What do a publicly funded institution like the British Library and the competitive members of the Special Libraries Association have to offer each other in the web 2.0 era? Tim Buckley Owen has been asking BL chief executive Lynne Brindley and SLA chief executive Janice Lachance.
TBO: Firstly, What do information practitioners have to do to be ready for web 2.0?
JL: They have to accept that Web 2.0 and soon Web 3.0 is a reality - that prosumers are going to be a part of their lives, that enterprise 2.0 is going to be how their organisations are working. There's a famous shoe company here in the United States that has a slogan that says 'Just do it' and I think that's where we are now.
LB: I would absolutely agree - have a kind of beta test mind. It's always going to be in beta test, it's never going to be perfect, and you do learn by just engaging with it. Another point - probably culturally very hard for many information professionals - is acknowledge that the information profession doesn't have a monopoly on expertise. Of course that begs a lot of questions about accepting that you lose control - and not all of that is bad because that protects quality of the brand and it's actually about getting the details right.
TBO: Web 2.0 represents a big cultural shift for SLA members who are used to competing with one other. Can they learn to collaborate as well?
JL: These people have a service mindset that is unusual in this day and age, so they are the perfect profession to roll up their sleeves and work together. And you can do that without violating proprietary information. The Association has members that have been active for a long time - they can mix and rub elbows with some of our very young digital native members who are still in library & information school.
TBO: It's a cultural shift for the BL too, isn't it - moving from 'sufficient unto itself' to a more collaborative role?
LB: The shift has been a recognition that, however great you are as a resource - one of the world's greatest libraries - you're never self-sufficient. Another shibboleth I can challenge for the profession is we use 'collaboration' in a very, very loose way. Often it means we just like to talk with each other. Actually what we've been trying to do is see what are the qualities needed for a win-win collaboration or partnership. And that isn't touchy-feely stuff; that is pretty tough, hard-nosed stuff.
TBO: Are public institutions also having to move away from the 'discard versus save' values of the print era because those are no longer relevant?
LB: We have statutory responsibility to save the intellectual memory of the nation, whether it's in print or in digital form, so I don't think you'll be seeing us at the front of that disposal debate. But it enables others to focus much more on access, and us to enable such access, whilst we still continue to keep long term preservation and long term storage as issues.
TBO: And are SLA members having to accept that protection of proprietary information may not necessarily represent so good a business model any more as collaboration and sharing does?
JL: Enterprises are starting to give things away to attract different kinds of revenue or customer base. One great example of that is the New York Times that just recently put all of its content online for free. They have figured out that, whatever minimal revenue they were getting did not offset the fact that people were frustrated, would turn to other places to get their information. SLA members have to be ahead of that curve, constantly scanning the environment to look at ways that other organisations and enterprises are being successful - and clearly one of those ways is by just giving it away and finding other ways to make money.
Lynne I'm sure will argue with me on this, but the library for members in the corporate or non-profit or government environment is less about the physical space than about the ability to have access to the information they need, and professionals to make sure the end-users have the ability to get to that information. So at SLA we no longer fight for square footage. We try to look at utilising the talent of the professional librarian rather than worrying about how big their office is.
TBO: Are you going to argue with that Lynne?
LB: Absolutely not. The critical thing is the combination of access to rich resources plus expert people. Many of those would be information specialists, but I think where we have scored a lot of success is to have a mixed team - we pair up information specialists with other specialists, and some of that teamworking creates much faster change.
I'd also like to comment on the New York Times model. Some people are saying now that the value of content is approaching zero; in other words, give it away and find other new business models. Take the software games industry; that is totally open and they encourage people to develop the software and co-contribute in a Web 2.0 mode. Equally we've just seen Radiohead putting up its tracks and saying 'pay what you want for it'. Actually I just read today that most people didn't pay anything - but they're rather famous, it's given them great profile and they've probably got much better money for gigs.
TBO: What kinds of partnerships between public and private institutions benefit the information industry?
LB: We've been doing work on public-private relationships in the context of the European Digital Library. It's quite clear within Europe that the UK is much more comfortable with public-private sector working than for example Italy or some of the new accession states, where they're not actually allowed to engage with the private sector. We have some stunning public-private partnerships, with Microsoft and over our newspapers with Thomson Gale, and they show that both parties can win. You have to be clear about how much you'll give and what you need from the private sector, and sure as anything you'll find the private sector will drive a hard bargain. Those of us who are less used to that kind of tough negotiation have got to be prepped for it very clearly in the public sector.
TBO: Do you agree, Janice? Are there wins for your members?
JL: I completely agree. Lynne is right that organisations have to look for win-win approaches, but I think too the magic in all of this is how we can increase the world's knowledge about things that used to be locked away in people's file cabinets or databases or dusty bookshelves. At SLA, we have a partnership with Ebrary to make thousands of leadership and management books available online for SLA members, something that you could never have conceived of just a few years ago.
TBO: So can SLA and the BL work together?
LB: I don't have many specifics but I think what we can and should offer is sharing best practice, and ideally sharing mistakes as well as successes.
JL: Every Fortune 100 company has to have an enormous appreciation for the resources, content and services provided by an organisation like the British Library, the Library of Congress, and I frankly think most of them would consider it an honour to work with them. Not only win-win partnerships but I think there is a third area of success here: the knowledge gained by the people working in both organisations, the fact that they both get better at what they're doing because they've observed how different organisations work.
TBO: How much of all this change is down to technology? Or can we get too hung up on technology?
LB: It is no longer acceptable not to be deeply knowledgeable and engaged with the technology. Technology now doesn't just support your services, it actually lets you do wholly and totally new things. We have something called Sounds Familiar on our website that's around dialect in the different regions of the UK. We opened this up to schoolchildren to contribute and to populate the map with their own recordings, and now we've had a great Web 2.0 experience but, more importantly, we have a great new even better research resource.
JL: Corporations used to spend probably close to millions of dollars on focus groups and surveys and polls and that's just not needed any more. What you have to do is get yourself engaged in Web 2.0 and let people test your product, let them tell you what they think, and chances are that people do improve it - maybe getting a product to market sooner or without a bug or a flaw that you might not have caught otherwise.
TBO: Finally - what's scary about the Web 2.0 era? What's exciting?
LB: I think scary is probably worrying about protecting the quality of your brand. What's exciting? Well, all the things we've just said. For us it's just changed the way we think about an exhibition. We're opening one tonight in London but actually it's on the Web so you don't have to come to it and you can engage with it. So I think the exciting thing is just how far this opens up everything we do to the world.
JL: One of the things that's scary is losing a measure of control. There are very few flaws you can hide; they're all out in the open. Also there are legitimate issues about cyber security, identity theft, security of proprietary information. And we have to think about copyright. What's exciting about it? Every day holds a potential for a new use for social networking - for corporations, non-profits and individuals. It's an extraordinarily exciting time and I think our biggest challenge - and it's only a little scary - is trying to keep up with it.
Dame Lynne Brindley has been the Chief Executive of
the British Library since July 2000. She is the first woman and the
first information professional to have held the post. Since her
appointment Lynne has led a major strategic development and
modernisation programme to ensure that the BL remains a relevant,
innovative and accessible national institution in the 21st century. The
BL provides services that underpin UK competitiveness in research and
contributes to innovation and creativity in our knowledge society. The
BL reaches out to a wide public, increasingly through its digital
services. She was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the
British Empire in the New Year Honours List 2008 for services to
education.
The Honorable Janice R. Lachance is the 13th chief
executive of the Special Libraries Association (SLA) and is a seasoned
leader and communicator with more than 20 years experience in public
service and governance. From 1997 to 2001, Janice was the Director
(CEO) of the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the federal
government's independent human resources agency. Appointed to this
position by President Bill Clinton and unanimously confirmed by a
bi-partisan US Senate, Janice provided policy and program leadership
for 1.8 million federal employees. The federal workforce encompasses a
vast array of professions including astronauts, attorneys, engineers,
physicists, executives and, of course, information professionals and
librarians. Lynne and Janice were interviewed by Tim Buckley Owen,
FUMSI Contributing Editor for the Use practice area.
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What do a publicly funded institution like the British Library and the competitive members of the Special Libraries Association have to offer each other in the web 2.0 era? Tim Buckley Owen has been asking BL chief executive Lynne Brindley and SLA chief executive Janice Lachance.
JL: They have to accept that Web 2.0 and soon Web 3.0 is a reality - that prosumers are going to be a part of their lives, that enterprise 2.0 is going to be how their organisations are working. There's a famous shoe company here in the United States that has a slogan that says 'Just do it' and I think that's where we are now.
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