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The challenge ahead—sustaining our relevance

Information Outlook - January 1, 2004

We have seen, in the past few months (I am writing this in November 2003), extreme advances in the area of interoperability, especially on the desktop. The lines are really blurring--between content and context, between software and hardware, between wired and wireless, between entertainment and work. Indeed, the new Millennials, that generation the first of whom are just now finishing their bachelor's degrees, are coming into a world that's beautifully designed to match their learning and information-seeking behaviors. It might just leave us behind too ... groan ... if we don't think smart and work quickly and nimbly to ensure special librarians' continued relevance.

Here's the Challenge

Is the desktop getting too good? Consider these autumn 2003 news releases:

* Reuters has hooked up its instant messaging (IM) network with quite a few others--Microsoft, AOL, IBM Lotus, and Yahoo.

* Extreme conversational connectivity and secure access aimed at the critical e-commerce, trading, and financial markets is a powerful initiative.

* Suddenly e-mail is looking creaky and old--just an e-version of our grandparents sending letters through the mail and posties walking them door-to-door, placing them in physical boxes.

Combine this with some new developments at Yahoo. Its IM client can now co-browse the Web, allowing IM users to share websites and Web pages easily and seamlessly. I have also enjoyed the emergent IMvironments--IM versions of community spaces. Now--wait for this--the latest Yahoo IM offers PC to Mobile conversations! Lord! My digital phone is now feeling oh-so-last century!

Microsoft Corp. began distributing MS Office 2003, leveraging its native XML underpinnings to include access to several key content sources--Gale, Alactritude, Factiva--directly from within Office applications. You are probably pretty familiar with Microsoft Office Suite (Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Access), but expand that awareness to include the new Office System additions (InfoPath and OneNote), and Microsoft Office FrontPage, Publisher, SharePoint Services, and SharePoint Portal Server 2.0. Spend some time reviewing the Microsoft site and learn more.

These products were designed to improve information intelligence, personalize access to information, reduce the barriers to access, deliver business information as seamlessly as possible, and streamline processes for learning, teaming, and collaborating. You will note that the first three partners for information provision are key to special libraries. Factiva's first solution for Office 2003, Factiva News Search, is designed to allow information workers to conduct research on Factiva's collection of sources directly from a report, spreadsheet, or presentation they're creating. Gale, part of Thomson Corporation, will offer Microsoft users access to a portion of Gale's online information resources. For example, by highlighting a company name in most Microsoft Office 2003 applications, customers can receive Gale-published company profiles within the application and also may purchase individual reports of more than 450,000 international public and private company profiles. Alacritude, republisher of eLibrary and Encyclopedia.com, will offer eLibrary through Microsoft Office 2003. Again, when a word is highlighted within most Office applications, eLibrary search results appear in a research pane within the document. The results include article abstracts from newspapers, newswires, magazines, journals, transcripts, maps, photos, and reference sources.

In November 2003, Google released the Search Deskbar. No, this isn't the familiar Google MSIE Browser Search Toolbar we all know and use. It's a new search application that lets PC users perform Google searches at any time from inside any application. It is browserless, or browser independent. And, it's free. Once downloaded, it appears as a search box in the Windows taskbar at the bottom right of most Windows-based PCs. For now it's only English and Windows (98/ME/2000/XP running IE 5.5 or higher). Key features are basic for now, following the simple Google model. Besides searching using Google, you can preview search results in a small inset window that closes automatically, access Google from any application by typing Ctrl+Alt+G, and use other simple keyboard shortcuts for multiple searches for Google News, Google Images, or Froogle--even when your browser isn't running. You can use the Google Deskbar to obtain quick answers from the Web without leaving the task at hand, confirm the latest news stories in Google News, solve math equations with Google's calculator, and look up the meaning of words with Google's define operator. If you don't love Google, feel free to check out HotBot's Quick-Search Deskbar, which also offers instant search to the four major Web search services that HotBot queries (FAST, Google, Inktomi, and Teoma) and a host of other cool features--including access to over 200 deep and invisible Web searches. It's browser-free, too.

Also, talk about your huge online library! OCLC WorldCat and Google started testing the opening of WorldCat records to Google access. The trial will offer a 2 million-record subset from the more than 53 million records in the WorldCat database. It will likely be in release when this article is published. I hear you'll just input your ZIP Code and be directed to the library closest to you that has the book you need. So far, the plan is to offer a subset of records of the most popular and widely available books by selecting only records held by a minimum of 100 libraries. More than 12,000 libraries are in the pilot! Until this pilot, the only way end-users could search WorldCat was to use FirstSearch, almost always in a library. The world of book collections is opening up, and clearly books are not dead.

Amazon announced its "Search Inside the Book" this past October. The service lasted mere weeks after some authors complained that it threatened sales of their works. As of November 7, 2003, Amazon.com had stopped allowing users of its "Search Inside the Book" feature to print pages of online books they find. The service covered 120,000 scanned books! Amazon said the program was designed to promote, not hamper, book sales by letting Amazon users browse content before buying. Using the tool, people can type in any keyword and receive results for all pages and titles of various books that contain that term. Interestingly, Google is in talks with several publishers to build a service that would allow Web surfers to search the full text of books online, according to a report from Publishers Weekly's online site. So far, Google is reported to have the rights to scan as many as 60,000 titles.

At time of this writing, rumors swirl that Google has been talking to Microsoft about partnerships and acquisition in the context of their recently announced potential initial public offering. And new Microsoft content partnerships are being announced weekly.

ARRRGHHHHH!

What Is the 2004 Desktop Going to Look Like?

Well, folks, I think that there are some real threats and opportunities for us here. We survived the data revolution. We helped lead the information revolution. We coped and are coping with the Knowledge Economy. This last shift, though, is the toughest. We are actually starting to see the seamless integration of information and content into the working, learning, playing, and entertainment environments of our users. Instead of just helping people become more knowledgeable with our services, we will be contributing to the world of improved human behavior. We certainly can't "own" that, but we can now seriously contemplate the SLA slogan--Turning Information Into Action!

Here's the Strategy

Off the top of my head, I can see a few key strategies you must focus on to emerge from this challenge new and improved!

We must communicate the critical role that information literacy skills play in our organizations. While the role of librarians in training and educating end-users in these key skills is obvious, we are not an easily scaled solution. So many users, so little time, and so few of us! We'll need to investigate e-learning, distance learning for bibliographic skills, information coaching (using IM and virtual reference) and ensuring that our students and professional and work colleagues are ready to adapt to this new age. Run--don't walk--down to your human resources vice president and start building a relationship. You need to be mainstream in HR for organization development issues and training.

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