Going away: digitization and other preservation activities going away, minimized. Investment still there if people want it.

Rotating and shared collections, less than it’s ever been in the past. Standards and guidelines that kind of thing. Except networks and coops active role in helping smaller libraries develop policies. Play that role fairly strongly. See that where networks and coops are administered at the state level. Less in the case for an organization like this, but is in other states.

Services to special populations. Expected it to remain the same but it’s dropping off. Increasing in Nevada, population aging. Same patterns Florida experienced in '60s and '70s. Retirees retiring there. Southern part of state not northern. Interesting tax implications there. Area where it will be level.

More and more state agencies asked to help libraries provide services and work collaboratively with other government agencies. So the role of the networking coop, special services, is an area we want to look at. An area that ALA is very interested in.

Where things are hopping:
CE, not professional development, but continuing ed. Some area are doing more training than they’ve ever done before, tend to be the really large networks, OCLC networks: Palinet, Solinet, BCR, Capcon DC based network shifted entirely to CE the same way Solinet did. Not so much state based networks and coops but those that have a corporate basis, OCLC networks.

The other issue in that region, they borrow trainers from these institutions, four library schools Drexel, Rutgers, Catholic, & Maryland U, libraries pay library schools to do training. Well developed. Library association leverage those library schools as well. Similar pattern in NY and Chicago areas where you have multiple library schools.

One other thing we’re seeing, won’t know until final date out, west of Mississippi, library networks and coops contracting. Washington state, Idaho, Oregon, and part of CA, contracting with BCR for training. BCR hiring faculty from Emporia university to do training in Portland, Oregon. Training for paraprofessionals, certification model. Western council of libraries, state officers west of mississippi, training plan for paraprofessionals. Pushing that. Emporia university grabbed onto that. States are members of BCR, using membership with network/coop to buy service of Emporia as a service for their members. Colorado big on that too, but not sure how much they actually participate in it.

Professional development for paraprofessionals but not MLS staff. Seeing more and more of. Hybrid situation.

Coop purchasing and group discounts not going away, leveled, what you’re buying is different, but not going away.

Courier services are different. Basic service not expanding. Number of questions about courier service. One state, either KY or OH, have statewide courier service, networks and state are party to. Looking at subcontracting to other states. Being entrepreneurial. What you do well that you could grow.

INR, information referral, virtual ref, almost gone as a service. First services to be lost by networks and coops as libraries became more self sufficient.

Growing the most: advocacy, PR and marketing. Single largest area that we’re seeing pop. So much so preliminary study, marketing itemized as an expenditure in this survey so we capture what we’re spending on marketing.

Populations change that you serve. Views and perspectives on kinds of service providing change and you have to respond to that. Plays out in what we’re hearing here, uneven local support. We don’t have, a lot of what we’re gathering quantitative good bit qualitative: your perception of this, network and coops directors in place for more than 10 years seen a lot of change in their organization and managed to survive. Missed opportunities to cultivate local library champions. Played out interestingly, networking coop directors in many ways disconnect between relationship lib admin with network coop and relationship library board has with library coop. Llibrary director/admin is official rep of lib system to network or coop. boards don’t really interact. One way channel of information. E.g. Oftentimes Charlie not invited to board meeting to talk to board members about services organization provided. He could be. Missed opportunities to make communication more transparent. What you or Charlie might learn from what trustees are saying about expectation and representing your community, crazy or really great board members. Helps support overall the library and library cooperative.

Seeing advocacy growing. Things we want to say to elected officials not allowed to say, but Charlie can say them.

Other reality, little evidence informal networks and coops, consortia, that exist largely in higher education arenas that has in fact driven price, commoditized these services. Institutions in fact paid fair market value because vendors realized losing market share and raised the price. That model did not help libraries one bit. The evidence is there. Academic libraries spend more for virtually the same services they had 10 years ago. Used to argue they had it multiple formats, CDs, online services, print, etc. Simply not true. Now in place where paying for article rather than per journal and paying much more. Talk about serial pricing trajectory 470% over a decade, no one to blame but themselves. No one to blame but ourselves.

Reality, as Gary pointed out, all this stuff is going to web, and going quickly. When you think about value of network or coop in helping you, in many ways because they have the staff infrastructures, they can in fact bargain down prices slightly on a service. What they typically can do, however, is bargain for more service for same price. So Charlie’s group may negotiate some ridiculous agreement for automation say only top end libraries serving large pop benefit most from. Libraries service pop much smaller will have access to services they never could have afforded. Getting value-add that you never could have achieved on your own by buying cooperative.

Another issue: marketing advocacy piece. State library of Maryland, directors Charlie Robinson, Irene Pedea, Ron Gislowsky, Agnes Griffin, (huge names). Completely overshadow directors in rest of state of 24 directors. State library decided that good thing to do for them bring someone from marketing in to create a marketing plan, 1994-ish. One meeting. We don’t need marketing, we can do it ourselves. 2003, they hired a marketing consultant to help directors. All those directors had retired, new directors really didn’t know how to do marketing, & probably thought they should do some marketing as a group for their libraries. 1994 too early. Painful for really big directors to say that. Part of the value, MY one of those states with regionals and not network/coops, regional directors could benefit from what larger libraries doing and replicate it to some extent. Flip model of how to learn about marketing. A little skewed. Advocacy and marketing largest growth areas.

Automations still there, but different. What constitutes technology. Two big areas.

An aside: Maryland library association fit the bill for household survey of residents’ value of libraries in Maryland. Did they value librarians over teachers, firemen, police, etc. the study very positive, love libraries. Take the study to state legislature, woman so happy about study pushed it through as state aid package increase to public libraries $1 year over 3 years. Return on Investment study, marketing subtle but it works. Not a lot of money but it’s pushed MY libraries up about 4 states per capita. OH $65 per capita, MY $54 per capita. It’s ridiculous.

We’ve been able to do things that make funders think we’re getting good value but not things that make them look in their pockets for more money. That’s the trick.

Just spoke to Mary Bicond, just got librarian of the year, because she helped push that though state legislature.

States that will have no networks or coops in the next decade. Either through redistribution of resource or library districts interceding and take on role. Idaho, with another state librarian change, could have no networks. Wyoming has none but they don’t need any. Very good library funding. Law established state lib in 1850s codified state libraries, plenty of money. More buffalo than people. WV had but got rid of, could do more with state funding. States always have them: NY, NJ, PA. MY could get rid of regionals, originally there for research sharing and reference took on the sailor backbone and virtual reference. Could be eliminated when not needed, have to be eliminated due to codifying. County based library service = fewer networks/coops. More and more districts of libraries communities annexed together independent library distracts, overarching districts works well west of Mississippi. Texas will always have them because state is so big; can’t operate otherwise. CA has fewer, but also multi-type. Bay Area. Not just public: public, academic, and K-12. State library less of a role than ever. Interesting to see how played out.

WV pushing everything back to the state. That state librarian will probably retire in next few years and whole thing could flip for WV. JD’s built good will for legislature, sits with dept of cultural services & education, museums, school and parks. Great relationship with state legislatures. Next state librarian could turn that upside down. Universities might be strong enough by them to pull services back in.

Minnesota, Minne-Tech’s single largest networks and politically powered organization in the country. They would be the state librarian if they have their way. Politically contentious situation there. State library told to give millions of dollars to Minne-Tech to do services, and don’t think about shopping around. Not an uncommon model, but most extreme situation.

IL networks and coops peculiar relationship with dept of state where state library sits. Unusual situation. Networks/coops operate independently and rely on members more than state library. Always operate in complete or virtual isolation.

Indiana strong network system. State library administers part of that. University fairly strong. Higher education in state legislature vs. education K-12. varies state to state.

Idaho could do both.

Ohio current state librarian being willing to redistribute. Have to watch how it plays out. Lost a lot. Moved libraries for the blind off state money over to federal. Big mistake. Should have made state keep paying.

State libraries have been successful and survived are those that have been willing to make difficult decisions about the kind of operation they are. State library board in mid 90s lost more than half of its staff in a legislative decision. Positioned state library to be place for all state government documents to pass thru. Digitize them and put them back out. 10 years later successful but took a beating when it happened. still provide service to government, biggest part of what they do, library development give state aid. Notion that they are collection of last resort for libraries in state, eliminated. Were selling books on ebay. Stack space with no books, providing more service to state government than ever before, desktop. Invested in technology and people skills to do desktop reference assistant to government agencies. Carved out 2 clear inches. Library for blind and handicap. 2 big services they provide, only 3.5 million people. Tough decisions.

Things they don’t do: library advocacy and marketing. Drew line on kinds of support they would have.

Study 2 years ago, number libraries have flat funding for multiple years, no increase. Had to give raises every year, effectively less and less money to spend. Utility cost of operating much higher. Issue for small libraries, small service areas especially. People choosing sewage and waste water treatment over libraries and public education.

All the more reason for libraries to do this to keep them connected to the library.

2. Changes in relationships of Google with vendors, essentially where this is headed, students will find your e-resources on Google, authenticate through there & go there.

Academic Library Directors Symposium at Berkeley. Google negotiating with Innovative for exactly that.

Sounds almost like objective is how to get your licensed resources indexes on Google so that your users can locate their content there, click, authenticate, and use.

Innovative working on new product, Encore, which would duplicate Endeca products. NC State University partnered with Endeca. Innovative’s Encore would do the same thing. Innovative is trying to work with Google to do exactly that. Desire to do a Google search and have everything there. Choose from the best. Value-added extras & one stop shopping. We need to get our resources up there.

Education, discovering Education has done that will do that. Compete with Google or get them on Google. Ease of use matter.

Frustrating for all libraries. How many databases we’ve got and have to search each one. Different search interface for each of them. All worse than Google. Explosion in innovation coming. Best federated search is not nearly as good as the worst Google search. Encore product incorporates everything: spell check, subject heading suggestions, federated searching. Cool and expensive, though half the price of an Endecca product.

3. Concern for library users accepting without question as authoritative anything they found on Google. News last night about wikipedia? Feature on Wikipedia and why it was not always dependable as a source and some school districts stopped allowing wikipedia as a source. The public seems to in general think it’s the same as Encyclopedia Britannica. No college age student should be using an encyclopedia as a source.

Good quick overview to point you in a direction.

4. Opportunity for having our databases included in Google search, some way for us to know usage of that, or ability for us to fund those databases goes away. For right now, now used very much but we can count how often they’re used. Hopefully when it goes to this other method, federated search through Google, until must be some way locally for us to measure usage or we can’t go to our funding source and know how many times something has been used. Problem with federated search engine.

5. Sustainability, building libraries, maintain that level of service or cost over years. Statistics provided are eye openers, staff expenditures. Loss of paraprofessional staff when positions come open. Decline in professional staff.

Didn’t mention retirements.

Share some information within consortium and somehow bring in folks who’ve had some success in driving their organizations to some sustainability, strategies, helpful.

Collection expenditures continue to decline, and books on shelves, disconnect. Break out independent expenditures and look at that.

Beginning of September, final report. About halfway finished now, 100 pages. Break into chunks. Data tables, static table son responses, contact info on coops reported in survey. Bibliography as well. Interviews conducted, summary, individuals identified. Data set available and searchable at end of June.

Florida’s not a cheap place to come to, retire to, and live in.

Don’t do: Nevada. Only source of revenue is sales tax. Population growing more rapidly than Florida, building everywhere, library and schools cannot expand. Our (FL) geniuses are proposing.