John says: "Yes I know this is not strictly a library, but it is a library service I would say; it is about giving people free and open access to text, images and sound that they can use for their learning."
20 years ago my local ref. library made available a complete set of Ivy courses in on a PC for the public to use. Now computer based learning was the latest hot thing at the time. Nowadays resources include web based resources, and this 'new' concept of free(!) resources, lol, and libraries I think have yet to factor things in. Do libraries start to use the free resources on the web? There are issues, do ref. libraries continue to stock so many books on baby names as the number of (free) baby name resources on the web starts to multiply (e.g., http://bit.ly/cXDxlx ). An elderly lady asks for a copy of a classic that was freely available on the web - how many copies of this book do libraries need to stock now it is scanned and on the web? Etc.
To digress, but still on the subject of free library resources on the Internet:
"cultural curation" http://bit.ly/aQOVcH
"Curated information" http://bit.ly/c9qxAe
In the information age that we live in are the expectations of the public being met in respect of the above 2 needs? Could libraries and librarians do more? I've suggested that a reference librarian could use the same software I use to study libraries over on Library Web http://libraryweb.info to curate web culture for their local industry (if the local area specialises in a particular industry - then the ref. library would be providing a useful service by 'scrapbooking' web culture). Do libraries now need to upskill their library assistants to use the following type of software: Software for Taxonomy Creation and Management http://bit.ly/9TZyj2 -- curating for the public which a particular community library serves the information they are interested in, federalising outwards to appropriate levels of governance e.g. to maybe the British Library curating publicly available government information, providing the public with the information literacy that they nowadays I think are starting to expect [backchannel for citations/evidence re. this latter claim]. I say train library assistants, because there is so much of this information in the communications and information age we now live in that we need every single library assistant working on it :) GAWD KNOWS WE MIGHT EVEN HAVE TO START DEMANDING LIS DEGREES OF LIBRARY ASSISTANTS AND PAYING THEM ENOUGH TO PAY FOR THEM AND USE THEM! It's early days but surely there are grounds at least for some (a great deal of?!) R&D in the field.
The above rambles a bit, but I think I have made my point that there are a great deal of (free) resources for the libraries on the Internet, and ask the question might it be worth the funding for libraries to open them up to the public -- archiving, cataloguing, collection development, but for the Internet -- from the thoughts of the nation (BL archiving twitter) through to quality information resources.
Gareth Osler
Library Web
http://libraryweb.info
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