A recent job requires me to decommission a special library
in an organisation. The reason behind this was the organisation received a substantial cut from it funding organisation so it is up to the organisation to
find ways to cut expenses. With the Library being under-utilised, it became the
target of cut to avoiding cutting grants they need to give out.
The email for the close down of the library went out the
other day asking for all staff to return their loaned items for decommission
and write off. When staff members started showing up, they were sad about the
library getting closed down and said they will miss it. My response was “Well
that’s what happens when you don’t use it and it cannot justify continued
funding”. In most cases, there were guilty looks on them. But this is a cold
hard fact in an age where everyone thinks Google is an unlimited source of
information and other things were just supplementary. When people said that to
me, I usually responded, “How do you know the information is correct?” And most
often I would receive blank looks from their eyes. It is another cold hard fact
– are we actually informed or we are just thinking we are being informed?
I am not here to defend the value of libraries or the
library profession as I believe if you make yourself valuable, you have your
value out there. However, it seems to be more often now that special libraries
or libraries themselves have become white elephants in organisations and when
the axes land, they land on them.
The thing is people seemed to like the fact that there is a
library in the organisation. Somehow they feel the library emanates knowledge
and wisdom. But then at the same time they don’t feel like going into them and
spending time inside them. They became “use by needs” institutes that could
help people crossing tight deadlines for projects they have no idea how to
complete. Otherwise libraries just
sit there and look nice. Why has it become like this? Most people were trained
to use libraries since schooling started but then its importance in people’s
life diminishes over time as they grew up.
I personally think that while Google played a part in
decentralising information, the library profession also has a share of responsibility for its
own demise in certain cases. I have seen libraries and library professionals
who claimed to be proud of their profession but did nothing to improve library
as an entity or establishment. Old materials were not reviewed and weeded to
make its collection up to date and relevant to their organisation needs; no
promotion of services; no proactive help or presence for their services; no
service charter informing users what are on offer; no continuous training and
education for users to utilise their resources etc. In my opinion, unless the
organisation showed no interest in keeping the library, doing all these would
help to increase the value of libraries in organisations. The library
profession is more than just coming in do some ordering, cataloguing and
circulating, and then going home. This for me is an “I couldn’t care less
attitude” and in the end will only lead to the demise of your own profession.
I might sound very critical about this whole situation but
for me it is important that libraries and library professionals continue to
grow and improve. Library conferences provide a lot of new technologies and
ideas but are we just limiting ourselves to what were put on a plate and
offered to us? In the past I repeatedly mentioned to my peers that librarians
need to take a more disruptive approach to technology. They should look at how
to exploit technology to their advantage instead of just using technologies as
presented to them. Thinking
outside of the box is extremely important for library professionals if they
want to stay relevant to business or otherwise they will just be limited to
academic and school libraries and then slowly die out. Of course if that’s the
stance I am fine with that but I do not know about other people.
On the other hand, I personally think there should be a
change in dynamics on how other people and organisations see librarianship as a
profession. I have moved on from purely library roles to information and knowledge
management roles but from looking at the job market, I still feel that a lot of
organisations still see information management as data analysis, data mapping
and data migration, which I think is hugely underplaying what it is about. For
me it is also about understanding why data is being collected and how to use
them in a business context that is relevant to the business. To achieve this,
an information and knowledge professional who understands users, technology and
the business is required. I personally think this is a new road young
librarians should start looking into and transforming their relevance as
information and knowledge professionals. For organisations they need to open up
their views about what information management is about and understand the value
a properly trained information and knowledge management professional can offer.
