Library as Infrastructure

Summary:

In this article Shannon Mattern lays out a fascinating historical perspective of the development of physical attributes of a library and how they influence and are influenced by the media that they house.  She starts with Mevil Dewey’s influence on all aspects of the library in terms of not only the organization of materials (like the Dewey Decimal System) but also the physical apparati that we use to access information (like the original card catalog that we used to organize the metadata).  Mevil Dewey, among many things, was an entrepreneur that had his hands in everything and anything that had to do with information, including how we develop it, organize it, access it and distribute it.  

The author, Mattern, continues from this historical perspective toward our present day libraries addressing the question, ' what is the library and what is its purpose?’  We no longer have Mevil Dewey to guide the answers to these questions, but we do have many new players that influence the direction of the library as a concept.  Including David Weinberger, who suggested that the library should consider itself a ‘platform’ for the creation of knowledge.   Mattern has some issues with this concept and instead suggests that the library is not just a “two-dimensional” space for the creation of information but is rather a vastly more complex infrastructure that embodies all information in all of its forms.  

Starting from the assumption that the library is the physical and digital infrastructure of information, Mattern continues to support this concept in addressing two forms of infrastructure (social infrastructure and technological-intellectual infrastructure).  Through this lens she explains the library's role in developing the infrastructures that ultimately influences the community that the library serves.  

Why this article is valuable to me and why I think in may be valuable to you:

As a new student to LIS, I am constantly feeling (and hearing from professors) that the library is struggling to define itself in this information age.  Most (almost all?) information that used to be physically housed in a library is now housed digitally and can be accessed privately.  People used to go to the library for answers, now they can go to their computers.  So, I’m constantly asking, ‘what is the library? And why is it important in this new era?’  I think this article really helped me to understand or to at least have a vision of what the library is in this new world that we now live in.  

Reference:

  Mattern. (2014). Library as Infrastructure. Places (Cambridge, Mass.), 2014. https://doi.org/10.22269/140609

Will Books Be Different?

Zatko, Ruzena

Guthrie, K. K. (2012). Will books be different?. Journal of Library Administration, 52(5), 353-

369.

Summary:

This literature provides a lot of coverage on how far we have come with journals for research from the early 1990s up till now. It also covers aspects of books (for leisure) and how the reading patterns changed. The author has extensive background working for JSTOR so he has seen the evolution of trends from the printing of research article trends to now being able to access it from your own home or from anywhere. The paper is broken into two parts: The print-to-electronic transition for journals and the print-to-electronic transition for books. Overall, the focus is on the transition of both mediums and how print and electronic book and journals are looking in the future.

 

Evaluation:

This paper was well written and flowed smoothly. The reason I felt this literature would be important to include is because I wanted to focus on some past history of library trends with research journals and book from then and now. I was very impressed with the insight Gutherie provided that was acquired by his extensive knowledge from his position. What could have be included is a chart demonstrating our reading habits and acquiring of journals, then and now. Also, since Gutherie mentions the demand for articles and that publishers are willing to provide a bundle savings rather than purchasing select titles. However, some libraries lack the funds and cannot bundle. What could have been included is some examples of the size of bundle a well-funded library can buy compared to a low-budget library.

In all, this was informative insight because this was the first mention of the raw, behind-the-scenes of libraries’ eBook acquisitions through publishers and the concerns we often don’t hear about. Overall, libraries are indicating they expect to spend nearly half of their budget on electronic books and changing their model for patron-driven approaches for acquisitions.

Remember Me? Content Development in a User-Centered Services Library

Bailey, Rachel

Morris, S.E. & Currie, L. (2014). Remember me? Content development in a user-centered services library. Collection Management, 39, 96-109. doi:10.1080/01462679.2014.891493.

Summary: Because of strategic planning and the need for budget cuts, the University of Kansas libraries restructured their collections’ department. The libraries went from thirty librarians working on collection development to seven working on materials selection. The old structure had librarians that were specialists for a particular academic discipline. The new structure has the librarians working together to gather materials for all the disciplines. The article also mentioned how they were able to cut down on serials collections after looking at usage data.  Surprisingly, there were many advantages noted for this new model. Obvious disadvantages were noted as well.

Evaluation: Since much of a library’s materials are supported through funds, it was interesting to see how KU handled the situation. As a graduate of the University of Kansas, this article was of personal interest to me. I always thought the university had top-notch libraries and it seems like it will continue to do so.