Information Anarchy or Information Utopia?
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| Title: | Information Anarchy or Information Utopia? |
|---|---|
| Language: | English |
| Authors: | Neal, James G. |
| Source: | Chronicle of Higher Education. Dec 2005 52(16):B23-B23. |
| Availability: | Chronicle of Higher Education. 1255 23rd Street NW Suite 700, Washington, DC 20037. Tel: 800-728-2803; e-mail: circulation@chronicle.com; Web site: http://chronicle.com/ |
| Peer Reviewed: | N |
| Page Count: | 2 |
| Publication Date: | 2005 |
| Document Type: | Journal Articles Reports - Evaluative |
| Education Level: | Higher Education |
| Descriptors: | Academic Libraries, Access to Information, Technology Uses in Education, Publishing Industry |
| ISSN: | 0009-5982 |
| Abstract: | A brief picture of the academic library of the future is presented and anxiety is expressed over the impact of technology-enhanced and online education, which has become a critical part of educational enterprise, on these libraries. The growing need for expanding the people's role as educators and scholarly publishers into agents of literacy and information is expressed. |
| Abstractor: | ERIC |
| Entry Date: | 2007 |
| Access URL: | https://chronicle.com/ |
| Accession Number: | EJ756441 |
| Database: | ERIC |
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| FullText | Text: Availability: 1 Value: <anid>AN0019190223;crn09dec.05;2005Dec20.15:58;v2.2.460</anid> <jsection id="AN0019190223-1"> HURRICANE KATRINA AND TULANE U</jsection> <title id="AN0019190223-2">Information Anarchy or Information Utopia? </title> <p>Marshall McLuhan once noted that our age of anxiety is largely the result of trying to do today's jobs with yesterday's tools. Those of us who work in academic libraries are certainly anxious, and that anxiety will probably only grow over the next decade.</p> <p>We are anxious about our role in scholarly communication. We've watched the corporate economy take over what was essentially a guild economy. But faculty members at our colleges and universities continue to transfer ownership of their intellectual property to publishers, many of which continue to exploit a single-source dysfunctional market. And we try to project what the future will be. Will it be information anarchy? Will it be information fascism? Or will it be information utopia?</p> <p>We are anxious about our role in teaching and learning. How do we enhance the student experience at our colleges and universities? How do we best support the technology-enhanced and online education that is such a critical part of our educational enterprise?</p> <p>We are anxious about the impact of search-engine libraries, like the Google and Yahoo initiatives that provide wide access to information and allow people everywhere to accomplish what we alone were once able to do.</p> <p>We are anxious about the need to expand our entrepreneurial roles, to produce new services and create new marketing strategies.</p> <p>We are anxious about our physical structures and identities, as we construct and renovate our spaces into trompe l'oeil intellectual and social centers.</p> <p>We are anxious about the expanding calls for accountability and assessment, especially in the absence of effective tools to measure our impact and success. We have focused too much on counting the inputs — the number of books on our shelves, how many journals we've purchased — and not enough on how we contribute to successful graduates, productive faculty members, and efficient administrators.</p> <p>We are anxious about the growing emphasis on resource development. My success used to be evaluated on my ability to effectively allocate resources, but now I am increasingly measured by how much money I've raised, how many grants I've obtained, and how many products I've sold.</p> <p>As we envision the development of libraries over the coming 10 years, we can also predict higher levels of disruption. Clayton M. Christensen, author of The Innovator's Dilemma (Harvard Business School Press, 1997), once noted in a CIO magazine interview that "a disruptive technology enables a larger population of less-skilled people to do things that historically only an expert could do."</p> <p>For the libraries of the future, work-force development will be disruptive. We must radically rethink how we prepare people to work in our profession and be committed to the continual retraining of our staffs. Right now we don't do a very good job. We need to be not only knowledgeable about resources for our colleges and universities, but also political and legislative workers, promoters of political coalitions, and educators in academe on important public-policy issues: copyright, civil liberties, intellectual freedom, privacy, network development, telecommunications, government information, international trade treaties, and educational and research appropriations.</p> <p>The relationships between libraries and faculty members will be disruptive. We must more effectively integrate the library into the academic enterprise. Libraries must be professors' partners, not their servants.</p> <p>Users' expectations will be disruptive. If we don't listen more carefully to our students and faculty members about what they want, our collections and services will not meet their needs.</p> <p>Technology applications and infrastructure will be disruptive if we don't build and support new hardware, software, and networks. We need reliability, capacity, and access to emerging technologies. That means a renaissance in the working relationship between libraries and campus information-technology organizations.</p> <p>The development of information standards will be disruptive if we don't rethink the process for reconceiving, debating, endorsing, and maintaining them through our national and global organizations.</p> <p>We can also predict heightened levels of chaos in the development of academic libraries over the next decade. As The Education of Henry Adams says, "Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit." Our libraries will be full of life. The repository and open-access-publishing movements will produce chaotic conditions for scholarly communication. Will libraries be able to step in and play an effective role?</p> <p>An expanding mandate to collaborate with other groups and organizations will draw libraries into countless — and chaotic — cooperative ventures without effective results. The absence of national and even global digital-preservation and archiving strategies will create chaotic conditions for gaining access to research and educational content.</p> <p>The constant change in how libraries are organized and structured will also foster chaotic and weak decision-making strategies. The absence of well-organized research-and-development programs will position academic libraries as confused, information-poor information organizations.</p> <p>And the weak leadership-development efforts in academic libraries will produce chaotic administrative turnover. Where will we find the next generation of academic-library leaders?</p> <p>This pattern of heightened anxiety, disruption, and chaos will change academic libraries momentously, yet it will also offer extraordinary opportunities. Although we will continue to acquire, synthesize, serve, and preserve information, libraries will have to become more intelligent and aggressive consumers, successful intermediaries, and aggregators of information.</p> <p>We must expand our role as scholarly publishers. We must expand our role as educators and become agents of literacy and information understanding. We must evolve as robust research-and-development organizations. We must leverage our assets as entrepreneurs in the information marketplace. Libraries must also represent public and academic interests in effective public-policy advocacy.</p> <p>We can foresee a shifting vision of the academic library. We will be legacy, responsible for centuries of societal needs and records in all formats. We will be infrastructure, the essential combination of space, technology, systems, and expertise that define our excellence. We will be repository, guaranteeing the long-term availability and usability of our intellectual and cultural output. We will be portal, serving as a sophisticated and intelligent gateway to expanding interactive multimedia content and tools. And we will be enterprise, more concerned with innovation, business planning, competition, and risk.</p> <p>A story goes something like this: George Bernard Shaw was opening a new play in London. The Irish playwright wrote a letter to Winston Churchill that said: "Dear Mr. Churchill: I really would welcome the opportunity to have you at the opening night's performance of my new play in London. I enclose two tickets. One is for you, Mr. Churchill, and one is for a friend — if you have one." Churchill supposedly replied quickly, "I'm sorry, Mr. Shaw, but I have another engagement that evening. I won't be able to attend the opening night's performance but I would be very appreciative if you sent me two tickets to the second night's performance — if there is one."</p> <p>The library of the future: Will there be one? We should not question whether it will survive, but whether it will have relevance and impact.</p> <p>PHOTO (COLOR): James G. Neal</p> <p></p> <aug> <p>By James G. Neal</p> <p></p> <p>James G. Neal is vice president for information services and university librarian at Columbia University.</p> </aug> |
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| RecordInfo | BibRecord: BibEntity: Languages: – Text: English PhysicalDescription: Pagination: PageCount: 2 StartPage: B23 Subjects: – SubjectFull: Academic Libraries Type: general – SubjectFull: Access to Information Type: general – SubjectFull: Technology Uses in Education Type: general – SubjectFull: Publishing Industry Type: general Titles: – TitleFull: Information Anarchy or Information Utopia? Type: main BibRelationships: HasContributorRelationships: – PersonEntity: Name: NameFull: Neal, James G. IsPartOfRelationships: – BibEntity: Dates: – D: 09 M: 12 Type: published Y: 2005 Identifiers: – Type: issn-print Value: 0009-5982 Numbering: – Type: volume Value: 52 – Type: issue Value: 16 Titles: – TitleFull: Chronicle of Higher Education Type: main |
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