The document discusses big trends in libraries and provides advice on how libraries can adapt. It suggests that libraries focus on user experience, partnerships, and innovative programs rather than collections. Libraries are encouraged to offer more educational opportunities and community spaces. The document also stresses that libraries must be open to change, risk, and new ideas to remain relevant.

1. Big Trends in Library Land
Stephen Abram, MLS
OGLC
April 29, 2014

2. What does it mean to be human?
To live
To experience
To learn
To create and innovate
To inspire
To love and raise another generation
2

3. I my
customers

6. Print was complicated too

8. Can everyone source their force?
Can we contribute to everyone’s self-actualization?
Can we turn our heads around from the foundations
(collections) to the users (humans)?
9

9. Is your library ready to support a
world of unlimited content, multiple
formats, massive access, and
consumer expectations of MORE?
Yes?
No?
With Effort, Vision,
Leadership?
Never?

10. 11
• What leadership is needed?
• Top down or bottom up?
• Culture of experimentation and pilots?
• Relationships?
• Network effect?
• Competencies and Skills?
• Attitudes or Aptitudes?
• What is the nature of ‘conversation’?

12. Differences in the Private and Public Sector
Approaches to Development
Private Sector
 Competitive advantage is
the ideal
 Innovation is key to long-
term existence
 Focus on clients and
marketshare
 Business strategies
 Responsibility to
shareholders or
owner/investors
 Increasing revenue
 Risk oriented
 Economic success is a
prime personal motivator
 Competitors, partners and
allies
 e-Business is the
challenge
 Focus on “results”
Public Sector
 Collaborative advantage is
the ideal
 Good service is the key to
long-term existence
 Focus on citizens and social
contract
 Political agendas and
government imperatives
 Responsibility to parliament
and to citizens
 Wise use of tax dollars
 Risk averse
 Making a positive impact on
society is a strong motivator
 Other departments, levels of
government, unions
 e-Government is the
challenge
 Focus on “process”

13. Every Day in every way librarians are
throwing pebbles

18. It’s simple really, shift happens, gedoverit
• Users & Communities will continue to be diverse in the extreme
• Expectations around timeliness will increase
• We will have a foot in both camps for many, many years to come:
digital and physical – professionals don’t debate the end of print
• Content will (is already) be dominated by non-text (gamification,
3D, visual, music, video, audio, etc.), acknowledge that!
• Search will explode with options and one-step, one box,
commercial algorithm-based search is for dummies not libraries
• The single-purpose anchored device is already dead as a target
• Devices will focus on social, collaboration, sharing, learning,
multimedia, creation and successful library strategies will align
with that (and libraries’ missions)
• E-Learning, collections, software, and metadata will go to the
cloud massively
• The “Open” movement is both threat and opportunity for libraries

19. Library Megatrend
It doesn’t take a genius to see librarian
skills and competencies applied to the
trends and issues in our communities in
very strategic ways – policy, social,
economic, learning, and discovery impacts.

24. Deer in headlamps slide here.

26. Librarians core skill is not
delivering information
Librarians improve the
quality of the question
and the user experience
Librarians are about learning
and building communities

27. Librarian Magic

28. 29
Librarians Cultural Diseases
• Risk Aversion
• Conflict
avoidance
• Candle under
the basket

30. Failure to Reward Risk & Failure

31. Digital risk has raised the bar on risk taking in library land.

32. Smelly
Yellow
Liquid
Or
Sex
Appeal?
The Complex Value Proposition

33. Books, eBooks
Magazines
Websites
Buildings, Branches
Rooms
Desks
Programs
Databases
Nouns can be warehoused
and ‘cut’
Serve
Answer
Engage
Link
Teach
Entertain
Tell a story
Do
Action verbs imply dynamism
and impact

34. Grocery Stores

35. Cookbooks, Chefs . . .

36. Cookbooks, Chefs . . .

37. Meals

39. Library Land
What changes, disruptions and
shifts are already in the
environment?

40. Millennials are the largest generation in history
IQ and their brains
Development
Gaming
Reading
Learning Styles
Crime Rate and other issues

41. Gaming
Making
Writing
Reading
Researching
Living
Enjoying

42. What if all music, audiobooks, and video moved to
streaming formats by 2018?
What if the DVD and CD go the way of vinyl, VHS, and
cassettes?

43. What if all or the majority of content is digital?
What about next generation e-books?
What if all books are ‘beyond text’?
Can we support books with embedded video,
adaptive technologies, audio, updating, software
tools, assessments, web-links, etc.

44. Could your library support advanced higher
education and offer accredited courses or
support universities and colleges for distance
education?
Could your library support distance education,
high school credits, and home schooling on a
much higher level?
Have you catalogued them?
Can you see yourself offering diplomas?

45. Could your library support any kind of mobile
device seamlessly?
Are you fully ready to deliver, agnostically to
desktops, laptops, tablets, phablets, smartphones,
televisions, appliances, at a much higher level?

46. Are you prepared for new forms of content?
Real multimedia? 3D objects and databases?
Holographics? Enhanced media?
Can you be ready for makerspaces, creative
spaces, writing labs, business and start-up
incubators, etc.
Can you publish for your community?

47. What kinds of community spaces are needed in
the future?
Can you support learning spaces, community
meeting spaces, performance spaces, maker
spaces, real advisory spaces, true relationship
and consultation management . . .?

48. What if everything was in the cloud? (software,
databases, metadata, content . . .)
What would you do with those system skills on staff?

49. Semantic, Sentiment, Bias, Visual, Ontological
This is happening in intranets first
What if search immersive resource discovery
becomes as ubiquitous as search engines?
What if schools and public libraries partner on
discovery services (a la NYPL, BPL, QBPL, and
NYED with their BiblioCommons initiative)

50. What if all metadata and content discovery is
freely available using open APIs through the
OCLC WorldShare vault and the Digital Public
Library of America / Europeana vault of open and
free metadata?
What does your experience portal look like? Top
questions?

51. What Should Library Priorities Be?
And what would you sacrifice?

52. Up Your Game
• Know your local community demographics
• Focus on needs assessment and social assessments
• Prioritize: Love all, Serve all, Save the World means nothing
gets done
• Priorities are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable,
Relevant, & Time bound
• Look for partnerships that add value

53. Focus and Understand on the Whole Experience

54. Up Your Game
• Align with Collections – every collection must be justified by
programs
• Force strategic investment budgeting
• Look for partnerships that add value
• Don’t go it alone. Focus on large scale sustainable programs
• Connect to the longer process not just events
• Virtual and in-person - in the Library and reaching out with partners
• SCALE: eLearning and Surveys – e.g. citation methods

55. What are the real issues?
• Craft versus Industrial Strength
• Personal service only when there’s impact
• Pilot, Project, Initiative versus Portfolio Strategy
• Hand-knitted prototypes versus Production
• e.g. Information Literacy and Fluency initiatives
• Discovery versus Search versus Deep Search
• eLearning units and program dissemination
• Citation and information ethics
• Content and repository archipelagos
• Strategic Analytics
• Value & Impact Measures
• Behaviours, Satisfaction
• Economic and strategic alignment

56. Up Your Game
• Align with Collections – But add virtual experiences
• Look for partnerships that add value
• Ensure the program delivery person is embedded including
librarians
• What are your top 20 question domains? Start there.
• Don’t go it alone. Build scalability and sustainability.
• Look for replicability – every neighbourhood

58. Up Your Game
• Start offering diplomas and certificates
• Look for partnerships that add value like HR and IT
• Offer real educational opportunities not just adjacencies
• What does your community need for economic advantage?
• What courses to you offer or recommend? (TED, Khan
Academy, MOOCs, Coursera, Udacity, edX, Learn4Life (ed2go),
Online High Schools, Homeschooling, etc.)

59. Up Your Game
• Learn two-way relationship and consultation competencies
• Understand Communities and have deep partnerships
• Understand Pedagogy in the context of government and
educational goals
• Know where your programs are heading
• Consider deep partnerships especially IT and HR
• Consider coaches, peer, and tutoring partnerships

60. Up Your Game
• The strong ‘library’ brand – but add dimension
• Personal branding – Who are your stars? Promote them. You?
• Program branding
• Take risks for attention (AIDA)
• Embed your brand beyond the library walls and virtually

61. The Virtual Handout
• The Value of Public Libraries
http://stephenslighthouse.com/2010/04/06/the-value-of-public-
libraries/
• The Value of School Libraries
http://stephenslighthouse.com/2010/04/06/the-value-of-school-
libraries/
• The Value of Academic and College Libraries
http://stephenslighthouse.com/2010/04/07/value-of-academic-and-
college-libraries/
• The Value of Special Libraries
http://stephenslighthouse.com/2010/04/07/value-of-special-
libraries/
• Library Advocacy: Save the Library Campaigns
http://stephenslighthouse.com/2010/04/01/save-the-library-
campaigns/

62. Up Your Game
• Move the ILS to the Cloud
• LinkedData models – OCLC WorldShare, Europeana, DPLA, etc.
• Look at TCO and look at all costs incurred and not just hard
costs
• Review opportunity costs in soft costs

63. Up Your Game
• Stop using meat cleavers and use paring knives
• Examples:
• A meat cleaver is undergrad versus grad vs. faculty
• A meat cleaver is kids, teens and adults
• A meat cleaver is medical versus legal

64. Up Your Game
• Learn how to reach and teach online
• Teach how to learn online
• Teach how to research online
• Everyone in academic libraries should be focused on
teaching/researching first, then library
• Learn more systems than one!
• Be obsessive about consultation, recommendations and advice
• Social alignment rules and use the tools

65. Up Your Game
• Use your data to derive insights
• Mine your data for measurements
• Justify
• Prove value and impact
• Avoid print and in-person measures alone

66. Up Your Game
• Dog, Star, Cow, Problem Child?
• Reduce investment in successes
• Increase investment in early strategic innovation
• Be patient and learn, it can take years
• Look at TCO
• Look at all costs incurred and not just hard costs
• Review opportunity costs in soft costs

70. Change is….

71. Global

72. Constant

73. Inevitable

74. Stressful

75. Breathe

76. Rhythm

77. Do you like change?
Does it matter?

78. What are the risks of not changing?

79. We can’t control change…
We can control our attitude towards change…

80. Deny

81. Resist

82. React

83. Explore

84. Commit

85. Change can be difficult

86. Personal change
precedes organizational
change

88. Negativity

89. Contagious

90. I can learn and I can
change and I can do it
quickly.

91. What can you do to deal with
change?

92. Accept that change
is an attitude

93. Create a personal vision
In the context of your team

94. Focus on what you can do…
……not what you can’t do

95. Develop a perspective of opportunity

96. Create Learning Centric Strategies

98. Being More
Open to
Comment

99. Being More Open to Criticism
and Feedback

100. Make an impact

101. Support Aspiration

102. Be Creative and Attract

103. Being More Open to Change

104. The Library as Sandbox

106. Problem: Too Much Respect for Tradition
While Neglecting to Curate the Future

107. Being More Open Experimentation,
Pilots and Innovation

108. Being More Flexible

109. Being More Open to Risk

110. Being Open
to a Mosaic
of Solutions

111. Be
More
Open
to Social
Technologies
and
Unintended
Consequences

112. Being Comfortable with Speed

113. Being Open to New Ideas

114. Letting Go of Control

115. Remove the Borders Inside Libraries
Be the Change We Want to See

116. Remove the Borders In the
Library Community
Be the Change We Want to See.

117. Remove the
Borders Between
Libraries and Users
Be the Change We Want to See.

118. Be Inspirational

119. Know What Makes Us Different

120. Stand Out!

123. Mission of Librarians (Atlas of New Librarianship)
“The Mission of Librarians is to Improve Society through
Facilitating Knowledge Creation in their Communities.”
David Lankes

124. Honest to G*d – Let’s
Encourage Some Fun!

125. Stephen Abram, MLS, FSLA
Consultant, Dysart & Jones/Lighthouse Partners
Cel: 416-669-4855
stephen.abram@gmail.com
Stephen’s Lighthouse Blog
http://stephenslighthouse.com
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