D. Kaye Gapen, Director

University Library Case Western Reserve University

Introduction

"I am convinced that the role of the librarian in society ... is to maximize the utilization of graphic records for the benefit of society. In other words, his function is to serve as the mediator between man and graphic records; not only books, but sound recordings, pictures, audio tapes, charts, whatever contributes to the advance of human knowledge .... The object of the library is to bring together human beings and recorded knowledge in as fruitful a relationship as it is humanly possible to be."[1]

When Jesse Shera wrote this in the 1970's, he was only capturing a timeless professional hope and expectation. At the time he could see the possibility of fulfilling the expectation differently, but only today do we have tools powerful enough to really begin to "bring together human beings and recorded knowledge in as fruitful a relation as it is humanly possible to be."

It is a pleasure to be here with you today. I would like to share with you recent experiences at Case Western Reserve University where five years ago the President and the Board of Trustees made a conscious decision to create a University which would be characterized as an Electronic Learning Environment. At the same time, President Agnar Pytte focused anew on the University's libraries, with a commitment to raise funds for a new library building, as well as the appointment of a campus-wide committee charged with understanding and describing the Library of the Future (LOF). The LOF Committee finished its work in 1990/91.

When I came to CWRU in 1991, I had special responsibilities to build upon the general directions outlined in the LOF Report in understanding the specifics of the library which had to appear in the physical plant for the new library building. Second, I had to build the roadmap which would lead to the creation of the LOF.

What I will share with you today are some of the highlights of the road map, particularly the models and analytic tools which we believe are fundamentally useful in constructing the library of and for the future.

Campus Context: the Electronic Learning Environment

"We want this Environment to support the ability to visualize relationships in new ways, to compare and contrast, to rearrange and restructure, to analyze and integrate, and to negotiate issues crucial to the conduct of social life. We want not only to construct a campus through which people move easily, but also an environment in which people communicate differently."[2]

The above description of President Pytte's vision for the university is a one that requires substantial support from fiscal resources, personnel, services, systems, and campus infrastructure. It is also a vision that requires one to think differently about the library's mission, its services, and its users.

Infrastructure

One cannot underestimate the importance of infrastructure in the Electronic Learning Environment (ELE). The infrastructure is more than just a physical or structural underpinning for a campus-wide system. The parameters of the ELE infrastructure dictate a great deal more than the traditional physical installation, maintenance, and convenience factors inherent in traditional infrastructures. In an environment where the product supported by the infrastructure is digitized data and in an environment where all forms of recorded knowledge can now be digitized, the viability of the infrastructure literally dictates what kinds of data can and cannot be carried and utilized by the system and users served by that infrastructure. Data formats that cannot be accommodated by the infrastructure cannot ever reach the end-users, now or in the future, and can never be part of the user environment and can never play a role in future approaches to fulfilling the university's mission. While the infrastructure remains largely invisible to the end-users, it is an expensive and critical component in an ELE and it's role is absolutely vital since it quite literally dictates the extent to which all other components may play a role. If an infrastructure is incapable of carrying photorealistic graphics or full motion video or digitized sound, those components can never be a part of the campus environment.

At Case Western Reserve University, we are fortunate to enjoy a point-to-point, fiber-optic network, where each computer, each laser printer, each network-compatible node in each end-user configuration has the option to share in a rich and growing set of networked resources. This infrastructure is the result of hard working and intensive long-range planning efforts. It also requires the constant and vigilant care of a group of highly trained and skilled network engineers. In terms of working with massive amount of point-to-point fiber optic cabling, these staff members represent some of the most experienced personnel in the country.

The cost of the infrastructure to properly support an electronic learning environment where the university community can think, learn, communicate, and research in a new way, is high in terms of fiscal and personnel resource, but without a comprehensive and soundly maintained infrastructure the long terms goals of an electronic learning environment cannot be realized.

Utilizing the Infrastructure

Once the required infrastructure is in place, other support and utilization mechanisms must be re-envisioned in light of their role in the Electronic Learning Environment.

Assumptions

In fulfilling my role of envisioning the Library of the Future, I have formed some basic tenets as a result of my thinking and research and experiences. For the first time in history, every form of recorded knowledge can be digitized. This is an absolutely critical fact since it makes possible things that have never before been possible. In practice, hardware and software developments dictate that some formats are currently more heavily used and processing speeds make text-dominated environments friendlier to low-level computer configurations, but that is not the long term picture. It is not important right now that commonly available static storage mediums (optical and hard disk drives) are not equipped to store digital sound or full motion video in any quantity. It is not important that voice recognition is still widely limited to basic commands or that voice synthesis sucks up large chunks of RAM needed elsewhere. Those are problems of the moment, subject to the next wave of hardware and software development, and not the stuff of which future planning for a library or any other institution are made.

It is useless to form certain questions in a deductive mode, such as "How will we use this new technology (whichever technology is in question) to do what we do now? How will it affect our current practices? How will it help us do something better?" Forming questions in this manner isn't productive when too little is understood about all the ramifications of a new technology. It is more productive, though significantly more challenging, to ask "What can we do with this technology that we have never done before?" This often involves discovering a remarkable new solution and then going off in search of problems that this new solution can address.[3] This is not what most of us are accustomed to, but it is actually quite practical since no one can accurately estimate the impact of a technology that lies outside their current experience. Traditional deductive thinking may actually prove quite costly in that it may result in completely missing a new possibility because there was no clue of its existence in existing patterns.

The most powerful thing associated with information technologies and the accompanying computers, peripherals, and infrastructure, is their ability to empower the individual, to accommodate the individual need in an effective and affordable way. Such a possibility means that service providers may acknowledge markets and client needs that were previously impossible or impractical. This also means identifying and adjusting to user needs in a way we have not previously been challenged to do so. For libraries and librarians, this will mean knowing things about their clientele that were never before relevant since we had no way to address needs at such an individual level. It may also mean providing services and applying skills for organizing and accessing information at a point earlier than ever before. It will clearly necessitate intensive collaborative work with providers of technological resources (network engineers, digitizing personnel, interface designers, etc.) and re-tooling of librarian's skills at an unprecedented level. Finally, it also means that the mission of the library must change to reflect this new capability of informational technologies to accommodate new users at new levels. The Library of the Future will need to address itself to "knowledge management" as it relates to its users.

New access and control mechanisms will need to be developed to match new data formats and new, textual and non-textual environments. This also means that what defines intellectual property and the forms that intellectual property may take, how it is made accessible, etc. will also evolve in new ways. Strategies for developing these new access and control mechanisms will have to evolve as the technologies evolve and their directions and impacts become more clear. New control mechanisms are also being sought: CWRU is working with IBM to develop Royalty Manager software that helps to track intellectual property rights of materials. It is a component such as this which makes possible the rational establishment of the Virtual Libraries described below.

Specific Tools for Change

Armed with the certainty that the very nature of libraries and librarians will change, our organization proceeded with a number of steps to meet these challenges. While radical change in infrastructure, skills, work relationship, etc. may be the rule of the day, the essential goal of librarianship remains that stated by Shera, to bring people and information together in the most productive way possible. Our definition of Knowledge Management[4] (KM) is that KM is a phrase that describes an environment where an individual can be brought into contact with information in a way that is exponentially more productive and engaging than any currently available environment, an environment where clarity and understanding can be brought to data.

Libraries and librarians, or anyone associated with the task of creating such an environment must concern themselves with forming the right questions, creating the right tools, and recognizing powerful solutions -- all of which will combine to produce the first iterations of an environment in which Knowledge Management is possible.

Taylor Model

One of the specific tools employed by the staff of University Library was the Taylor Model.[5] Taylor's model is a theoretical model and is not predictive. The University Library adapted it as a working tool and, in turn, adopted the concepts of "value-adding" and the importance of Information Use Environments as critical guiding principles in the construction of the Library of the Future.

In Taylor's model, individuals work in information environments and part of those information environments are the problem-solving or wrestling with problems or questions that naturally occur. Taylor's model allows that these "problem dimensions" have certain characteristics that exist along a continuum. The model also allows that information also has traits that exist along a continuum. The combination of the user's problem dimensions and the traits of the information involved create a picture of the "information worlds" within which groups of users work. However effectively a given information system (in the largest sense of the word "system") meshes with the individual or group's Information Use Environment is the measure of the degree of success of that system.

It is inherent to Taylor's model that the degree of "value-added" by any component or service within the system is judged wholly from the user's point-of-view. If it isn't valuable to the user within the user's information environment, than the service isn't valuable, period.

In order to begin to create these pictures of how our campus clientele gather and use information, the staff conducted some 1400 interviews with representative percentages of faculty, staff, and students. The interviewees were asked opened ended question not about how they used existing libraries services, but about how they gathered and used information.

The results of the analysis of the interviews showed that campus users do indeed have very different information gathering and use patterns and that these patterns (described in Taylor's terminology) do differ along the lines of both discipline and scholarly level, i.e., the types of information required by those studying in the humanities are markedly different than those required by engineers. In turn, while the nature of the material is consistent, there are differences even within a discipline among the levels in a user group, i.e., what a humanities faculty member needs is significantly different than what a freshmen in the same area needs. There are even noticeable differences between subject areas in the same discipline such as the visual arts as compared to the literary arts. The differences are not just present in the types of information required, but also in how the information is gathered and used. This means that what each group values and requires differs widely. Often what the library considered important was not what the user considered important. Findings related to major user groups, especially faculty user groups, were taken back to those groups for discussion and confirmation.

The conclusion was that developing profiles of the information gathering and use patterns by precise user group would be a powerful tool for prioritizing and planning. We also concluded that "cookie cutter" services that offered essentially the same services to all users were no longer useful or advisable. These assumptions are in the process of being applied to other areas of library responsibility such as resource allocation, including collection management budgets, personnel deployment, training programs, etc. The need to bring library resources to bear on individualizing library services has become a priority. In keeping with some of the findings of the LSBC, a means to transfer the librarians investment of their resources in activities associated with problem-solving, time-savings, and cost-savings activities is also a priority.

These and other findings form that basis for another of our specific projects, the development of a suite of virtual libraries that are discipline-specific. The term "virtual library" refers to an environment, an environment in which the "client services" aspect is the most commonly referred to and the most immediately relevant to the user. In our discussion, a virtual library environment is not access to some local or remote OPAC, nor is it access to the Internet or some specific listserver on the Internet. The client server component of a virtual library environment may offer all of the latter as part of client services, but as a concept, a virtual library environment goes far beyond those notions. A virtual library environment is one in which component parts combine to provide intellectual and real access to information, the value of which is framed entirely from the users' point of view, meeting the individuals' unique information needs.

Virtual libraries are not a single entity, but a host of component parts brought together in a dynamic environment. Frequently, virtual libraries are also defined as the act of remote access to the contents and services of libraries and other information resources, combining an onsite collection of current and heavily used materials in print, microformats, and electronic form, with an electronic network which provides access to, and delivery from, external library and commercial information and knowledge sources worldwide. In essence, the faculty member and student are provided the "effect" of a library which is a synergy created by bringing together technologically the resources of many libraries, information services, and knowledge stores.[6] In addition, librarians will be working collaboratively with their faculty to develop the tools to build, maintain, manipulate, and distribute these collections of data resources.

The Library As Mind

The Library of the Future is many things, some of them very familiar, and some newly arrived on the wings of brand new informational technologies. Among the hallmarks of the Library of the Future will be: a new level of intellectual access, new access and control mechanisms to facilitate this new level of access to new formats of materials, new tools to help visualize and clarity data in ways that facilitate understanding, new levels of collaborative involvement for librarian staff, new, more personalized and relevant virtual library environments, and new, more powerful voices for individual users.

No new path is void of peril. All future planning engenders serious risk, but it is imperative that we embrace this risk, just as we must embrace the possibility of error. It is nearly guaranteed that in planning and trying to position ourselves for the Library of the Future, we will surely make mistakes, just as we will surely overlook some important ramifications. We must just as certainly pledge ourselves to correcting ourselves rapidly and continue undaunted to follow our vision. Flexibility and innovations are also hallmarks of the Library of the Future.

Along with the other challenges, most of the long established infrastructures that support us will also have to evolve. Infrastructure like technical support, budgets and economic strategies, evaluation tools, physical plants, policy development, organizational and staffing patterns, etc. will all have to respond flexibly to patterns of change. There will be a high price for all this innovation and change, but the price of ignoring a compelling vision of the future or failing to follow one will be even higher.

In its fullest realization, the Library of the Future will truly empower the individual and truly serve the client. It will be a Library of the Mind and surely that is worth every challenge and risk posed to us.

Endnotes

[1]Jesse H. Shera, Sociological Foundations of Librarianship. 1st ed. (New York: Asia Publishing House), 1970.

[2]Case Western Reserve University, Plan for Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland, OH: Case Western Reserve University), 1990.

[3]Michael Hammer and James Champy, Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for a Business Revolution (New York: Harper Collins), 1993. This book offers an excellent discussion of the importance of inductive reasoning as applied to informational technologies.

[4]D. Kaye Gapen, Sharon Schmitt and Lei Zeng, "Developing Intellectual Access and Control Mechanisms for Discipline-based Virtual Libraries that Feature Media-Integration," Proceedings of the 4th ASIS SIG/CR Classification Research Workshop: 179-203.

[5] Robert S. Taylor, Value-added Processes in Information Systems (Norwood: Ablex Publishing Corporation), 1986. Taylor refers to his model as "rather an early presentation of a way of thinking about the field of information science" and also as "a frame of reference for ordering what we know about information use environments..." It is a very complex, powerful and sophisticated model. To mention some of its principle components only briefly, as we do in this paper, is to do the model and the book an injustice. Interested readers should examine the book for a true idea of the range of Taylor's thinking.

[6]D. Kaye Gapen, et al., loc cit.