“Happiness is…Library Automation:” The Rhetoric of Early Library Automation

and the Future of Academic Libraries and Discovery

Lauren KosrowUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign/Triton College

Lisa HinchliffeUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

@laurenkosrow@lisalibrarian

“Once we have perfected the search technique I am certain that a session of ten

minutes at a terminal could accomplish more than hours of pouring through library catalogs

and thumbing laboriously through books.”

J. G. Kemeny in Library Bulletin (1972)

Initial Questions

• Does history tell us anything about the future of library technology?

• What is there for us to learn about the language, sentiments, and decision-making processes of librarians in the past with regard to technology, discovery, and automation?

Predictions for the Future

Image courtesy of Matt Novak, http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com

“The librarian’s philosophy from the beginning has been to accept and adapt for library use whatever mechanical devices fit his needs regardless of what their use might

be outside of the library.”

Melvin J. Voigt in Library Trends (1956)

Librarians as Proxy

“By automating, librarians can spend more time with their books and their contents—returning to the age when the librarian was an intellectual, a knower of language, and spent less time with

clerical mechanics.”

Rodney K. Waldron in College & Research Libraries (1958)

“No longer will librarians be called upon to perform these routines more rightfully left to machines, thus freeing them for

more creative, imaginative, and rewarding work.”

Rodney K. Waldron in Library Journal (1959)

Shift Discovery

“By the late 1970s we can expect technology to be so far advanced that a

vast transmission network will make into a reality the possibility of calling upon total global resources to locate information.”

Marjorie Griffin in Library Journal (1962)

Criticism

“I argued that we were ignorantly imitating industrial research and development, which comprise our systems

programming, and that we were wasting money on a faith the exact equivalent of a witch’s

faith in flying ointment.”

Ellsworth Mason in Library Resources & Technical Services

(1972)

“If anybody really loves libraries today, it must the

power companies and electronics industry, for we

gleefully purchase, so it seems, almost any thing that plugs in,

flashes, bleeps, or hums.”

Sanford Berman in Library Journal (1971)

Shift User Wants/Needs

“It is very important to define what we wish to accomplish by automating libraries and

information services, and equally important to discover what users want of libraries today and

of automated libraries tomorrow.”

C.D. Gull in Papers Presented At The Meeting On Automation In The Library (1964)

Shift Access

“The stockbroker today is completely dependent on his cathode ray tube terminal to bring him instantaneous, up-to-date information. He can not rely on yesterday’s Wall

Street Journal … CRT’s are going to be as common in libraries as are telephones.”

“It is true the automation drive is for greater efficiency, but not to put people out of work. It is to make library

services available to more people.”

I.A. Warheir in Library Journal (1971)

Competition Looming

“If librarianship does not meet this challenge and fill the need for professional

knowledge, someone else will.”

Robert Hayes, 1964 Clinic on Data Processing in Libraries

Technology as Competition

“The library’s clientele is changing its expectations…the public will no longer be satisfied with any kind

of library response that smacks of being plodding or bureaucratic. People want information now, not

tomorrow or next week. If they can’t get what they want from the library, they’ll go to the computer

facility.”

Allen B. Veaner in Library Automation: The State of the Art II (1973)

CONTEMPORARY CONSIDERATIONS

What is Unseen?

“We’re always limited by the technology of the present.”

– The Long Now Foundation –

New Understandings

• Focus on User Practices and Preferences – Not Librarian as Proxy

• Technologies and Experiences with Technologies Create New Kinds of User Practices and Preferences

Ex Libris for PrimoMeeting user expectations for quick, easy,

and effective searching and retrieval, Primo® is a one-stop solution for the

discovery and delivery of local and remote resources, such as books, journal articles,

and digital objects.

Summon (ProQuest)The Summon® Service increases the value

of your library by delivering an unprecedented research experience.

More than a single-search box, the service makes your collection more discoverable

and provides unique ways for users to connect with librarians.

EDS (EBSCO)EBSCO Discovery ServiceTM brings together

the most comprehensive collection of content—including superior indexing from top subject indexes, high-end full text and the entire library collection—all within an unparalleled full-featured, customizable

discovery layer experience.

WorldCat DiscoveryIdentify resources at your library and in the collections of the world’s libraries. Library users and staff use WorldCat

Discovery to search the WorldCat database of electronic, digital and physical resources; to identify materials they need and to find out where they are available.

PROVOCATIVE PERSPECTIVES

Does Discovery Still Happen in the Library?Roles and Strategies for a Shifting Reality

“Discovery has occupied a growing amount of systems resources and attention in recent years in academic libraries

… libraries are shifting strategy, reorganizing staff, and licensing or building new library systems, to a great

degree in support of a vision that the library has a central role to play here. Is this vision the right one for the

academic library?”

“It might just be that free searching such as that provided by Google or Scholar is effective enough that the library can

walk away from making investments of its own.”

Roger Schonfeld, Ithaka S&R

Resisting Amazonification

“When it comes to being a social platform to rival Facebook, a shopping platform to rival Amazon, or a search platform to rival Google, libraries – local

and little - can’t compete.”“But that whole competition narrative is screwy.

Some things aren’t for profit. Some things need to be small and personalized.”

Barbara Fister, Library Babel Fish, Inside Higher Ed

Discussion

• What lessons can we take from the era of library automation?

• What are we trying to accomplish with discovery? Will history show we succeed?

• What is our motivation? Vision? Fear?

• What are we not yet thinking about that we should be?

This present momentUsed to beThe unimaginable future.

Stuart Brand, The Clock of the Long Now

Works CitedBerman, S. (1971). Let is All Hang Out: A Think Piece for Luddite Librarians. Library Journal, 96.Brand, S. (1999). The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility. New York: Basic Books, 164.Fister, B. (2014, July 15). Resisting Amazonification. [Web log post] Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/library-babel-fish/resisting-amazonificationGull, C.D. in Andrews, T. & Morelock, M. (Eds.). (1964). Papers Presented At The

Meeting On Automation In The Library - When, Where, And How. Purdue University, Lafayette, IA.

Griffin, M. (1962). The Library of Tomorrow. Library Journal, 87.Hayes, R. M. in Goldhor, H. (Ed.). (1964). Proceedings of the 1964 Clinic on Library Applications of Data Processing. Urbana, IL.Kemeny, J. G. (1972). Library of the future. Library Bulletin, 1250-60.Mason, E. (1971). The Great Gas Bubble Prick’d. College & Research Libraries. 32(3), 183-196.

Works CitedMason, E. (1972). Perspective on Libraries and Computers: A Debate. Library Resources and Technical Services, 16(1), p. 5.Schonfeld, R. C. (2014). Does Discovery Still Happen in the Library? Roles and Strategies for a Shifting Reality. Ithaka S+R.Spilhaus, A. (1962, February 17). Our New Age. Chicago Daily News.Veaner, A. B., Martin, S. K., & West, M. W. (Eds.) (1973). Library Automation: the State of the Art II: papers presented at the Preconference Institute in Library Automation. Las Vegas, Nevada.Voigt, M. J. (1956). The Trend Toward Mechanization in Libraries. Library Trends, 4.Waldron, R. K. (1958). Implications of Technological Progress for Librarians. College & Research Libraries, 19(2), 118-164.Waldron, R. K. (1959) Will Circulation Librarians Become Obsolete? Library Journal, 84, 386-388.Warheir, I.A. (1971). Letters. Library Journal.