President's perspective Prepare to raise your voice Libraries provide solutions at many levels, says new CILIPS President Alan Hasson. Just after the New Year I attended a meeting of the CILIPS Council, where I was presented with the President’s Medal. The next day a photo appeared on Slainte of the presentation. I was feeling pretty good about myself. And then came my meeting with the Library Services Manager for Scottish Borders Council, Margaret Menzies, who was in Dennis Skinner mode. More of which anon. To those of you who don’t know me, a brief resume. Following university, I started work in the Special Collections of Glasgow University Library, recording – cataloguing would be far too grand a word – collections of Whistler-related letters and ephemera. Towards the end of the project the offer of a position in the Sudan came up, and Kate and I went off to Rufaa, about 100 miles up the Blue Nile from Khartoum. I retain from that time gratitude and respect for the vast majority of the people we met, who were generous with what they had and made a stranger welcome. I also became very aware of just how privileged Scotland is in having local and national democracy (annoying though that can be for us bureaucrats) and that the BBC is a jewel. On my return I started working for Renfrew District. I had the good luck to be sent, as my first professional post, to help open the new Ferguslie Park Library in a team which included librarians, youth workers and teachers. It was what a public library should be, indeed what local government should be: a service which evolved, was innovative, above all it was relevant to the local population and therefore was heavily used by them. I had various positions in Renfrew District, before being appointed as Chief Librarian at Cumbernauld and Kilsyth and then at local government reorganisation as Head of Service in East Ayrshire. A prominent lesson I learnt in all these and later posts was perhaps simple, but it’s a constant: structures and policies, checks and balances, are there to support the talent of staff to deliver to the needs and wants of their communities, but, they have a siren like danger of becoming the prime concern. I came to the Scottish Borders in 1998 and since then have changed jobs four times. Currently my title is Head of Community Services, which takes in Libraries, Museums, Arts, Community Learning and Development, Sport and Physical Education and various multi-disciplinary initiatives. For the next year in my role as President, the baseline has to be the celebration of 100 years of SLA /CILIPS. Officers of CILIPS have been putting a lot of work into preparing for the year, including some good old fashioned paper-based research and threads of continuity, for instance getting young men to read, are constants through the huge changes. It’s a bit of a cliché to say we live in a time of change, but, clichés become clichés because they are accurate. And this is a time of change. Globalisation, the changing consensus on the role of the state and the continuing process which is devolution, are simply some of the more prominent factors which are affecting us. All have an influence for colleagues in all our sectors. Since I get the opportunity to write a few of these columns, let me pick one of these for the time being. For us in libraries devolution provides a paradox. The level of access we have to decision makers, both at a political level and on policy issues is unprecedented. We have an opportunity, already being exploited, to get over the message that libraries are a solution to many challenges on many levels. But the opportunities only remain as long as we have a strong, united, Scottish-focused organisation which speaks for the sector as a whole. This sets the context which I believe may be the biggest challenge for our profession on an organisational level: how it adapts to the new context of increasingly differing priorities and delivery within a devolved UK. To its credit CILIP has recognised, to a much greater extent than some in our sector, that the mechanisms that were appropriate in a unitary UK are no longer those which fit a federal structure with four centres of government. Whether it has recognised the full meaning of this change is still moot. Whether it can continue to evolve, events over the next year or so will give a clearer picture of. We here in Scotland will have to be prepared to make our voices heard in influencing our UK-wide organisation, to ensure that we are redesigning to a purpose which suits all our needs rather than moving some organisational deckchairs on an outdated, centrist model. Within Scotland it will be interesting to see if we can make it clear that libraries across all our sectors are a ready-made tool to make Scotland,wealthier and fairer, smarter, healthier, safer and stronger and greener. I look forward to seeing as many of you as I can in the next year, to hear how you are making your voices heard. I hope that I will come up to the standard of my predecessors in this presidential role and not fit the image that first crossed Margaret Menzies mind on seeing my picture, of a Victorian mill owner... Information Scotland Vol. 6(1) February 2008 © Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland Disclaimer Information Scotland is delivered online by the SAPIENS electronic publishing service based at the Centre for Digital Library Research. SLAINTE (Scottish libraries across the Internet) offers further information about librarianship and information management in Scotland. Digital environment Young dogs, old tricks? On evidence from an important new report, Tony Ross and Richard Fallis conclude that libraries must learn lessons from successful Internet brands, and establish stronger, more intuitive online identities. A familiar image: a child sits, effortlessly getting to grips with some new technological marvel, while the parents despair in the background, leafing forlornly through the instruction manual. The specific technology has changed over time, but the truistic quality of the image has remained the same, showing younger and older generations to be hopelessly divided by technology. Implicit, of course, is the contrasting of the adaptability and fearlessness of the young, with the rigid, “old dog, new tricks” mentality of older minds. However, this image falls short of reality when it comes to the Internet, according to Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future, the report of a new wide-ranging UCL study of the information-seeking behaviour of the so-called “Google Generation”. The report, commissioned by the British Library, has attracted media attention for its debunking of some popularly-held misconceptions about the Google Generation, defined as those born since 1993, and their use of technology to access information. The report dismisses the perception that members of the Google Generation are “expert searchers” as a “dangerous myth” (p.20). While they are generally more competent with technology, they “tend to use much simpler applications and fewer facilities than many imagine” (p.18). In fact they favour types of technology that are straightforward enough to be mastered intuitively, such as the uncomplicated Google interface. Interestingly, the report adds that this is probably the case with Internet users of all ages. It questions the perception that, compared to older generations, the Google Generation prefers to consume information only in “easily digested chunks” (p.19): in truth, all age groups exhibit a preference for bite-size information. In presenting such findings, the report serves to diminish perceptions of a generational divide in this area, and amplify a growing awareness of the fundamental need for information literacy training across all age groups, at all levels of education, in all sections of society. The future may belong to the young but, as the report argues, “the future is now” (p.31) and, “in a real sense, we are all Google Generation” (p.21). The Internet has now penetrated society to such an extent that a more accurate version of the image with which we opened would surely show the parents competing eagerly with their kids for time online. Different generations also exhibit common shortcomings in their ability to make effective use of technology to retrieve information. At the risk of sounding contentious, it seems to us that people, regardless of age, are generally lazy in their information-seeking habits. Faced with an overwhelming amount of information online, people are inclined to make snap decisions about its worth and veracity. Ultimately, convenience may be the most popular measure of whether or not an Internet resource is useful. If a web application is straightforward to navigate, and quickly yields information in a readily-digestible format, people will keep using it. Thus, while the Google brand has grown beyond ubiquity, users rarely use its advanced search features, or even browse beyond the first page of search results. Given such realities, a resource which cannot be grasped intuitively – or even requires formal training, to use effectively – is unlikely to be used, no matter how accurate and relevant its information. The UCL study places most online library systems in this bracket (p.9). So how should librarians respond? They can hide their heads in the sand, or rail impotently against the tide of progress, so that they become outmoded figures, wringing their hands on the margins. A more sensible approach would be to respond proactively, in two distinct ways. Firstly, librarians can institute the sort of information literacy training which empowers people by endowing them with skills to search effectively for, evaluate, synthesize, and use information in ways that are appropriate, ethical, and legal.