Library in the Cloud with Diamonds: a critical evaluation of the future of library management systems
| Date | 26 April 2013 |
| Pages | 9-13 |
| Published date | 26 April 2013 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/LHTN-11-2012-0071 |
| Author | Richard Levy |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science |
Let me begin with something pedestrian.
I recently saw an advertisement on the
back of a bus. The caption floated on a
minimalist sky-blue backdrop with a
barely visible reference to a.com. I had
never heard of. The message was clear,
bold and bright:
The Cloud is the Answer.
The marketing department for the
company must have assumed that the
bystander would have some inkling
about what was meant by this slogan.
And the reason is obvious. The Cloud is
now an increasingly omnipresent
technological paradigm permeating
almost every aspect of everyday life.
Whether we know it or not, we are all, at
least to some degree, members of the
Cloud community. We use devices that
are tied to it, we search content housed
within it and even do our banking
through it. Symbolically, the word
evokes an eclectically ambiguous set
of images: concealment, revelation, a
dark Cloud, Cloud 9, a perfect storm,
silver linings, being under a Cloud or,
more esoterically, the Cloud of
unknowing. Indeed, there is something
quite mystical about it. As with avatar,
android and icon, the Cloud has been
appropriated by geeks and corporations
to become yet another shimmering
image of how things should work, a
way of doing things that is cool, trendy,
ideal, easy, convenient, practical and
almost certainly profitable. There is the
Apple Cloud, the Amazon Cloud, the
Google Cloud, etc. but it is more than
just a brand. It is a value, a vision, a
paradigm and, increasingly, the norm.
So,myimmediatereactiontothat
advertisement was, first, “Yeah I get it”
and, second, where on earth in that
ethereal space does the library, as a
physical and virtual entity, belong?
Before we embark on this journey, a
word of caution. Not everyone in the
online industry trusts the Cloud. As with
any groundbreaking paradigm or school
of thought, there are always sceptics,
cynics and naysayers. Some of them may
be obscurantswho are resistant to change
while others are progressives with real
reservations and concerns about the
impact that change may bring. Steve
Wozniak,the Co-founderof Apple, is one
of those progressive thinkers who do not
believe that the Cloud is a universal
panacea. Wozniak argues that:
[...] with the Cloud, you don’t own
anything. You already signed it away [...]
I want to feel that I own things. A lot of
people feel, “Oh, everything is really on
my computer,” but I say the more we
transfer everything onto the web, onto the
Cloud, the less we’re going to have
control over it (Meckendrick, 2012).
This fear of losing control of personal
property may become less acute as end-
users move increasingly towards Cloud-
based storage but it only takes one
disaster to flip that complacency in the
opposite direction. Once you get beyond
private collections that may be
replaceable and into the vast and
complex heritage of entire institutions
and countries, you are dealing with a
much more serious and potentially
catastrophic scenario. Bringing the
Cloud to the library is not the same as
bringing the library to the Cloud. There
is a mountain between the perceived
ideal and the concrete reality. Yet there
can be no doubt that there is a growing
interest among librarians and library
technology vendors in delivering
services almost exclusively via the
Cloud along with a belief that to resist
such a trajectory is to consign the library
to extinction.
The end is nigh?
When talking about the future of
libraries, it is not uncommon to hear the
colourful language of doomsayers and
panic merchants. Cinematic images of
libraries staffed entirely by avatar s,
mountains of books rotting in
abandoned vaults, libraries converted
into warehouses and, perhaps most
disturbingly, kids growing up believing
that a library is just a bunch of stuff on
iTunes. Not all of this is fiction and the
temptation to imagine the worst is
symptomatic of the challenges that
radical change provokes. Is the library
doomed? Will it vanish into virtual
oblivion? Does the solution lie in the
Cloud or is the Cloud itself a potential
threat to the library’s very being? Is this
the beginning of the end or just the
cutting edge of an exciting and
enlightened new beginning? Either
way, it is hard to deny that the threat to
libraries is patently real. The open web is
progressively realizing what Wells
(1938) called the World Brain, a kind
of universal encyclopedia in which
almost anything and everything is
recorded, documented and made
accessible to each and all at any given
time. There is a proposal to preserve
every tweet ever tweeted and Wikileaks
is an example of how even sensitive
information becomes publicly available
within a matter of seconds. As the web
expands, the ways and means of using it
radically expand as well. Voice
recognition, Cloud players and nano-
sized supercomputers are not science
fiction anymore. The web comes to us in
ways the library never could. You can
carry it on your person and if the library
does not come to you, users will go
elsewhere. Of course, there are some
downsides to this epic explosion of
content, this veritable Big Bang of
online media, these relentless
Library Hi Tech News
Number 3 2013, pp. 9-13, qEmerald Group Publishing Limited, 0741-9058, DOI 10.1108/LHTN-11-2012-0071 9
Library in the Cloud with Diamonds: a critical
evaluation of the future of library management
systems
Richard Levy
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