Libraries can expend a tremendous amount of time and staff resources on redesigning and improving the library Website so that users can find information most effectively. Any librarian who has been involved in such a process knows that it can be extraordinarily complex, particularly when trying to anticipate the different ways that users might approach information resources.

Sometimes I wonder if we should put more effort into thinking about how users could utilize library resources without going through the library’s Web site. That may sound like the exact opposite of what libraries want to accomplish but it may be exactly what users need from a library.

I don’t expect library Websites to disappear but I do expect libraries to offer more Web-based services that allow information resources to be discovered by users and integrated into users’ research habits without having to visit the library’s portal regularly.

One simple solution to start with is more use of RSS feeds. RSS has completely the changed the way that I use the Web and my expectations of Web sites. Yet, I didn’t use RSS regularly before March 2005. Now, a simple account through Bloglines allows me to monitor over 250 Web sites everyday.

I think that most librarians agree that the library is not a building or even its collection but that the library is a set of services. One of those services is the building (library as place), another is the collection and associated bibliographic services. Research and instructional services comprise another set. Perhaps the services that libraries need to develop the most are those Web-based services that integrate resources into the information flow of students and researchers.

Lorcan Dempsey examined an electronic learning environment and identified the following interesting conclusions:

One, the ‘library’ is not present in this iteration of the landscape. But, more importantly, how would one represent the library if it were to be dropped in? As ‘the library’? As a set of services (catalog, virtual reference, …)? If as a set of services, which services? And, if a particular set of services, how well would they ‘play’ in this environment? What would need to be done for them to be in the flow?

The importance of flow underlines recurrent themes:

• the library needs to be in the user environment and not expect the user to find their way to the library environment
• integration of library resources should not be seen as an end in itself but as a means to better integration with the user environment, with workflow.

Increasingly, the user environment will be organized around various workflows. In fact, in a growing number of cases, a workflow application may be the consumer of library services.

The message for libraries is clear: be in the flow.

So, rather than a library embarking on yet another painstaking redesign of its Web site, an exploration of these workflow issues may be a better use of time.