Magic & Hypersystems: Constructing the Information‐Sharing Library

Citation

Peare, T. (2003), "Magic & Hypersystems: Constructing the Information‐Sharing Library", Library Review, Vol. 52 No. 7, pp. 352-352. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530310487489

The author of this compilation, Harold Billings, had been Director of General Libraries at the University of Texas at Austin for 25 years when he retired in 2002. During that time he led the expansion of that university library system to become the fifth‐largest academic library in the USA, with major programmes for electronic access, staff development and buildings. He was an active author and visionary throughout his career and this volume is a compilation of 11 articles published in the years between 1990 and 2000, several of which have been revised for this collection.

Although some of the articles have illustrative examples that might be a little dated, every one of them is written in a very easy and comfortable style and the key concepts identified as issues for librarians and information suppliers are just as relevant for the first decade of the second millennium as they were for the previous ten years.

Billings writes with the authority of someone at the top of his profession, but of course is no surer of the future than anyone else. Changes and developments involve risks, but librarians must take risks to break away from their traditional, more familiar roles. This volume of articles traces some of the risks taken both by himself and by colleague librarians, and he identifies areas of continuing challenge. For example, a theme running through the series of essays is the transfer of collection building from the acquisition of physical volumes to the acquisition of access rights to remote information resources for the library’s users. But to balance this, there is a brief commentary titled “Special collections – still special after all those years” where the importance of rare materials is confirmed, although “special” is defined in terms of the extra costs associated with the collections and wide access by digital surrogates is prompted.

In an article headed “The bionic library” (1991) he notes that “information does not become important until a user needs it. Its location prior to the user’s need is of little consequence. What is important is convenient access to appropriate information when it is needed, the ability of the user to discriminate among a variety of sources in order to decide what is most pertinent and the capability to transfer that information to the scholar … in whatever format is most useful. It is important that librarians understand the whole of this process and help shape the flow of information.” Here, Billings has defined the key aim of the profession in a couple of sentences! The same article continues with sections on “understanding the economics” and “new ways to pay”.

Several articles consider various alliances and cooperative ventures that libraries and librarians have engaged in from local to international level over the years. There are some very useful analyses as to how many developed, why some have ended or failed and others continue to flourish and expand.

For anyone entering the profession, this volume of essays provides a well‐rounded review of the challenges ahead and for others it should stimulate an assessment on how they are meeting the needs of users now and preparing for the decades to come.