• we leave traces everywhere;

• sourcing and scaling activities;

• “Collective collection”;

• what happens to the library when discovery happens elsewhere; and

• “A trend toward externalization: libraries are looking to collaboratively source activities or to outsource them to third parties […] by doing more things at a group level.”

Chapter 3, “In the flow”, presents today’s library less the destination for scholars, but “now part of the research flow: more flexible, agile and omnipresent. For better or worse, libraries are just one more source of information. How are they adapting to this tectonic shift in the information landscape?” (p. 55). Knitting the library into a research scholar’s workflow means, in part, amplifying the library through social networks. Here, Dempsey recognizes “people as entry points,” and that people have online identities that are often “fractured” (think, e.g. of the number of handles an author might have over a lifetime). In this chapter, Dempsey recommends that libraries invest in consumer environments, build services around workflows, and deal with the attention span of users who will go elsewhere if information is not made available in a convenient way. All of this requires a new approach to the library web site.

With metasearch declared passé, Dempsey implores libraries to connect users with resources “in the most efficient way.” In Chapter 4, Dempsey describes “the evolution of resource discovery from sequentially searched silos to cross-silo federated search to web-scale single-index discovery systems” (p. 87). He envisions a “discovery2delivery” string in which the library can play a major role. This “Resource Discovery” chapter reminds librarians to mine all of the data they can: holdings, ILL records, circulation records, and database usage and change the way in which their libraries operate as a result. Demsey asks us to respect the simple search box, but ask users “what else” they’d like to know related to their search. He encourages evidence-based research, but reminds library workers that supporting conversations is equally important. He wants us to free the discovery experience from its traditional ties to “inventory management systems,” i.e., the catalog. Acknowledge that today “discovery happens elsewhere”; optimizing the contents of library catalogs (information objects) so that they will be discovered by search engines is increasingly important. Important phrases that capture the ideas set forth in Chapter 4 include the following:

• the data well (p. 119);

• discovery layers (p. 121);

• community is the new content (p. 123);

• describing resources as owned, licenses and freely available is probably more helpful than the print/electronic digital schematic that is sometimes used (p. 127); and

• making things of interest discoverable, referenceable, relatable, etc. (p. 127).

Chapter 5 “includes posts related to the software tools that libraries use to provide services to their users, along with discussion of the implication these systems have on broader provision of information services” (p. 135). Dempsey asks librarians to think about four collecting areas they manage in different “boxes”: the bought collection; licensed collection; local digitized collection; and the managed institutional research and learning output. While Chapter 4 focussed on “Resource Discovery,” Chapter 5 looks at “Library Systems.” These systems, says Dempsey, should not only allow individuals to discover an item, but also take care of fulfillment, with one click on a URL, and voila!

Rather than focus on its traditional holdings of physical objects, libraries are increasingly concentrating “on their digital counterpart.” In Chapter 6, “Dempsey describes the tapped and untapped potentials of data” and metadata (p. 159). Scholarly communications and networking form the basis of the blogs contained in “Publishing and Communication.” In Chapter 7, Dempsey asks about the responsibility of libraries “to the cultural and scholarly record […] and how will it be discharged” (p. 191). Dempsey recognizes that “books in digital form offer a better fit with research and learning workflows” (p. 206). “From a library point of view, it is interesting to see humanities scholarship acquiring some of the features – and support requirements – more characteristic of the sciences” (p. 209). The author uses this chapter to lament the fact that while we pay a good deal of attention to the literature covering other fields of study, there are very few journals in library and information science that one could consider “must reads.”

Though Chapter 8 is entitled “Libraries,” the blogs presented are devoted to “memory institutions” (libraries, archives, museums, and galleries) – “the cultural output of society” and their administration/organization (p. 221). Here, Dempsey remarks on the eradication of boundaries between libraries and the larger institution (e.g. universities). Dempsey notes three challenges in this chapter: engaging, rightscaling, and innovating.

The author selected the posts that appear in Chapter 9. “Lorcan’s Picks” don’t fit neatly into any of the categories of prior chapters. They are perhaps the least compelling of all the chapters in the book, and I would not have missed them had they been left out of the volume.

With the exception of a paragraph or two at the beginning of each chapter in which Varnum prepares the reader for the blogs they will find in that chapter, the editor remains in the background, allowing Dempsey to speak for himself. Throughout the work, callout boxes appear with several sentences complimenting Dempsey and his contribution to librarianship and information thought. These are gathered from 35 to 40 library directors, consultants, and academics. Having gone to the trouble of contacting these individuals for their contributions to the work, Varnum might have done better to ask these thinkers to comment on the subject of the chapter in which their quote appears rather than simply praise for Dempsey’s insights. That would have helped to make the book more relevant to read today, value-added atop the work already published.

Presented in this collected fashion, some originally published a decade ago, the posts lack the impact that they had “in the moment.” As such, the work is more a nice to read – a reminder of what was once a new thought, but is today widely recognized practice. While this volume was an interesting read, I’m much more excited about what Lorcan Dempsey has to say today than what he’s said in the past, so I will now read his blog and follow him on Twitter (@lorcanD).