Now that I've finished praising the basic approach of the ACRL document Changing Roles of Academic and Research Libraries, it's time to express my concern about one of its ideas.

The first of the three "essential actions" recommended in this document is this: "First, libraries must evolve from institutions perceived primarily as the domain of the book to institutions that users clearly perceive as providing pathways to high-quality information in a variety of media and information sources."

Literally, I agree with this statement, though it seems out of date. I know about OCLC's 2005 Perceptions About Libraries and Information Resources. This report found a very high percentage of people who associated libraries primarily with books. But hey, this was a survey. It's not surprising that it would bring up books as a prominent association with libraries. It's like taking any association test: Yes - No. Right - Wrong. Libraries - Books. If we want this answer to change, then we're already on our way. I think most of us would agree that the use of databases and e-journals is an established fact in academic libraries, and a very popular fact at that. The reality is, these formats have changed library culture. Just imagine shutting down your proxy server.

I also read Drew Racine's article "Bifurcate to Survive!" in American Libraries last September. Focusing on academic libraries, Racine advocated that any book or book-related service be called a library, while everything else be given another name, such as Campus Research Service. Racine considered the book-related, physical, gathering-place library to be "baggage."

This is an unfortunate failure of imagination. (I tried to say this nicely.) I hope that the ACRL group that wrote the "Changing Roles" document wasn't also thinking in these terms. I have no reason to believe that it was. It's just that the themes are similar.

It's foolish to divide up the world of information into media types, with some formats seen as burdens to the advancement of modern academic libraries. In a world with so many options for interacting with texts, this just doesn't make much sense.

From what I can tell, e-books aren't terribly popular - yet. If this is the case, and if print-based monographs are seen as barriers to students' full use of their libraries, then what are we saying about our professional dealings with the body of scholarly literature? Consider me puzzled.

I have no problem with the fact that libraries need to broaden students' perceptions of what we offer. I'm all for it. In case you haven't noticed, I'm into Library 2.0. But maybe this broadened perception might include the use of tools that foster student interaction with books on the social Web. Rather than concentrate on the format, focus on the ways in which we can empower student engagement with the content of works housed in this format - and in other formats too, of course.

Last December, David Lankes, co-author of Participatory Networks: The Library as Conversation gave a talk on Second Life. One of his quotes has stayed with me: "[Librarians] need to market how they add value, not their great collection of stuff."

Actually, I think we should do both. One need not preclude the other. But I like the first part of what Lankes had to say: add value. We can market our great collections by highlighting the ways in which we add value to them. If pretty much all we do with books is to house them and circulate them, and sponsor the occasional talk about them, then sure, we've got to get away from a too-heavy association with them. But if we offer interactive tools to add value to the reading experience, then we should shout our association with books from the rooftops.

Here's an example. On my campus, we are in our second year of a university-wide Reading Project. The university community reads a book, and several seminars are organized to explore the book's issues and themes. This sounds great, but it could be better. The Web site about this project is pretty bland. It's not terribly engaging. And there is no role for the library other than the fact that we offer copies of the designated book on reserve. (It's a 72-hour loan. I hope our students are good speed readers.)

Now, what if my library sponsored a blog that offered managed discussions about important themes in the book. Teaching faculty and librarians might identify different themes, raise provocative questions, and invite discussions from the university community. A good example of this type of thing is the blog about All But My Life, a Holocaust memoir by Gerda Weissmann Klein. This blog was created by Michigan teachers, and fosters discussions with students from area schools on the difficult themes raised by the book. The comments are a very compelling read.

Maybe next year, my library might use this model to create a blog for the Reading Project. Such a blog could be an additional avenue for engaging the campus community in discussions about the book. The blog might become an integral part of the annual project. If this happened, it would highlight the library's intellectual, pedagogical and civic association with books. And it would raise the profile of the library in a positive way - in a 2.0 way.

The point is not that the book is a printed monograph. The point is that it has content. Academic libraries can enhance the educational value of the reading experience by offering an online forum for conversation about this content. Isn't "conversation" one of the buzzwords of Library 2.0?

My campus is also the home of the New York State Writers Institute. I'm wondering if we might partner with the Institute to create discussion blogs about many of the amazing writers it brings to campus each year.

Obviously, blogs aren't the only ways in which libraries can add value to the educational experience of reading books. I'm just using this as an example to support my point that libraries and books can co-exist just fine in the 2.0 world. In fact, Library 2.0 can make this co-existence better. Let's emphasize our association with books by offering students the means to comment on them, raise questions about them, analyze them, recommend them, associate them with similar books, write essays about them, and so on, all on the social, interactive, participatory Web. In other words, we've got work to do.

I don't know if Amazon is trying to get away from its association with books, now that it offers so many other things for sale. But many of us admire what this company has done to foster readers' engagement with books in a social environment. We can do the same. This doesn't have to preclude us from raising our profile across media types, just as the ACRL document recommends.