Editorial

Date09 January 2017
Published date09 January 2017
Pages2-4
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/ILS-01-2017-0007
AuthorDavid Michael Baker
Subject MatterLibrary & information science,Librarianship/library management,Library & information services
Editorial
A new library world and more
“Combining the new and the enduring in information, learning and libraries”
Welcome to ILS
Welcome to the rst double issue of Information and Learning Science (ILS). Given the
change in the journal title (but not the volume or issue numbering), I thought it a good idea to write
an explanatory editorial giving more detail about why there has been a refocusing of New Library
World.
Context
Anything and everything can now be connected to the Internet. Information and
communications technology (ICT) is fundamentally changing the ways in which information
is created, stored and delivered and how learning processes are developed, provided and
experienced. But this is only one aspect of the latest developments in information and
learning as part of a broader, signicant shift in the way people live and learn, work and play.
Societies are being transformed through democratisation, globalisation and
consumerisation; changing demographics are affecting the needs and wants of user groups;
global and regional economic forces are driving what is available to whom, when, where and
how. Library provision – of all types and across all sectors – is also being transformed.
Recent work by David Baker in the eld
I have long been involved in digital library development, strategic technology management
and information service provision and stafng, as the bibliography at the end of this editorial
will testify. But recent trends have been especially brought home to me through working on
two recent publications: “Innovation in Libraries and Information Services. Advances in
Library Administration and Organization” (Bradford: Emerald, 2016) and “The End of
Wisdom? The Future of Libraries in a Digital Age” (Oxford: Chandos, 2017), both written and
edited in collaboration with Wendy Evans. “The End of Wisdom” focuses on the hypothesis
surrounding “the end of libraries” and “the end of the book”, looking at what many term a
“crisis of identity” for “the library”. We argue that:
not only is the future of “the library” irrevocably bound up with the future of mankind and civilised
society more broadly, but its fate will also be an indicator of the kind of world in which we live in the
coming years.
Batt (2016) sums up the current trends and future challenges well:
There was a time when a steam engine was an iron horse and a motorcar was a horseless carriage.
So it is that the badge of library is now attached as a metaphor of transition to digital asset
collections of whatever stripe. It is certainly the case that digital assets now form key building
blocks for libraries and information services in both private and public sectors. It is positively not
the case that every organisation building and maintaining collections of digital assets would
consider itself to be a library. This may be self-evident, but it raises important issues concerning the
relationships between traditionally separate institutions and the ways in which service boundaries
in the digital space may need to be drawn in the future. The difference between popular ideas of the
library – a place with physical collections managed by librarians – and what may in future be
implied by the notion of the digital library is not merely a matter of semantics. It underlines the
possibility that, in the long term, success in the digital space may require radical redenition of
institutional roles and structures.
ILS
118,1/2
2
Informationand Learning Science
Vol.118 No. 1/2, 2017
pp.2-4
©Emerald Publishing Limited
2398-5348
DOI 10.1108/ILS-01-2017-0007

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