Libraries for a global networked world: Toward new educational and design strategies

Abstract The growth of the Internet and the World Wide Web means that users expect access to information and the world’s knowledge regardless of geographic or political boundaries. Some approaches think of geographic distances as the primary barriers and use information and computer technologies (ICTs) to enable knowledge transfer across these distances (MacCormack 2002). The concept of a digital global library is a natural extension of these ideas, and the technology to accomplish this would seem to be available. However, as others have pointed out (Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995; von Krogh, Ichijo et al. 2000), the technologies used to manage knowledge have a decidedly western, if not North American, perspective. Culture is rarely taken into account in the design of systems intended to help organizations manage knowledge (Mason 2003). This paper posits that developments in Internet technologies can have a profound effect on the concept of a global library. These technical developments enable new ways for people to interact and for communities to form, and the combined technical and social changes challenge the conventional notion of a library as primarily a means for providing access to information. Future library design and the education of library professionals will benefit from conceiving of a global library as a space and infrastructure that enables different ethnic communities and national value systems to create and maintain “third cultures” (Packman and Casmir 1999) in which knowledge from the distinct communities can be shared and new knowledge developed. Such a conceptualization of the future library suggests that we should reassess the skills and systems that will need to emerge if library professionals are to continue to provide leadership for global knowledge sharing.