What Do You Call A Medical Library
Ves Dimov at Clinical Cases and Images asks, "What Do You Call a 'Medical Library' in 2008? "Information Commons." This topic seems to float through every so often on the email lists (MEDLIB & HLS) and librarians definitely have given their opinions on the renaming the library.
Ves posts the question in response to John D. Halamka who wrote, "In my CIO role at Beth Israel Deaconess, I oversee the medical libraries. In the past, Libraries were 'clean, well lighted places for books'. With the advent of Web 2.0 collaboration tools, blogging, content management portals, lulu.com on demand publishing, and digital journals, it is clear that libraries of paper books are becoming less relevant. The end result is that the Medical Library has been renamed the Information Commons and the Department of Medical Libraries has been retitled the Department of Knowledge Services. Librarians are now called Information Specialists."
As the chatter on the email lists indicates, these thoughts are not new. What is the big deal if the CIO wants to change the name of the library to Information Commons and librarians are known as Information Specialists? John thinks the change in the library's "content" from books to online resources necessitates a name change. With the advent of Google Books and other similar endeavors and online resources, Ves seems to wonder if this is the way of the future.
According to Wikipedia the definition of a library is "collection of information, sources, resources, and services: it is organized for use and maintained by a public body, an institution, or a private individual. In the more traditional sense, a library is a collection of books." The phrase "Information Commons' refers to our shared knowledge-base and the processes that facilitate or hinder its use. It also refers to a physical space, usually in an academic library, where any and all can participate in the processes of information research, gathering and production." (Incidently the term Information Commons was not in Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster Online, or Cambridge Dictionaries Online , but library was.)
So why bother changing the name from Library to Information Commons when they appear to be very similar? In many cases the reason appears to be because people believe the term library brings to mind books and printed material, essentially the library of old. However, if we are to change the name of a department based on the change in technology shouldn't we name the Radiology department (which brings to mind old x-ray film) Online Medical Image Processing or Computer Medical Image Processing? We have already renamed Medical Records to Health Data Management, but people still call and look for Medical Records and are frustrated when the internal phone book doesn't list a Medical Records Department. They end up spending more time searching for what Medical Records was renamed just to get a simple phone number than if the original name was kept.
Personally I prefer the term Library and I think more people understand what a library is rather than an Information Commons. I think the term Information Commons is a concept still too vague for most. It would be interesting to see how many Medical Libraries have changed their name to Information Commons but are still referred to (unofficially) as the library. If most people are still calling it the library, then what was the point of the change.
posted by The Krafty Librarian @ 5:05 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
To add to the confusion, in large academic libraries, the term "information commons" tends to refer to the space within the library where there are public access computers available, but even that is pretty vague. I've been part of a group that is planning renovations for the general campus library and even we can't come up with a consensus definition. I was appointed chair of the "information commons subcommittee" and when I asked the chair of the overall planning committee how we were defining "information commons" he said, "we don't really know -- I think that's up to you and your subcomittee."
I haven't seen any evidence that changing to some other terms than "library" or "librarian" does much except cause exactly the kind of confusion that you allude to.
In our library, an academic medical library, we struggled with the idea of Information Commons as we planned for a new building, now some three years ago. What we realized along the way is that, in our situation, Information Commons is a way of thinking; a service perspective. Information Commons for us means that we now offer MS Office, and other similar programs on the reference computers, whereas before, those things were available in the library computer lab. The librarians and other Service Desk staff in turn assume a basic level of support for users on those resources. Information Commons by name meaningless to our patrons, and it isn't a place really. Interesting blog post; thanks. -Roger
In my hospital, the Radiology Department is now called the Imaging Department, Medical Records is Health Information Management, and Personnel/Human Resources is now Organizational and Talent Effectiveness?! I remain a holdout; I managed to convince would-be renamers 10 years back that "Media Center" was a K12 primary school concept. My gut response - that I don't express to VPs - is a Johnny Hart-ism: "Libraries got computers!"
All the hospital libraries in my city are now called "Knowledge Centres." This is confusing at best, aggravating at worst. One of my patrons actually sneered at it. "What does that make you -- a knowledge centrist? How pretentious." I told him he was preaching to the choir.
I know people make the argument that since the word "library" comes from the Latin for "book," and we don't focus on books any more, we should get with the times and rename ourselves something that sounds more high-tech. I think these folks are excessively literal. I called my IT department a while back for some help with our integrated library system (oops, I guess that's "integrated Knowledge Centre system") and they said they'd have to look it up in their software library, which is apparently where they keep all the CDs for software that runs in our system. So even to the non-bookish, the term "library" is found to be the most intuitive for organizing a collection of information objects.
I think librarians see renaming ourselves and our spaces as a wonderful educational opportunity for our users. If we rename the space, the users will either automatically become aware of the vast scope of our services, or they'll ask us what we do, and we can elucidate. As far as I can see, this is not the case. At the university where I worked previously, we've had an Information Commons in place for some years. Yet students hanging out there still answer their cell phones and inform the person on the other end that they're "at the library." They're fully aware of the services the Commons offers, but they haven't bought into the name.
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