How libraries are embracing change and the new information experience occupied the rest of the morning.

George Needham presented results from OCLC report “Perceptions of libraries and information resources.” Ten years ago no one knew what a search engine was. Now it blows everything else away. Trustiworthiness of libraries is pretty low compared with search engines. And 60% feel libraries and search engines provide the same level of trustworthiness.

Librarians have done a lousy job of communicating our value proposition, letting search engines grab mindshare, we need to learn how to do what we do better. End the priesthood of librarianship

Michael Miller, University of Michigan, Arts & Engineering Libraries, recapped what others had said about the born digital generation, then talked about digitization projects at his university. Deep Blue, their institutional repository, comprehensively collects all UMich intellectual output. They’re digitizing music, images (library slide collection), video (Shoah visual history archive), and more. The Information commons are evolving into learning commons. The library is looking beyond its walls and is becoming producer of information

The view of special libraries was presented by Melanie O’Neill, VP R&D Information, GlaxoSmithKline. Her main theme was managing information for the discovery and development of new medicines. GSK has a very mobile workforce and has closed physical libraries to create a virtual library.

GSK negotiated enterprisewide contracts to put information on the desktop. It’s no longer OK for a scientist to ask a librarian a question that can be answered at the desktop by resources purchased by the information department. On the GSK library portal, scientists are encouraged to use Google and Google Scholar. I’m rather shocked by that and, in answer to a question from the audience, O’Neill said it was very popular and heavily used.
Librarians are now analyzing information and are situated within project/strategy teams. There’s a major push to capture and manage proprietary information (e-lab books, e-archiving, records retention). She wants to blur the distinction between publicly published data and proprietary information, and mine proprietary data in same fashion as searching public sources. Breaking down the silos between libraries and archives is the goal.

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