遠離冰山,把你的”圖書館之船划進Web 2.0的環境吧!!

对岸的梁董翻译了一篇关于图书馆2.0的文章,译站荒芜太久了,转载来充一下数!

Rick Anderson 內華達大學 圖書館 資源徵集部 主任
在過去戲劇化變遷的十年裡,沒有任何疑問的,我們圖書館員以我們最正面的意願努力工作來服務我們的讀者。如果專業是條船的話,那麼我想我們正如英雄般完美的划著它。但是我不確定我們是不是已經注意到橫亙在目前航道上的潛在危險。特別是有三個「冰山」 會對我們的將來的成功造成顯著的威脅。當所有過去資訊時代已成過去,我們很難對這些已不再有意義的慣例和態度就此鬆手。當然,我們的讀者們並不會有這類的擔心疑慮,像是Web 2.0的出現。我所見正威脅我們的前進我們的存在的冰山是下面這幾個:

I don’t think there’s any question that we librarians are working hard, with the best intentions, to serve our patrons well in a world that has changed dramatically in the last decade. If the profession is a boat, then I think we’re all rowing pretty heroically. But I’m not sure we’re paying enough attention to the potential disasters that lie in our current path. In particular, there are three “icebergs” that I believe pose significant threats to our future success. All are remnants of a bygone information age, practices and attitudes that no longer make sense but which we have difficulty letting go. Our patrons have no such qualms, of course, as the emergence of Web 2.0 demonstrates. The “icebergs” that I see threatening our progress, indeed our existence, are these:

「以防萬一」式的典藏
儘管這可能聽起來像發瘋了,我們已經來到對圖書館”典藏”的中心思考存疑的時間點上。建構一個預想讀者所有的需求而廣泛收集各式資料(不包括浪費不存在的)總是很不確定,但是這曾是在資訊只能由紙本獲取時唯一合理的方法,因為這樣,要很困難、昂貴並且緩慢才能建立。但是如果他們很難找到資料而收集訊息產品這事兒已不再有意義。因為不難了。事實上傳統的典藏觀念已經完全不在適宜了。在我的圖書館裡,在過去的二年裡我們看到流通在數據上掉了55%,讓証明持續大量的「以防萬一」式典藏紙本是合理的。當Web 2.0不斷的浮現與發展,我們的讀者將會期望能檢索到所有的事-數位館藏如期刊、書、blog、podcast等等。你想他們無法擁有所有的東西嗎? 再想一下。這可是我們的大好機會啊。

The “just in case” collection
Crazy as this may sound, the time has come for us to look skeptically at the very idea of a library “collection.” Building a comprehensive collection of materials that anticipates the user’s every need (without providing wastefully where no need exists) has always been problematic, but it was an approach that made sense when information was available only in print formats, and was therefore difficult, expensive and slow to distribute. But it no longer makes sense to collect information products as if they were hard to get. They aren’t. In fact, it may no longer make sense to “collect” in the traditional sense at all. In my library, we’ve seen a 55 percent drop in circulation rates over the past twelve years, making it harder and harder to justify the continued buildup of a large “just in case” print collection. As a Web 2.0 reality continues to emerge and develop, our patrons will expect access to everything – digital collections of journals, books, blogs, podcasts, etc. You think they can’t have everything? Think again. This may be our great opportunity.

依賴使用者教育訓練
圖書館在教學上訓練不足。問問你自已你「讀者對館員」的比率是多少(在內華達大學大約是680比1),然後再問問自已你是如何受訓來面對這些讀者,我們需要專注於排除讀者與資訊間的阻礙而不是花精神在這些教學技巧上,然後他們可以花費一點點時間來和那些廢柴的搜尋介面摔角就如他們實際上閱讀與學習這些技號一樣。很明顯的,當我們夠行時,我們會幫忙和教讀者,更好的話,我們會將我們的服務也整合進去。但是如果我們的服務在沒有訓練下是無法使用的,這表示這服務是需要修正-而不是我們的讀者要修正。一鈕搞定,像是Flickr的Blog This功能,並且易於使用的程式像是Google PAGE Creator,提供了使用者為中心的使用模組。

Reliance on user education
Libraries are poorly equipped and insufficiently staffed for teaching. Ask yourself what your patron-to-librarian ratio is (at the University of Nevada it’s about 680 to 1) and then ask yourself how you’re going to train all those patrons. We need to focus our efforts not on teaching research skills but on eliminating the barriers that exist between patrons and the information they need, so they can spend as little time as possible wrestling with lousy search interfaces and as much time as possible actually reading and learning. Obviously, we’ll help and educate patrons when we can, and when they want us to, and the more we can integrate our services with local curricula, the better. But if our services can’t be used without training, then it’s the services that need to be fixed—not our patrons. One-button commands, such as Flickr’s “Blog This,” and easy-to-use programs like Google Page Creator, offer promising models for this kind of user-centric service.

「來我們這兒」式的圖書館服務
曾有個時期,並不是很多前,當圖書館在努力些東西企圖要以這種獨占的力量來主控資訊市場。在印刷品的時代,如果你要檢索高價索引或是學術期刊,你沒有選擇地得來個圖書館之旅。這不是一個好的系統,但是有效。有這麼一點兒意思。可以這樣說,這可以運作的不錯如果你有幸地是在利用個好的圖書館。在後印刷品時代,圖書館已不再有這種獨占的力量,讀者已從網際網路上得到這種力量。在現在這個年代裡我們必需謙卑些,與其堅持讓讀者自已來,不如找些新方法來把我們的服務帶給讀者-無論是實體或是虛擬。最低限度,這代表將圖書館服務與內容置於讀者較喜歡的環境裡(像是…網路上),或是更好,整合我們的服務到他們的日常生活中,像是上班、學習、或是遊玩。

The “come to us” model of library service
There was a time, not very long ago, when libraries exercised something close to monopoly power in the information marketplace. During the print era, if you wanted access to pricey indexes or a collection of scholarly journals, you had no choice but to make a trip to the library. It wasn’t a good system, but it worked. Sort of. That is to say, it worked moderately well for those privileged with access to a good library. In the post-print era, libraries no longer have the monopoly power that they had in the days before the Internet. We have to be a bit more humble in the current environment, and find new ways to bring our services to patrons rather than insisting that they come to us—whether physically or virtually. At a minimum, this means placing library services and content in the user’s preferred environment (i.e., the Web); even better, it means integrating our services into their daily patterns of work, study and play.

沒有一個專業每當在遇到劇變時丟掉到他們的核心準則與價值去迎合新時代後還能生存。然而,當專業不去承認和適應在其服務的市場根本上一些改變時,它也可能同樣是災難,。在這個時間點上,我們的專業對照前文所提,非常接近於災難的後面類型。我們需要修正我們的方向,我們也不能等待我們專業的大船先改變方向,這將會在一個圖書館裡開始發生-一艘小船-一次一點滴改變。

No profession can survive if it throws its core principles and values overboard in response to every shift in the zeitgeist. However, it can be equally disastrous when a profession fails to acknowledge and adapt to radical, fundamental change in the marketplace it serves. At this point in time, our profession is far closer to the latter type of disaster than it is to the former. We need to shift direction, and we can’t wait for the big ship of our profession to change course first. It’s going to have to happen one library—one little boat—at a time.

Translated By:梁董