BiblioTech: Why Libraries Matter More Than Ever in the Age of Google by John Palfrey

Author:John Palfrey [Palfrey, John]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: Language Arts & Disciplines, Digital & Online Resources, Library & Information Science, General
ISBN: 9780465040605
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2015-05-05T02:40:11.765878+00:00

BIBLIOTECH

determine community priorities and maintain a politically oriented online listserv are so crucial. An emphasis on scale and on helping people deal with the challenges of a digital era will enable librarians to find areas of comparative advantage in the years to come.

Unlike for-profit companies, for instance, librarians can help patrons sort credible from less credible information. In a world in which anyone can be a pamphleteer and a publisher, providing this service is central to librarians’ comparative advantage. The mode of search and discovery and the provision of recommendations should be an area of major research and development in libraries, not left to the commercial sector to exploit. The gnarly and growing problem of how to preserve digital information in a complex, networked environment—where every book might be a “living book,”

subject to change at any time—is an obvious area for continuous development within libraries. These investments are happening in small pockets of the library world, but not in an especially coordinated way. It is time for more libraries and librarians around the country and around the world to collaborate on a strategy to address these issues.

The skills that librarians need to develop, in order to operate at scale, look a lot like the skills that Google, Amazon, Mozilla, Khan Academy, and Wikipedia staff members develop through their day-to-day work. Creating these newly curated sites involves simple forms of computer programming, such as scripting. It calls for a design sensibility, 142

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