Omar Wasow – Libraries in the Age of Google
October 27th, 2007 by infomancyOmar Wasow is closing the AASL 2007 conference with a discussion of what we must do to thrive in the age of Google/Amazon/Whatever. We cannot beat these companies, but we can succeed by remaining focused on our core values. School libraries are about critical thinking and information fluency – these are the critical tools for success. Libraries also provide a space, a place for reflection and a slower pace.
Omar did his homework preparing for this talk, and was able to take us through a quick tour of some of the turmoil and challenges libraries are facing. From the Wyoming Mudflap flap to questions about what libraries do for users, he acknowledged that this is a pivotal time for libraries.
What can libraries do? Become a transformation. Be a transformed place (a place to connect or disconnect) and also be a transformed information experience. Libraries can help. Book: The Experience Economy – B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore.
There are five stages of economy, shown here in terms of coffee:
Commodity – a sack of coffee beans
Product – a can of Folgers
Service – a cup of coffee at a diner
Experience – a custom brewed cup at a local shop
Transformation – a coffee tasting class
So Wasow suggests that libraries can transcend to become a transformational experience for information. [I have been pushing the past two years to create Fish4Info as an experience, now I have a new goal to work towards!!!]
In closing, libraries can be a “public park for your brain.”
October 28th, 2007 at 9:07 pm
If you like what this speaker had to say check out this post
http://dbl.lishost.org/blog/2007/02/26/the-age-of-the-user-experience-part-one/
and
http://dbl.lishost.org/blog/2007/03/05/the-age-of-the-user-experience-part-two/
at Designing Better Libraries
I don’t know Wasow but it sounds like he’s doing a presentation similar to ones I’ve been doing for about the last 18 months. I’ll have to find out more about him.
October 29th, 2007 at 10:44 am
Wow, great posts. Thank you for sharing them. That is very much like what Omar was talking about. I love your discussion of the stages of economy in libraries. I am preparing for a keynote in a bit over a week, and I was just thinking yesterday (on the long flight home) about the whole Google thing.
The way I see it, the Internet is a commodity, link lists or directories are a product, search engines are a service, but libraries can transcend to fill the gap for an internet experience and transformation. Since we are all teachers (even those public/academic/special librarians who forget) we are best suited for the creation of that transformational experience. The problem we face is making bibliographic instruction transformational instead of deadly boring.