no sound from a one man band

The Librarian in Black has posted a great piece about the fact that the future of the library is in web services. She writes in response to a couple of articles (one by Richard Wallis and another by Richard Ackerman – see her post for links) and while she doesn’t say anything that those of us in web services haven’t heard before — the web is where it’s at (at least if not for us, definitely for our users), she really hits the nail on the head by asking the following questions. These points need to be heard by our libraryland leadership:

• How many libraries in the U.S. have a honest-to-goodness computer programmer on staff?
• How many have staff with Computer Science degrees?
• How many staff do they have devoted to the library’s hardware, software, and network?
• How many staff do they have devoted to web services?

And the conclusions -

• There is a dearth of technology staff combined with ever-increasing demands on those staff for new services and resources.
• Very few libraries have stopped to take a look at reallocating staff resources to match the ever-increasing load that they are putting on their technology staff.
• If any library is doing any kind of technology or organizational planning, this is something that must be addressed upfront.
• This probably meant a few less library assistants, or even one less reference librarian, and that’s sad. Ideally, our public would see the rising circulation, programming, and educational needs as well as technology needs and offer us up some more funding for additional staff. But on a cost-benefit analysis, you can’t do much better than investing in tech staff. How many library branches, that get more traffic than your largest branch, can be run 24/7 by a handful of FTEs with (far lower) infrastructure costs? And let’s not forget–our online branches serve all of our users, wherever they are, and it’s not dependent on physical proximity or open hours.

And not just in words. Every library director I have talked to has maintained enthusiastically kind sentiments toward the web – believing because they think they recognize its importance that they are supporting it. Perhaps that was true 10 years ago, when the mere idea of the internet was so new that to support the role of the library there was in fact a great step forward. Not anymore. It is time for action to back up sentiment. It was time 5 years ago.

LiB makes some great points about staff reallocation. In our current climate, we are not getting any more bodies. However we have a significant amount of human resources right now that could be redeployed to serve our current needs. My library is doing this — just not in technology. They are recognizing that the staffing levels at their physical branches are not meeting current demands and taking steps to move folks/positions to where they could have the most positive impact and economic benefit for our users. Of course, the web has not been recognized as a place that could benefit from these reallocations. The fact is that any library that is not allocating staff (a lot of them) and budget dollars to their web services is doing a serious disservice (LiB calls it a crime) to their public — what other area of service is growing so fast? Where are you pushing your public for information? What are you giving them when they get there?