Aggregation: the role of librarians
My thoughts this week are in response to the following question from Dean:
“Is aggregation a new role for librarians? Haven’t we always gathered, organized and used classification systems, integrated information? How can we use aggregating tools to deliver innovative library services? (If our existing “legacy” systems allow for it.)”
I’ve been thinking about this question from the perspective of a cataloger. What, first of all, does it mean to “aggregate?” According to the American Heritage Dictionary, it means to “to gather into a mass, sum, or whole.” Is this something that librarians do? Absolutely. In fact, you could even define a library as a place of aggregated information – a place that gathers together disparate resources into a single place. And for over a century, catalogers have, by creating searchable metadata, made those resources aggregate-able.
But now, aggregation occurs not just at a physical level, but in the virtual world. In a library, resources have traditionally resided in a physical place – the library — and have been accessible from a single access point – the library catalog. And although our catalogs now reside online, this traditional paradigm has changed remarkably little. We still put our resources in a ‘silo’ and expect users to come to us (to our website) to find it. But in a world where aggregation tools are making it possible for multiple sources of information to be custom-filtered and fed directly to our desktops, this just simply won’t work anymore. Library catalogs need to become digitally aggregate-able if they are to survive.
What would happen if we allowed our resources to be aggregate-able beyond the library catalog? What if we made our catalogs findable by search engines, and thus aggregate-able by RSS feeds and other tools? What if individual items in your nearest library were retrieved in a Google search? What if a single Google search could tell you the nearest library that owns what you are looking for, and could tell you if it is checked out, and if you are a cardholder at that library? What if Google could show you the nearest copy of that item at the nearest library of which you are a cardholder?
This hasn’t happened yet, but I think it will. The technology is there, it is the mindset that is missing. So what role do catalogers have in this future? I think it is the same role they have always had: they will not be aggregating information – that will happen, more and more, through personalized, unmediated, aggregation tools – but they will be making information findable for those aggregators. Our challenge is to recognize our new responsibility: it is no longer enough to create metadata that is findable in our institution’s catalog; it must be findable by the world.
August 11th, 2010 at 9:52 am
Excellent post Emily.
The idea of contextual searching for our users is certainly coming and the articles describing what some are calling OPAC 2.0 are evidence of a type of aggregation.
I also like your observation about aggregatable content being a part of our history as librarians. I couldn’t agree more. Dean
August 11th, 2010 at 4:45 pm
Hi Emily,
I have to agree with Dean here – I thought that your answer to his question was really well thought out and you synthesized the history of librarian-aggregators very well.
I was also interested in your thoughts on cataloging. I too think that it would be neat to have a library’s catalogue available through different portals, but have some doubts about retrieving catalogue items from a Google search. I worry that the already existing information overload means that users will only browse Google results and won’t even notice the catalogue entry! Any ideas on how to get users to take note?
August 12th, 2010 at 4:03 am
Thanks for your question, Maggie. I think being able to search both the Internet and library catalogs at the same time is already starting to happen with so-called ‘federated searching’ and ‘next-generation discovery platforms.’ Since our patrons already go to a search engine (Google) before coming to the library, why not save them a step? It would be possible to have library catalog results be flagged with an icon in some way – and I think the search engines of tomorrow (Google or whomever else comes along) will take advantage of location data to show users more information about the results list using such icons. Google already shows us which results are paid for (ads) and which are not, but they could also show us which are in our area, which are from libraries or bookstores, etc. The data is there, it is just waiting to be used.
Librarians often like to say that librarians are still needed to help people ‘evaluate’ information (now that we are no longer needed to help people find information.) But I question that, because again, a computer can be taught to evaluate information. A computer should be able to tell you if an article is peer-reviewed, if an article is published by an academic institution, even if an article has a biased point of view. As computers get smarter (albeit with the help of more metadata and smarter programmers – it’s not doing this on its own!) — the mediation of librarians between information and patrons becomes less necessary. Not that there won’t be librarians, but our jobs will drastically change.
August 12th, 2010 at 4:12 am
One more quick comment. You can also have an Internet search engine that has the capacity to limit or “drill down.” Google already does this by asking in in the sidebar if you just want images on your topic,for example. But why not limit by “just libraries to which I have access” or “just scholarly resources?” This is all perfectly possible, just hasn’t been done yet.
Such a future will mean the extinction of separate library catalogs – we will all catalog for the Web, not for our individual silos. Call me a dreamer, but in ten years I’m guessing none of us will be searching our library catalogs. Many of our patrons, especially younger ones, already don’t. Why search in only one place at a time? That is so 1.0.