Oxford, Ohio - The Mayor is a Librarian

Yes, really. Jerome Conley is the Head of Special Libraries at Miami University, but he is also serving his second term as Mayor of Oxford. You just never know who's in your audience....I was at the bit in the presentation about libraries as a third place and said, flippantly, "it's a good sound bite for politicians." Jerome is too nice a guy to take me to task for this.

Here's one thing that seemed to resonate with the Miami U librarians as it has with other audiences: perhaps there are two distinct service models looming in our future that reconcile the paradox of library as place seeming to be increasingly important to communities, and the need to disaggregate library content from the building and get it out to the open web where it can be found and used and valued. Looked at through the lens of current organizational structures in libraries, the challenge is extremely difficult. But, let's twist the kaleidoscope and look at the new pattern.

What if the physical library and its set of services was a separate organizational structure--different staff, different content, different services--from the virtual library? Of course, some libraries are not big enough to have completely different staff and content but the skill sets needed in these two "places" are different and getting more so. Is it really important to users of virtual library services to have to navigate a simulacrum of the physical library before they find (or not) the content? It is to the administrators of those physical spaces but I doubt it is to most people on the "SFO" (search, find, obtain) trail.

OK, this is one of my hobby horses. I'll get down now.