CAR PURCHASE COMPARI

2. CAR PURCHASE COMPARI Death is not the end… Professor David Nicholas, CIBER and the University of Tennessee • text • text

3. The backdrop: ‘The future is here but not widely distributed’ CAR PURCHASE COMPARI • Reality is large bits fallen off profession – special libraries; public libraries under cosh (public services generally not place to be in economically challenging times); falling student (rising fees, low job prospects) and CILIP numbers (on current trends membership drops to half by 2022 and lights out in 2040) • If that is not bad enough we have seen nothing yet. And all the elements of the storm, which will rock/sink our boat are with us now: • Disintermediation/digital transition • E-books • Fast information • Smartphones/tablets • Social media • No gripes or hidden agendas, talk data driven based on 10 years of studying millions of footprints of the digital consumer/virtual scholar

4. Disintermediation and the digital transition • Brakes on the profession applied long ago by the digital transition, but, like an ocean liner takes time to stop. • Disintermediation means take out the middleman/women. It is a DIY information world. There is a level playing field we are all attached to the big fat information pipe. • We are all librarians now and we like it! Use is going up and up and up. Publishers never had it so good • And even our brains are rewiring and we are never going back • Unfortunately as a profession we opened the door to the digital world and encouraged the transition, but forgot to follow the user in CAR PURCHASE COMPARI

5. e-books: the digital transition fast forwards CAR PURCHASE COMPARI • Digital transition has been given a massive kick in a particularly venerable area for libraries – books • Huge movement of people to the digital environment • E-books carry more people with them than e-journals • Impacts particularly on strategic groups for libraries – general public, students, arts and humanities users come to mind • Academic libraries could be in the firing line – made an art of managing a shortage of supply

6. a. Fast information generation CAR PURCHASE COMPARI • As in life, the (information) snack/bite has replaced the three course meal (whole book/article/page). Libraries major on three course meals • Been conditioned by emailing, text messaging, tweeting and PowerPoint to like/produce/want/need fast information above all else • ‘Fast bag pick-up’ the gold standard • Don’t come in the front door; dive in courtesy of Google • Don’t read; don’t do deep; horizontal has replaced the vertical; skitter • Avoid carefully-crafted discovery systems!! • Young fast forwarded from a world where focus was on knowing one big thing to a world where you know many things, but not very well.

7. CAR PURCHASE COMPARI Smartphones (and tablets): the game changer • Smartphones are forecasted to be platform of choice to access the Web in a couple of years time • Ask a young person today about the library and they will point to their phone. Ironically they are not allowed to use them in most physical libraries! Parallel universes. • Taking ‘lite’ information seeking and reading behaviour to a new level: faster, more truncated/abbreviated, less appraised etc. • Away from the office, away from the desk; away from the library, information on the go and in the social space (considered reading again is being challenged) • Google struck the first blow (search); Apple the second, maybe, killer blow (platform)

8. CAR PURCHASE COMPARI Social media: another game changer • Massive information players (Facebook., Twitter etc.). Huge and massive and growth • Ushers in another round of disintermediation; another powerful data source for the individual (the personal) • A social tool with big implications for scholarly communication, but few librarians in sight • Social media users much more likely to use iPads and smartphones – this compounds and accelerates change in behaviour, especially in regard to wanting it fast, above all else • Challenging old concepts of trust, brand, authority and peer review. Asking a friend, might be coming back in fashion

9. There is an after life: things the profession can do CAR PURCHASE COMPARI • McLuhan’s universe of linear exposition, quiet contemplation, disciplined reading and study was an ideal we developed services around. But its gone: • Decamp to the digital space and join the vast majority of the population, and at same time throw away those information seeking/retrieval textbooks and unlearn (the hardest thing to do) and then relearn by watching • Get into digitisation big time – emergent market, plenty of capacity and insatiable demand. Libraries institutions of social memory and the ‘local’ so lots to offer • Jump ship to publishing. The baton has been passed, publishers are the new digital librarians. Rich, innovative, digital and own content. • Physical libraries should model themselves on museums, galleries and cultural/historical institutions – knowledge acquisition function will move elsewhere

10. There is an after life: things the profession can do [cont.] .] CAR PURCHASE COMPARI • 5. Teach people how to maximise the information retrieval value of the smartphone and tablet. • 6. Enhance user performance (and society). Become personal trainers – help people whose memories are shrinking, are poor on evaluation, have short attention spans, lost the art of reading and who would rather have something fast than good. But don’t call it information literacy, and put it on an app!