Dave Lankes gave a great keynote today at the Oregon Virtual Reference Summit in Salem.

He's way ahead of us and posted the slides and mp3 audio of his talk on his blog. I hope we'll have the video soon.

I'll try to summarize what I got out if it from my notes. Lankes talked about libraries as being the in change business, and that it was our job to innovate, hence the title of the talk, "The Innovation Imperative".

He started out by talking about myths in libraries - that Melvil Dewey had the Decimal System come to him while sitting in church, that the Library of Alexandria was Great, and that public libraries are the cornerstones of American democracy. The myths aren't necessarily false, but they are often uncritical stories that help explain this crazy world we live in. We need to challenge these myths.

Besides change, he also said that libraries were in the conversation business. Conversation, he said, is how knowledge is created. But he asked, why, in virtual reference, is this knowledge supposed to be created with one patron and one librarian?

I heard a lot of people talking about this remark. Here is my take:

One-on-one, confidential reference services are necessary to provide a freedom of inquiry. Dave wasn't challenging this idea - he was attacking the reference desk model made virtual when we had the chance to do anything else - but it was my gut reaction when he asked, "why"? This is one myth I hold on to pretty tightly.

Not too long ago, a post on the blog Love the Liberry by The Liberry AKA Amy that when she found a barcode ripped out of an apparentley stolen book, she scanned it and found the book was How to Clear Your Adult and Juvenile Criminal Records.

Funny, right? But also sad and true. Whatever confidentiality library staff might have kept, the patron knew that she was not anonymous if she checked out this book. Self-checkout aside, at least one other person would know she checked it out - a clerk, a librarian, someone. The confidentiality we provide means nothing if patrons don't trust us.

At the same time, being with friends or peers can give patrons similar confidence to ask personal or embarassing questions. It's sort of like going with a family member to the doctors when you're expecting to hear bad news. Or how organized protests give citizens the courage to shout beliefs and slogans they would be too timid to voice alone.

More than that, two heads are better than one. We are a collaborative reference service, and how do we collaborate? By taking turns answering questions. We'd provide better service if each question were commented on or worked on by more than one librarian.

So, one to one reference is both necessary, even if mythical, and necessary to circumvent.

I'd like to see L-net do several things to encourage conversations beyond one librarian and one patron.

- Allow one or more patrons to join a chat room together with one or more librarians

- Encourage librarians to contribute suggestions to each other, especially on in-depth e-mail/webform questions (Web 2.0 software is good at this)

- Allow patrons to bookmark and share transcripts of their sessions

We should explore all this, try it out, and keep talking.

This is just one aspect Dave talked about and it's what I wanted to loosen from my brain tonight.

There was a lot more to the talk and everyone was energized. Listen in, and tell us what you thought!