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January 31, 2007
Rocket Science
Jeffrey Toobin has an article in the current New Yorker about Google's "quest for a universal library," discussing the pros and cons of the copyright issues, and coming down on the side that a settlement is likely, and not in our interests.
Some interesting information, though not a lot that's new if you've been following the issue.
I was struck by the following throwaway sentence:
The chief engineer of Google’s system for scanning books in the library collections is Dan Clancy, who joined the company after eight years at NASA, where he supervised teams of Ph.D.s. working on problems related to artificial intelligence.
Maybe it IS rocket science, after all.
Just kidding, since Clancy is responsible for the scanning, indexing and search end of the process, but let's get real about who's got the money and talent to bring to the fray. I've got a lot of faith in the Harvard, Michigan, Stanford and New York Public Library folks involved, but their perspective is a bit different from that of our cute little public library tucked away in a corner of Connecticut.
Where are we in all this? We do some things very well -- customer service (real customer service, not just saying "no" with a smile) -- and we're about to break ground on a new building since we're too busy in our current fifty-year old building that's been expanded two times. But if we aren't really clear in the future that we need to do extraordinary work in looking after the interests of our patrons, we're going to be washed away.
Which reminds me of what Marc Smith of Microsoft said in a presentation at the OCLC Symposium at ALA Midwinter, about trying to hold back the loss of private personal identity in this world of accelerating technology, "It's like standing on the shore watching Katrina approach and saying, 'Not convenient now.'"
Google, and Amazon, and lots of others are coming, and it's convenient for them. Now. And yes, there's the Open Content Alliance, which includes Boston Public Library, Johns Hopkins University and others (including Microsoft, Adobe and Xerox as contributors) but that's a distinction without a difference so far as our patrons are concerned. More and more, there's going to be massive amounts of stuff available out there (I mean, even more massive amounts of stuff) and we better do something more that pitch ourselves as being really good about helping our patrons find what they want. Google probably figures that's what's in it for them, and they're not scared about us -- they're thinking about Amazon and Microsoft.
What are we going to do? Some of it we know, some of it don't know, and some of it we don't know we don't know. And what you are going to need to do is undoubtedly different in your community than in ours.
But here's a guiding principle:
Rocket Science
Michael Griffin, head of NASA, gave a speech in Houston in January, in which he talked how support for NASA
came, not from what he described as Acceptable Reasons, but from the Real Reasons. Acceptable Reasons are based on cost-effectiveness and derivative engineering (Teflon, Tang) but Real Reasons are what stir the soul -- the exploration of space, extending the human spirit, the sight of someone walking on the Moon.
In the middle of his really fascinating talk (link is to the same speech -- it's really worth reading) he said:
But the JFK quote about space that I love more than anything in the world, because it evokes exactly the things I'm talking about here tonight, was the one he gave from this lectern at Rice University in September of 1962, when he said "We choose to go to the moon, and to do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard." I'll say it again: "not because they are easy, but because they are hard".The cathedral builders knew that reason. They were doing something that required a far greater percentage of their gross domestic product than we will ever put into the space business, and they knew it was hard. We know it too. We look back across 600 or 800 years of time, and we are still awed by what they did. What is it that Americans make sure to see when they go to Europe? Who goes to Europe and does not, at some point, see the cathedrals? We are still awed across the centuries by what they accomplished.
To me, the irony is that when we do hard things for the right reasons – for the Real Reasons – we end up actually satisfying all the goals of the Acceptable Reasons. And we can see that, too, in the cathedrals, if we look for it.
In the same way, we have been successful in Darien when we have done things even though, and maybe because, they are hard -- extreme customer service, a technology center that at five years old still stands out, making sure every child who had a reserve for Harry Potter got one the first day, even if it meant buying 210 copies, hosting the web sites of 60 local non-profit organizations, empowering staff to break rules if it is in the best interest of a patron.
What we do in the future is up to us, and it's going to be hard.
Great.
Think of it like this. Children come to the library, and they see a cathedral -- you've seen it in their eyes.
When adults in your community come to the library, do they see Teflon and Tang, or do they see a cathedral?
Posted by Alan Kirk Gray at January 31, 2007 08:22 AM