Customer orientated technological futures for library systems
| Published date | 01 January 1985 |
| Pages | 52-55 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb044642 |
| Date | 01 January 1985 |
| Author | T. Cannon |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
ARTICLES
Customer orientated
technological futures for
library systems
T. CANNON
Professor of
Business
Studies,
University
of Stirling,
Stirling, FK9 4LA,
Scotland.
T
he pace of growth and the scale of
change in information technologies
has absorbed the interest of increas-
ing numbers of researchers and
writers over the last decade. Not
surprisingly, their work has focused on devel-
opments in hardware or the even more diverse
software initiatives. Relatively little attention
has been paid to the impact of these inno-
vations on established organisations and the
services provided by them to their publics. A
similar pattern can be seen in the literature on
the influence of new information technologies
on library systems notably at the point of inter-
face with their diverse client groups.
Programmes of research which are now re-
porting suggest that the challenges go far
beyond the technical and procedural difficul-
ties posed in the past when ah innovation or
series of new products became available. It
appears that the nature and role of the library
will need to be re-examined. This review ought
to focus on the nature of the client services
offered and the fit between current provision
and the demands of an increasingly 'infor-
mation aware' array of customer groups. Two
features of this are especially significant:
— The users of the library service have a
rapidly increasing awareness of both the
potential of information and the scope for
structuring and restructuring material to
meet their needs.
— These users are becoming more hetero-
geneous with diverse but internally homo-
geneous client groups emerging with dis-
tinct and often non-generalisable demands.
Both developments can be encompassed
within the new technologies. In fact, the more
recent innovations have helped to stimulate
these changes. However, they raise major
questions for those responsible for the manage-
ment and design of library services. It is likely
that the rapid growth in access will require
more re-examination of procedures than the
more widely discussed expansion in the
volume of data readily available to potential
users.
There are immediate prospects of change in
three areas of library services:
1.
The form of provision.
2.
The allocation of provision.
3.
The source of provision.
Traditionally libraries have focused their
attention on the production and availability of
data and materials in a hard copy form. The
immediate pressures are likely to focus
attention on the distribution of information in
soft as well as hard copy forms. In turn, this
poses relatively new tasks in segmentation of
the market for service as well as the design of
specific offerings for these groups. The
accelerated transmission and recovery of data
allied to the scope for rapid organisation or
processing of material will greatly enhance the
capacity of the system to tailor services in these
ways.
The existence of this potential will not
guarantee a relevant response by current pro-
viders of equivalent
services.
In other areas the
opposite has generally held true:
— The railways were providers of transport
services but did not respond to the trans-
port revolution of the twentieth century.
— The departmental stores provided shop-
ping facilities but failed
to
move in to super-
market retailing.
— The manufacturers of mechanical calcu-
lators completely failed to respond to the
electronic revolution.
— Manufacturers of tv sets in North America
and Europe almost totally missed the rapid
growth of the cassette recorder market.
There is evidence to suggest that providers
find it difficult to respond positively to trans-
formation by technology orientated substitutes
which require major modifications in organis-
ation or behaviour. This is the case with
modern information technologies. Four
features of the new technology will create
major new options in terms of provision: [1]
1. High
availability:
access points can be large
in number and highly diverse.
2.
High
customer
specificness:
services can, and
will be designed jointly by supplier and user
to a degree only seen in high price, highly
customised products in the past.
3.
Recurrent
adaption:
the rate of exchange is
now so fast that the notion of an established
or fixed service will disappear.
4.
Interaction:
The facility exists now for users
to communicate, in the near future this will
extend more widely especially between user
and provider.
Faced with these challenges the notion of
a
library will require to be re-examined. The
options that exist lie along a continuum
between:
Outright rejection of the technologies and
the necessary adaptations to employ them, may
mean the virtual extinction of libraries as
significant access points to local, national or
international information stores. Total absorp-
52 The Electronic Library, January 1985. Vol. 3, No. 1.
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