The Australian Library Journal

A letter to the editor

Roxanne Missingham

I am motivated to write to you after rereading the November 2004 issue of the Australian Library Journal. It was, again, a stimulating mix of papers and editorial, enough to start me thinking on various trails including the future direction of our services. The particular articles which have stimulated me are your editorial and the Ellis and Salisbury review of University of Melbourne first year arts students' information literacy.

I should start by saying that last year we conducted research into the information needs of Australians - public library users, independent scholars and those in the tertiary sector with the Information Australia project. We summarised the findings in a paper given at Online this year. The findings were very similar to those of Ellis and Salisbury - those searching used Google as often as a library catalogue to start their research, many needed to obtain material in different formats (journal articles, books, reports) and they also wanted to find material held in various places.

The key question for the profession is, of course, what should we do to react to these needs? You suggested in your editorial that we needed to 'think outside the square' and I want to explore what this might mean for libraries in the 21st century:

Should we focus on services that go 'outside the square' - for example seeding records in Google, such as has been done by RLG, OCLC, and the National Library has done with records from the catalogue and Picture Australia, and will be done with records from the Australian National Bibliographic Database?

Should we focus, instead of training people to recognise the different tools they need to use for every different format or subject type, focus on delivery services which integrate access - such as AARLIN and Libraries Australia?

Should we focus information literacy on what skills can be used within a teaching framework rather than straight bibliographic skills?

And should any ordinary human being be expected to learn Boolean operators? Shouldn't we have systems that enable users to search without the great impediment of having to learn a new language for each individual database or catalogue, rather than causing chaos and confusion?

Information literacy is a very exciting space with a great range of approaches in practice - and should be seen in the context of the developments needed in our tools and services overall. One of the conclusions of our study was that library users just wanted a Universal Search Engine (USE) - but with library content and a library focus. In other words they quite simply wanted to use the information, to be an active searcher not a passive recipient of technical knowledge which they were required to regurgitate as part of a test when faced with every different interface that we can throw at them.

So I pass my two cents worth to other readers for more stimulating discussion in the profession.