Eliminating Silos
Posted by: David Tyckoson
At the Booklist webinar on 21st Century Reference Collections, a librarian at a consortia in Nebraska asked:
Q: Is this the “eliminating the silo” movement I’ve heard of?
A: I have not thought of the subcollections within the library as silos before. If we allow reference books to circulate, we are not really eliminating silos, but making the silos more like each other.
Unlike ebooks, a print book can only be in one place at one time. In order to be able to find it, it needs to be designated as being in a particular collection (or silo). If it is a reference book, it should be where the reference books are. If it is a children’s book, it should be with the rest of the childrens’ books. For the practical purposes of finding it, it needs to be in the proper silo. When a book gets put in the wrong silo, it can be years before it is found and returned to its proper location.
If we eliminate a silo – such as the reference collection – the books must be allocated to another silo. In order for us to be able to keep some order to the library, we cannot eliminate all of our silos. However, if you decide that all reference books (or all of some other collection) can be integrated into the main stacks, you can eliminate one of what are probably many different silos. I doubt that many libraries will be able to carry this reduction down to just one main collection.
While the image of a collection of free range reference books, roaming throughout the library, with maybe a cataloger or two riding herd, is intriguing, it simply will not serve our users. Most of the time people turn to reference books for a specific need, not for pleasure reading. When a reference book is needed, we need to be able to find it quickly, not by chance. It needs to be in some kind of silo for that very reason.
