2014 Charleston Conference Friday, Nov 7, 11:30 AM

1. “Happiness is…Library Automation:”
The Rhetoric of Early Library Automation
and the Future of Academic Libraries
and Discovery
Lauren Kosrow
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign/Triton College
Lisa Hinchliffe
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
@laurenkosrow
@lisalibrarian

3. “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)

4. 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?

5. Predictions for the Future
Image courtesy of Matt Novak, http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com

6. “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)

7. 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)

8. 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)

9. 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)

10. 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)

11. 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)

12. 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

13. 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)

14. CONTEMPORARY CONSIDERATIONS

16. What is Unseen?
“We’re always limited by the
technology of the present.”
– The Long Now Foundation –

17. 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

18. Ex Libris for Primo
Meeting 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 Discovery
Identify 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.

19. PROVOCATIVE PERSPECTIVES

20. 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

21. 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

22. 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?

23. This present moment
Used to be
The unimaginable future.
Stuart Brand, The Clock of the Long Now

24. Works Cited
Berman, 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-amazonification
Gull, 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.

25. Works Cited
Mason, 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.