Let ’ s Call It the “ Ubiquitous Library ”

Framing an argument with the right terminology is critical to making any case effectively. Sometimes such framing is to clarify understanding, while in others it is rhetorical and persuasive. Politics is a particular example of the latter. Since at least 1984 when Duane Webster first developed and wrote “Organizational Projections for Envisioning Research Library Futures,” we have been struggling as much with the terminology as with the work of transforming libraries. “The intent of these organizational projections is to suggest alternative library futures in order to assess competing possibilities for research libraries in the next decade.” 1 The work has been updated several times and posits four basic futures—from a very traditional print-based model (not likely) to an IT-driven information agency model (which appears now to be closer to reality). The paper does not suggest terms or labels for the four futures that describe these library models. Since then the literature has grappled with the transformation we are experiencing, and terms like paradigm shift (to describe the phenomenon) or virtual library (to describe the outcome) have been much used. An exact phrase search for “virtual library” on Google yields 5,070,0000 matches while Yahoo results in a mere 2,800,000. These huge numbers alone suggest that “virtual library” is not a descriptive term of much use or precision for framing what is happening in libraries today although we throw it out rhetorically with great frequency. Digital library and electronic library are no better terms, I might add. I want to suggest a term we have been using increasingly at the University of Maryland Libraries—the ubiquitous library.2 An exact phrase search on Google yields a mere 114 instances of the term and in Yahoo a slightly larger 126 matches. This means we can add significant meaning and precision to the term that make it useful for framing. I think, too, that it is a better fit with what is happening and with what we mean than the term virtual library or commonly used alternatives. I claim neither “rights” nor originality in adopting the term. It was used in the pages of this journal an issue ago to describe chat reference.3 In 1999, the term was used by Michael Keller to describe networked access to significant content, much previously in print.4 Similarly the Monash