ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


1 9 6 /C&RL News

TheW ay 

I See It

College lib raries and the 
new  technology

B y  T h o m a s  G. K irk

The opportunities and challenges 
o f using new technology

I read everyday about new  tech n o lo g y  and the dramatic things that will happen in 
the delivery of information as a result o f that 
technology. As a librarian in a small college I 
often feel overwhelmed by this news and ask 
myself disturbing questions o f self-doubt. How 
will my institution ever afford the costs of the 
new technology especially when my institu­
tion is stretched to provide adequate support 
to maintain the current purchasing level? Do 
our undergraduates really need all the glitzy 
technology that delivers evermore amounts of 
information when we aren’t using fully what 
we already have? How will my colleagues and 
I learn to use the technology effectively?

Those questions come not out o f any oppo­
sition to the technology but out o f fear o f the 
unknown and great uncertainty about what the 
future holds for me as an individual and us as a 
profession.

Keeping technology in perspective
Those questions do not, however, consume my 
professional life and do not preclude my li­
brary from moving forward. What keeps me 
upright in this topsy-turvy world of informa­
tion technology is a return to some basic prin­
ciples which help keep the rapidly developing 
world o f technology in perspective and guide 
my thinking about how to engage the new tech­
nology effectively.

These basic principles include: the role of 
our college libraries is to improve the educa­
tional programs we serve. We improve those 
programs when the information we deliver can 
effectively be used. The program is more successful

 not when we have more technology 
but when our students’ interest in and capacity 
to use the literature in all formats has been 
developed. Such capacity and interest should 
extend beyond meeting the needs for courses 
they take to include a fully integrated sense 
that libraries and information resources are an 
important avenue for lifelong learning.

The technology may be evolving very rap­
idly but the integration o f the technology's use 
will take at least a generation. Technology starts 
out automating or m echanizing a tedious 
manual operation. Only after the technology 
has replaced the old way o f doing things do 
users (and creators) discover new things the 
technology can do. Different levels o f comfort 
in using computers, and the need for initial 
programs and hardware to evolve into more 
intuitive versions that complement the way 
people actually perform work, put a break on 
the fast pace o f technology development.

Our work o f implementing the use of the 
technology is a process. Our challenge is not 
the completion of particular work such as imple­
menting an online catalog, developing a cam­
pus network, or purchasing a new CD-ROM 
database. Instead each is but a step in a larger 
process which has as its goal the continuing 
evaluation of the library’s ability to provide tech­
nology in service to teaching and learning and 
the cultivation o f the habit o f lifelong learning.

I must be willing to change. My most criti­
cal challenge is to continue my own profes­
sional education. I should take every opportu­
nity to learn about the new technology and 
how it might be used. I read, play on the Inter­
net, attend conferences, talk with colleagues, 
and ask questions. I need to remember that if 
the habit of lifelong learning is important for 
my students to cultivate then it is also impor­
tant for me to practice.

Thomas G. Kirk is ACRL President a n d  college librarian at Berea College, Berea, Kentucky; 
e-mail: tom f .kirk@berea.edu

mailto:tom_J.kirk@berea.edu


April 1 9 9 4 / 1 9 7

I am not alone. We as a society and as a 
profession are navigating in uncharted seas. Like 
generations before us we are making up the 
rules as we go along. Therefore, it is not pos­
sible for us to know the answer to every ques­
tion. There is a level o f risk involved which we 
must accept and move on. Our challenge is to 
minimize the mistakes and learn from them.

Future challenges
With those principles firmly in mind I am ready 
to face the challenges of developing my library’s 
program o f service to the community.

The first challenge is development o f a new 
curriculum for bibliographic instruction. The 
issues are so profound that even the old lan­
guage (i.e., bibliographic instruction) is inap­
propriate. However, the new language has not 
been created. When I started out in this profes­
sion I developed programs o f instruction based 
on a linear model of library research. The model 
suggested there are classes of library resources 
(e.g., encyclopedias, the library catalog, peri­
odical indexes) which can be used in a sequence 
so that what has been learned at each stage 
contributes to later use.

The work of the last twenty years has upset 
that model even for beginning undergraduates. 
Advances in learning theory and its applica­
tion to bibliographic instruction, the recognized 
importance o f users’ emotional states in the 
problem -solving effort o f research, and the 
multipathed approaches and volume o f infor­
mation which automated systems provide, con­
verge to demand new approaches to instruc­
tion. While the need to make students aware 
o f resources and the particulars o f how to use 
them are still o f basic importance, we now must 
give much more attention to evaluating re­
sources, understanding research as a decision­
making process without the benefit o f full in­
formation, and understanding the semantics and 
logic of indexing systems.

Whether you call it information literacy, in­
formation use instruction, or one o f a dozen 
other possible names, the enterprise of prepar­
ing students to make effective use o f the new 
technology, even with the benefits o f more in­
tuitive interfaces and the assistance of artificial 
intelligence, is still the most important thing 
we do as college librarians. While the technol­
ogy complicates our effort it should not divert 
us from attention to this priority.

The second challenge is to use the technol­
ogy to deliver a greater diversity o f material

which will increase students’ awareness of the 
multicultural world in which we all live. This 
challenge is part of the articulation of a new 
paradigm for collection development. We need 
to find creative ways to use the technology to 
ensure that we have effectively balanced ac­
cess, and purchase so that basic general sources, 
which may be under utilized, are adequately 
available while also providing a diversity of 
materials that present the experiences of par­
ticular ethnic, racial, and religious groups-, 
women; physically challenged persons; and 
persons o f different sexual orientation.

Our third challenge is to integrate the new 
technology into the library’s reference service. 
The new technology increases, not decreases, 
the demand for user support. While an instruc­
tion program will help, there is still need for 
new approaches to reference service. The large 
academic libraries are now examining “differ­
entiated service” and “undifferentiated service" 
as two contrasting models o f reference service.1 
While some aspects o f this discussion remind 
this experienced librarian of the 1960’s discus­
sion about information desks vs. reference 
desks, and central reference vs. subject refer­
ence and branch libraries, the new technology, 
among other factors, may have added new di­
mensions to the discussion about how to pro­
vide effective reference service.

We must not dismiss the re-examination 
because it has primarily focused on large aca­
demic libraries. But neither should we ignore 
differences between the nature of colleges, their 
academic programs, and campus ethos on the 
one hand, and large multifaceted universities 
on the other.

Our challenge as college librarians is to re­
main true to our central commitment o f serv­
ing the teaching and learning activities o f our 
institutions. Our goal is support of processes 
which allow the effective use of new technol­
ogy to improve access and reduce the drudg­
ery o f literature search and retrieval. Our re­
ward is to pass on to the next generation libraries 
which are fully engaged in the effort to use 
technology to enhance our understanding of 
the world.

Note
1William L. Whitson, “Alternative Models of Ref­
erence Service: A Proposal,” unpublished pa­
per posted on Internet (Berkeley, Calif., Feb­
ruary 22, 1994). Available from COLLIB-L® 
WILLAMETTE.EDU. ■



198 /C&RL News