Bricks, Books and Bytes... long

["WILLIAM R. HANSON, WILLIAM ABERHART HIGH SCHOOL" <BHANSON@CBE.AB.CA>]

While surfing with Netscape, I came across a piece from HotWired that
seemed to have something to say about the debate of the offending
article about the campus in California that chose not to construct a
library.

It is a bit long, but worth the read and even quotes LMNETTER Ken Haycock.
Some of you may remember a bruhaha about that self appointed futurist
Frank Ogden decrying the construction of a physical place for the Vancouver
Public Library.  Well this is the library he trashed in his uninformed
remarks.

Although this is a public library piece, it has a lot to say about the
woof and warp we all are experiencing.  Enjoy...  I warned you it is a
bit long...
Bill
BHanson@cbe.ab.ca
========================================================================

From:   IN%"bhanson@educ.ucalgary.ca"  "BHanson" 28-JAN-1995 17:48:59.42
To:     IN%"bhanson@CBE.AB.CA"
CC:
Subj:   http://www.hotwired.com/Eyewit/Planet/Vancvr/Library/index.html

> [Trying to Read the
Future]By Larry McCallum
>
> It's multimedia day at the Vancouver Public Library. In a corner of
> the main floor of VPL's central branch, at Robson and Burrard streets,
> children are sampling Microsoft's Encarta and an array of other
> interactive, educational CD-ROM software. On computer screens,
> colourful arrows advance and retreat across historical maps of the
> Korean peninsula, which segue into text- and-photo biographies of
> General Douglas MacArthur and other Cold War heavyweights. "In our new
> building, we'll have much more technology," explains library Youth
> Coordinator Terry Clark. "We don't want to be the dinosaurs who reject
> the notion of computers in libraries."
>
> Precisely. Libraries have always striven to be vital organizations -
> champions of literacy, people's universities, cornerstones of
> democracy. But the next few decades will sorely test their
> adaptability on a scale that the grim-faced MacArthur would find
> tactically challenging. Depending on how they deploy their resources,
> libraries could find themselves either collateral damage at the side
> of the information highway or in clear control of all vital supply
> routes.
>
> Although VPL's new 300,000-square-foot building probably won't be
> rendered redundant during its 30- or 40-year lifetime - libraries and
> books are more popular than ever (and the paperless office predicted a
> decade ago still hasn't arrived) - Vancouver's new central library,
> like its cousin opening next year in San Francisco, is likely among
> the last of its generation. This isn't necessarily bad news for
> libraries - as information becomes increasingly digitized during the
> next few decades, the reach of libraries will extend into people's
> homes. Already, patrons can browse library shelves, as it were, with
> an ordinary home computer and modem, place holds, and have books
> delivered to local branches. Increasingly, the books on those shelves
> will be electronic, allowing patrons to obtain the information they
> contain without a trip to the library. But as "books" become digital,
> the logic goes, print-based book collections will become rarely
> visited museums or archives that won't require high-rent space in the
> downtown core.
>
> VPL's director, Madge Aalto, sees the new branch as continuing to play
> a critical role for decades to come by serving the community's needs
> for both hard information and recreational reading as only a big
> centralized facility can. As computer terminals gradually replace
> bookshelves, those, too, will need physical space. "Libraries are
> protean organizations," Aalto says. "One of the reasons the central
> library in Vancouver is such a vital organization is because it serves
> both information and recreational needs."
>
> Vancouver's new central library represents a transition between the
> print and digital-electronic eras. Within its walls and floors
> radiates a kind of fibre-optic vascular system designed to accommadate
> not dozens but hundreds of computers. Each floor contains a subfloor,
> or crawl space, to allow easy access for changing and adding
> fibre-optic cables. Fibre-optic vertical risers lead from the
> communications room on the seventh floor to communications closets
> that serve as switching points on each of the floors below. If faster
> lines are needed for particular applications, such as multimedia, it's
> just a matter of changing a card in a hub under the floor. Says Brian
> Campbell, VPL's systems and planning director, "It's a library that's
> certainly been designed to evolve, there's no question."
>
>
> Frederick Kilgour, the founder of the OPAC system, which is now[Image]
> in use in libraries around the world, believes libraries will
> have to shift their primary concern from books as artifacts to the
> data and information they hold. He sees the library of the future as
> consisting of a centralized database. Imagine one province-wide public
> library, with a toll- free number, situated in a low-rent industrial
> park. A reductio ad absurdum, some would argue, but such a centralized
> database (and conduit to databases worldwide) could readily serve the
> whole province at comparatively low cost. To ensure access for all -
> because even in the technologically utopian future, not everyone will
> have a computer or the ablity to use one - storefront satellite
> libraries could be scattered around the cities, each consisting of a
> few computer terminals and printers and staffed by one librarian.
>
> Missing from this picture, of course, are certain social aspects of
> the public library, such as the library as community living room, a
> neighhourhood melting pot where students can work together on their
> homework, where old people can read the newspapers - the one place,
> librarians like to point out, where people and their needs will not he
> judged.
>
> "Libraries are no longer simply places where you store books and
> people come in and borrow them and take them away," says Roger Hughes,
> the architect of VPL's new state-of-the-art Renfrew branch, which
> opens next month on East 22nd Avenue. Hughes sees a blurring of roles
> between community centres and libraries, which have gradually expanded
> their children's programming over the years and now also serve as
> social- integration facilities for non-English-speaking immigrants,
> released mental patients, and others.
>
> Also lost would be the notion of libraries as warm, inviting places
> where people interact with books by browsing shelves and reading in
> comfort. Libraries, especially in the US, already have been losing
> readers to market-sensitive bookstores that provide comfort, ambience,
> and amenities like cappuccino bars and children's programming.
>
> Although the Lower Mainland has seen its own flurry of public-library
> constuction during the past five years - spurred by population growth
> - in fact, public- library spending across North America, both capital
> and operating, tapered off in the 1980s. Demand, meanwhile, has
> continued to rise - between 1981 and 1993, queries to VPL's
> circulation and reference jumped by more than 50 percent. Thus,
> libraries are caught in an ongoing paradox: meeting rising public
> expectations (driven partly by technology) in the face of fiscal
> restraint.
>
> VPL has concentrated on books and other media - in fact, videos,
> cassettes, and CDs now make up 20 pecent of the library's circulation,
> a proportion expected to keep growing. Videos are usually superior to
> books for showing how to tile a bathroom or improve a golf swing. Even
> if Canadians have access to "500 channels with nothing on," libraries
> can fill an important video niche, Whitney believes. "If I'm really
> interested in French films from the 1930s, I don't think that stuff is
> going to be out there on the airwaves."
>
> During the transition to an information society over the next few
> decades, libraries have to resist demands for transitional
> technologies, Whitney believes. "The problem is, people want access to
> all that at the same time as they want us to maintain all our existing
> services. Sure, our support's been increasing, but it's not been
> keeping pace with our use level. And that's the rub."
>
> Yet libraries can't afford simply to maintain the status quo. If they
> remain on the technological sidelines, libraries stand to lose their
> central position in the flow of information as consumers turn to
> commercial vendors to obtain what they want. Lost in the shuffle to
> the private sector will be the librarians' pre-eminent philosophy of
> public service - their concern with access for all, their resistance
> to censorship, and so on.
>
> British academic librarian Maurice Line agrees that professionals and
> corporations will gradually forsake public libraries in favour of
> private online services. In his essay "Libraries and Information
> Services in 25 Years' Time," he writes: "The concept of information as
> a public good will have all but disappeared by AD 2015. The private
> information sector will be very big...and will be carrying out some of
> the work traditionally carried out by libraries."
>
> As libraries become caught between a technological tidal wave and a
> receding tide of government spending, the issue is control over
> information: how much will lie with public-sector librarians sensitive
> to equitable access, and how much will lie with the private sector?
> Librarians like Campbell have been the prime movers in the creation of
> freenets across Canada. "It's certainly important that public
> libraries remain at the forefront of providing access to information,
> because that's the basis of an informed citizenry," says Ken Haycock,
> director of UBC's School of Library, Archival and Information Studies.
> "There's a real danger that we're going to have tools and access to
> information for those who can afford it and not for those who can't."
>
> Against this backdrop, it's difficult to envision VPL as a dynamic
> force in the 21st century. And yet the library has been showing
> glimmers of innovation: the Renfrew branch will be the first Canadian
> library west of Ontario to introduce self-checkout, where patrons
> "wand" their own books before leaving the building. VPL has created
> self-serve databases covering popular reference subjects, such as NHL
> statistics and consumer-product ratings. And it's steadily expanding
> its telephone services, soon allowing patrons with computers or
> touch-tone phones to place reserves, renew books, and find out how
> much they owe in fines, among other things. VPL makes all its books
> availible to all its branches. And it's a member of the Lower
> Mainland's Interlink, which provides reciprocal library use to all
> residents in all jurisdictions.
>
> But VPL's largest policy decision of the past few decades is certainly
> the costly new central library. Within VPL, there's a philosophical
> debate as to whether the strength of the library system rests with the
> central branch as a full-scale research/reference facility or with the
> popular neighbourhood services provided at all branches: children's
> books and programming, popular-materials collections, and so on. By
> most accounts, in fact, VPL has too many branches - at least, too many
> little ones. Of the 21 branches many are less than 5,000 square feet,
> and some storefront branches - Riley Park and Kensington - are less
> than 2,000 square feet, which is unusually small for any urban library
> system and too small to contain a critical mass of books and services.
> A smaller number of larger libraries would also be less expensive to
> bring online.
>
> Librarians worry that because the federal goverment decided to tax
> books, library funding won't prove immune from cuts, especially when
> cash-strapped governments have to weigh it against health or
> educational funding. Some jurisdictions, such as California, have seen
> a wave of library closures during the past decade. On the bright side,
> the future may hold more than grumpy taxpayers and grumpier
> politicians. A 1992 Gallup poll found that more than half of US
> citizens randomly surveyed were willing to support their public
> libraries at a level greater than US$20 per capita. The national
> average for library funding then was actually about US$6 per capita.
> VPL's funding that year was the equivalent of US$31 per capita. But
> then, BC residents use their libraries, per capita, twice as much as
> other North Americans.
>
> If there's any public support for libraries that governments aren't
> recognizing, BC's libraries hope to tap it. In June, the government
> proclaimed legislation establishing a BC Library Foundation, which
> will begin accepting private donations for any of the province's 72
> library boards. The first of its kind in Canada, the library
> foundation has Crown-agency status, allowing rich donors to claim
> generous tax deductions. (This same Crown status has been conferred
> lately on universities, allowing certain campuses to reap hundreds of
> millions in donations.)
>
> Although the patrician era of Andrew Carnegie may be long gone, the
> foundation could induce rich Canadians to demonstrate philanthropy. "I
> think it's an enlightened move," says Celia Duthie, a member of the
> foundation's board. In fact, the new downtown library helped spur the
> move. Because the old site didn't fetch what it was supposed to, the
> foundation became imperative. Says Duthie, "The impetus is the new
> library, which is obviously going to be a costly venture."
>
> Indeed, for all it may be a drain on VPL's overall operation, the new
> downtown showpiece may prove a public-relations coup by winning
> friends and influencing well-heeled patrons to part with their
> millions. "Certainly, the downtown library is the really big, new
> high-profile thing that's happening," says foundation chair Lyme
> Copeland. "It's an incredible structure, and there's a lot of interest
> in making it a modern, forward-looking library and forward-looking
> service."
>
> Technology, in fact, will be one of the foundation's priorities. So
> will multicultural resources for a changing population, although the
> foundation's board has yet to meet and work out the details. Copeland
> says BC probably wouldn't have needed such a foundation in the
> comparatively affluent 1960s, but she says the point is to prepare for
> the future. "Libraries are trying to do a lot more now, to serve a
> broader clientele, for example, and do some electronic things we
> obviously didn't do 20 years ago," she says. "There are a lot of
> expectations."
>
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> Last Modified: Friday, 27 January 1995, 20:33 PST
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