Libraries of the Future
The moderator for this session is Dan Carrigan, Chair of the IC Librarian’s Consortium.
The panel consists of:
- Chuck Henry, President, Council on Library and Information Resources
- David L. Osbourne, Head, Research Section, Federal Research Division, Library of Congress
- Richard James King, Chief Librarian of the Ruth H. Hooker Research Library, Naval Research Laboratory
- Diane J. White, NSA Librarian, National Security Agency
Dr. Henry speaks from the perspective of higher education and research libraries in general. He discusses the roles of computers in dealing with information, particularly in the humanities. He shows some slides of the way technology is documenting items such as a laser scan of works from Michelangelo, 3D maps of Civil War battles and original and transcripts of Civil War diaries.
He highlights the project Survivors of the Shoah from Steven Spielberg. The project contains and indexes the visual and vocal histories from Holocaust survivors.
Mr. King discusses the future of the library as well as examining the library’s past and the evolution of scholarly communication.
Dr. Osbourne speaks about the Library of Congress and how the Federal Research Division serves Open Source Intelligence to the Intelligence Community. He highlights the critical role played by gray literature in Open Source Intelligence. The staff of the FRD are all professionals with proficiency in foreign languages as well as training in advanced research methods. OSINT depends on people who can ask the right questions and make the right judgments. He also briefly touches on the future of the LOC’s research environment, including digital preservation and collection and particularly at-risk born-digital content. They also intend to expand access through the digital effort.
(Note: the FRD projects are available to the IC on opensource.gov)
Ms. White approaches the problem of libraries in the future as libraries of tomorrow and the day after and not the future of libraries in a year, five years, ten years. She is a realist and is engrossed in the problems happening right now. She discusses using technology to provide resources, particularly to get information to the desktop. She describes the need to get open sources available from the average analyst’s desktop no matter what level of classification his system resides on. She wants to enhance collaboration and the need for librarians to assert themselves as the experts and authority in information management. Access is important beyond the information itself and IC librarians need to learn to navigate new technology and be able to guide their customers. She emphasizes that the younger generations (digital natives) need to be embraced and that librarians are the ideal people to bring the generations together. She says that the wikification of everything is happening. The authoritative librarians need to jump in and use the tools to further their cause, specifically to edit the wikipedia to make it better, promote the blogs that are good resources, join in the conversations. The point is to make sure that people are interested in the library and will use it to enhance the work that they are doing.
