Strategic planning discussions and reorganization scenarios have led me recently to think about and read about change. It has struck a chord, and I want to share what I have learned. The time for those of us who work in and lead libraries to plan for change is now. Consider the following research results. A 2011 OCLC study of its members found that the nearly 2000 respondents, including directors, managers, and librarians, consider licensed electronic resource collections to be a top priority. (1) Academic librarians, who made up about half of the respondents, are currently focused on e-books and other electronic resources as well as on discovery tools. Public librarians were concerned with e-books and electronic resources, and were focused on providing Internet access. The highest priority for public libraries was demonstrating library value to funders, but there was little interest in discovery tools. (2) To stay current, respondents in all types of libraries use electronic discussion lists and email; few use social media. How do we compare to our users? The world is changing quickly. Many library users show a marked preference for both mobile resources and social media. Facebook is the most popular website. Nielsen's Fall 2011 Social Media Report found that social media, including blogs, reach 80 percent of those using the Internet. (3) More people are using the Internet, and broadband access is rising, even if use is not always following. On August 21, 2012, the FCC issued its annual report on the number of American locations without broadband access. (4) The report noted that efforts are bringing great progress in access to both wireline and wireless broadband, but also that technology does not stand still and issues of speed are still important. (5) At the same time, more teachers and college faculty are embedding social media in the classroom. An infographic from onlinecolleges.net, titled A Teacher's Guide to Social Media, states that 2/3 of all faculty have used social media during a class. (6) Several recent reports from the Pew Internet & American Life Project support these notions of change. In March 2012, researchers found that nearly half of American adults are smartphone users. (7) A June 2012 report by the Project states that 88 percent of US adults own a cell phone as of April 2012 and 55 percent use this phone to go online. The authors go on to note that 31 percent of these current cell Internet users primarily use their cell phones to access the Internet rather than some other type of computer and that this is particularly true of nonwhites and young adults. (8) Use of e-books and other longer electronic information resources is rising. An April 2012 report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project reported that one-fifth (21 percent) of American adults had read an electronic book in the previous year, noting that this number grew with 2011 holiday gift-giving from 17 percent to 21 percent. (9) The report mentions a different study that showed 43 percent of Americans age sixteen and above had read an e-book or a longer form of content such as a magazine, journal, or news article in digital format using an e-book reader, tablet, or regular computer or a cell phone during 2011. In another study, however, Pew researchers found that, although three quarters of American libraries lend e-books in some way, only 22 percent of respondents knew that their libraries made e-books available. The authors also interviewed librarians, finding that patrons and librarians were fairly uncertain about the exact way that libraries would function in the future. Both librarians and users believe that major change is inevitable, but there is no consensus on what form that change will take. (10) The ways that readers use webpages may also be changing. Two recent articles by Richard Macmanus posted on the ReadWriteWeb site suggest that there's simply too much content to consume nowadays, so the great challenge of online publishing is to organize it better. …
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