Simply put participatory librarianship recasts library and library practice using the fundamental concept that knowledge is created through conversation. Libraries are in the knowledge business, therefore libraries are in the conversation business. Participatory librarians approach their work as facilitators of conversation. Be it in practice, policies, programs and/or tools, participatory librarians seek to enrich, capture, store and disseminate the conversations of their communities. Explore the information below, and throughout this site to learn more.

In 2006 the American Library Association's Office for Information Technology Policy (OITP) commissioned a technology brief to look at the area of social networking. The brief was to provide guidance to OITP and the ALA as social networks became an increasing part of policy debates, such as the Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006, but also in the board meetings of libraries around the country. Librarians and policy makers alike would need greater understanding of terms like Web 2.0, Library 2.0 and sites like Facebook and MySpace. What durable concepts could be gleaned from the raft of participatory tools and services now sweeping the web and catching the media's attention that libraries could use in their services?

In the OITP brief, Participatory Networks: The Library as Conversation, the authors found a single framework that held together the growing spate of "2.0" services - that knowledge is created through conversation. Based on conversation theory, the thesis holds that in order for people to gain knowledge they must engage in some form of conversation, be it with themselves (metacognition), other individuals, or between two groups. These conversations result in a set of agreements that together constitute an individual's domain knowledge. The rise of participatory networks and social sites such as Face Book, Flickr and the like is a result of people seeking to be active constructors of this knowledge. This results in a pressure for participation. As users encounter systems in their knowledge creation process they expect some ability to help influence that system.

This pressure for participation can be seen in many settings, but a clear example is the Internet itself. The Internet is a truly participatory system. At the infrastructure level the only thing that binds the Internet together are sets of individual networks that agree to use a protocol suite (TCP/IP) and to forward traffic to and from the other individual networks. There is no central Internet authority that enforces a network architecture, or even what traffic must flow over the individual networks (many, including libraries, will not carry certain Internet traffic such as instant messaging, or e-mail from a given source). In a very real way, the Internet is an ongoing conversation among network providers. This ability to actively construct a network has supplanted other, more proprietary models of wide area networks. America Online, CompuServe, Prodigy have either disappeared, or radically changed their network infrastructures to accommodate the more participatory Internet model. This pressure for participation in the Internet can also be seen in the applications used on the net. The rise of open source software exemplifies a desire on the part of skilled Internet users to create their own systems.

This participatory pressure on the Internet has now come directly to Internet information services. A culture accustomed to actively shaping tools, systems, and resources now encounter information providers and expect the same voice. Encountering traditional encyclopedias that structure knowledge among elites and disseminate it to the masses is replaced by Wikipedia, which allows users to not only access information, but to construct it. Users who encounter bookstores expect to be able to rate books not simply to shop for them. Users seeking images, now expect to be able to add their own. This is not a case of people simply looking for the quickest or easiest information, but looking for systems that can accommodate active knowledge construction.

How does this apply to libraries -- in two ways. The first is obviously as organizations that provide information online and off, libraries must accommodate users' growing expectations for participation. The second however is more fundamental. The brief posits that since libraries are in the knowledge business, they are in the conversation business. Books, videos, web pages, all of these are artifacts that only reflect the knowledge creation process itself. To be sure artifacts are useful, but only when they become part of a larger and ongoing conversation.

The starter kit is a resource to move participatory librarianship from concept to reality. How does a focus on knowledge creation over artifacts look in practice? How can librarians be prepared for a world of participation? The answers to these questions and more come more from experimentation than theory. The Starter Kit is the ever increasing forum to detail, document, and solicit real steps in implementing participatory librarianship.

The Starter Kit itself (this site and related materials) will be an evolving ecosystem of projects, ideas and tools. It will enable Partners to engage in many kinds of activities, ranging from scholarly work in information retrieval and Conversation Theory, to hands on software prototypes.

ALA/OITP and the IIS are currently seeking a diverse set of Partners to aid in the construction of the Starter Kit. Partners may be individuals and/or organizations that want to work with the ALA/OITP, the IIS and with other innovative groups to create approaches and technologies for transitioning librarianship to a participatory practice. Partners will have opportunities to collaborate in theory, practice, technology and policy to accomplish transition to the next generation of librarianship. Interested parties may contact David Lankes at rdlankes@iis.syr.edu.

The following presentations given at partner sites the Free Library of Philadelphia, Innovative Interfaces Academic Library Directors Meeting, and OCLC cover the basic concepts of the movement:

Keisuke Inoue, doctoral student at Syracuse University's School of Information Studies, explains his current research into applying participatory concepts to information retrieval and virtual reference:

David Lankes demonstrates a sample reference application based on participatory concepts. This presentation can also be downloaded in high quality format (MP4, 20.2mb).

Presentation to Drexel's iSchool focusing on the implications of particiaptory librarianship on LIS education.This presentation can also be downloaded in high quality format (MP4, 65.6mb).

Presentation to Catholic's Library and Information School focusing on the implications of particiaptory librarianship on LIS education.This presentation can also be downloaded in high quality format (MP4, 431mb).