How Does a Library Get Better the More It's Used?

You might think that after writing two posts on topics from the same ALA program that I would have exhausted my material, but no, this is your unlucky day. Maybe it was because I was not a participant but the master of ceremonies and referee that I was able to jot down so many intriguing ideas. In any case, none of them are mine so you can rest easy.

The latest thing I want to bring to your attention was said by Joe Janes, who was one of the debate panelists. Apparently he had been at the Urban Libraries Council preconference where John Seely Brown was speaking. In answering a question, John tossed off a sentence like "how does a book get better the more it’s used?" Riffing off that, Joe wrote down "how does a library get better the more it’s used?" and added that thought to his PowerPoint slides that served as the wrap-up of the day (admittedly even Joe is unsure whether he was the author of said quote or the recorder, so stay tuned until I can clear this up with John).

I think this is an intriguing question that may lead to some interesting ways for us to leverage the people who use our services in enriching them through their use. Certainly this is a large part of what the social software crowd are trying to do, by setting people up to tag, review, rate, and otherwise add their thoughts and opinions to the mix. But I’m thinking of potentially other things as well.

For example, aggregating circulation statistics at the network level could make our relevance ranking much better. In fact, aggregating virtually any of the social content at the network level offers the opportunity to sweeten the pot on behalf of us all. We’ve already seen the power of aggregation with the WorldCat Identities project and others. Tags, ratings, and reviews should help enrich the whole, not one particular library catalog. That is our challenge, and one that my place of employment (OCLC) certainly sees. Only together can we accomplish certain things — only together can we make all libraries better the more any of them is used.

That is my final reformulation of what began with John Seely Brown, moved through Joe Janes, and ended up in my ear at ALA. If someone uses your library services, and checks out a book, then it should help inform the search of someone half a world away. I thank my lucky stars that I’ve lived to see the day when such a thing is possible.