How can we create nimble libraries that keep up with our users’ demands - both known and anticipated - while also introducing services that will actually work, that can be maintained and will be the best use of our scarce resources ?

Is it our job to give our users what they say they want - or to provide the best way to connect them with information in a way that enriches them?

We should be playing with technology - but should we use our service points as our playground?

Will our users stay with us if we spend so much time evaluating new services that we don’t introduce them in time ?

At Beyond the Hype, many papers - mine included - had the rousing cry that we should be user focused and give the user what they want. It seems to me that many of us - me included - then pushed out our own biases, hiding behind this catchcry.

In the name of serving the user with nimble, relevant new services, we heard Christine MacKenzie who was implementing new services - like tags from Library Thing - at Yarra Plenty using Web 2.0. Kate Davis from Gold Coast Libraries told us how she is raising the profile of the Online Branch among users to provide resources using new avenues.

In the name of serving the users with accountable, evidence based services known to work, we heard from Kate Watson of University of Sunshine Coast who stated that they hadn’t implemented any Web 2.0 services because the users hadn’t asked for them. We heard from Andrew Spencer and Corrine Hughan from Macquarie University library who spent a ten thousand dollar grant traveling the country to find out about podcasting in academic libraries, and then concluded that they couldn’t find compelling evidence that podcasting was serving the user any better than existing services and that they would not be recommending a pilot project at their library.

In his paper Brad Jones argued, among many other interesting points, that the new social space being created by young folk online is just as radical and incomprehensible place as the space occupied by youth in the sixties. Now it is Virtual realities, blogs and wikis, file sharing and virtual sex. Then it was separate realities (drugs, counter culture), the alternative press, communal ownership and free love.

What is different now is the pace of change, and the rapid rise of alternatives to our services.

Libraries have been caught out by the pace of change in our users’ information demands. The contest between us and Google as a generalist reference source is over. Google won. Users took the shortest path to the information they wanted, accepting convenient, good-enough information instead of the harder to access, more authoritative sources we offer.

Our users didn’t come to us - once the only show in town for reference information - and tell us they were thinking of moving to Google instead, but before they moved they wanted to know what our counter offer was.

I think Lucia Ravi is right in her paper when she says that we have the tools to create bias free, information rich content that she refers to as knowledge gateways. If I understand her right, she is arguing that we can provide an alternative both to the over-mediated information in the mass-media and the under-mediated information of single word search on Google.

I missed the paper on evidence-based practice. I think we need an evidence based practice. I also think that we need new and nimble methods of evaluation. And a new model of peer reviewed publishing so that thorough and rigourous information isn’t totally outdated by the time it goes to press. And I think we need to be rigourous about evaluating our existing methods and services in light of changed circumstances.

I heard an argument in one session that face-to-face instruction was known to work, but I wondered to myself whether anyone has actually re-evaluated it now that we can be in more spaces in more ways over more time. A tentative question from the audience on the first day flagged the same issue - how do we provide “just in time” services to students who want in-depth instruction on how to research using our resources, without referring them to a complicated booking sheet and telling them they will need to come to a formal session that fits in with their childcare, work, study and social commitments -that probably has a swag of information irrelevant to their specific need.

I enjoyed Beyond the Hype, as it is obvious that people have moved away from the “what is it?” stage to the “what do we do with it?” stage. I can see an interesting time ahead as we grapple with how to do this.

Personally, Beyond the Hype has clarified the zone where I work. I want to be in a place where I’m saying “hey, look at this, here’s how it works, think you can use it??” I’m spending my time trying to keep up with new tools, tweaking and playing and fiddling with them, raving about them…. and then pushing them downstream to people who may or may not think there is any point to them. It’s really exciting to see librarians now understanding what these tools are and feeling their way to find best practice to implement them.

There were so many more ideas and interesting papers. If you were there, what else would you add about the symposium ? Did it raise different issues for you?

Information on the papers plus the authors’ slides will be up on the symposium site soon.