The Academic
Library is dead. Long live the Academic Library. The phrase, typically given as
the “The King is dead. Long live the King” in response to the death of a king,
and hailing his successor, is appropriate for thinking about the academic
library of the 21st century. Like the old king and the new king, there are
similarities in role and purpose but the new king represents some fundamental
changes; a new day with new opportunities and new promise. While some in the
media and even in our own profession have predicted the complete death of the
academic library, I think the news of its death is, as Mark Twain said, “an
exaggeration”.
It is true
that higher education and the world itself have gone through fundamental
changes and continues to evolve on a seemingly daily basis. Higher education is being challenged by new models,
public opinion, media spin, government policy and legislation, and rapid
technological change. Radical and continual decreases in funding, changing
demographics, increased resource costs, and changes demanded by accreditation
associations all have contributed to the mood to re-think/recast the higher
education arena, which is the arena in which the academic library lives.
While higher
education has indeed changed and will change even
more, many of the fundamental roles of libraries have been surprisingly
consistent and enduring. Libraries still provide collections of information
resources, staff, facilities, services, and technologies, all to facilitate
engagement with information and ideas, learning, scholarship, innovation, and
creation. That said, academic libraries have taken on additional roles such as
scholarly publishing, data management and data curation, large-scale digitization, and closer
partnerships with faculty in student engagement and learning, and in faculty
scholarship and research. Libraries always have been places of learning,
intellectual engagement, creation, and dissemination. These are part of the
enduring thread that ties the academic library of the past to the academic
library of the future.
What is the academic library of the future?
A variety of
challenges are shaping the academic library in today's colleges and universities.
Some view that academic libraries are in crisis. I rather think that academic
libraries are more alive and robust today than at any point in their history.
Challenges can serve to dissipate complacency and to refine and reinvigorate
our role and to allow the librarians and staff to play an increasingly more significant role in the educational and public
purpose of the university.
The
Library’s de facto hegemony as the purveyor of information is gone. Some bemoan
the fact that “Google” stole our business. Regardless of what one feels about Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, or
Facebook, they all have played a
predominant role in making the world at large
aware that everyone is an information
consumer, and in many cases, a creator/provider as well. They have made the world global in a new way.
This new awareness of the value of, and need for, information can and should
provide us with opportunities to exploit our knowledge and expertise to draw
users to our rich resources; our collections, our staff, and our services.
Historically we have talked about libraries primarily in terms of collections, facilities, budgets, circulation counts, staffing, etc. While this model served the academy well in the past and these are elements that are still important, this King is dead.
In thinking
about the academic research library of the future I want to talk about it
differently I want to talk about it in terms
of its qualities or attributes and in some cases its aspirations.
The academic library of the future is characterized by
Engagement: The academic library is engaged. It is engaged across the entire
spectrum of the university and with higher education, locally, nationally, and
globally. The library must be involved, in conversation with, and work with,
all of the work of the university. We must be intimately part of the
undergraduate experience, graduate students and also the work of the senior
researcher. We must be engaged with athletics – scholar athletes, and with the
arts. We must work with the VP of Research, the deans of the colleges, the
research centers, student government and
clubs, etc. The work of the university is our work in that we must understand the
information /knowledge needs of all of these and lend our hand in supporting
their work.
University aligned: The academic research library must be aligned with the values,
goals, and strategic priorities of the university and likewise develop values,
goals, and strategic priorities that advance the work of the university. We do
not exist in and of ourselves. While we have individual ways of
operationalizing these values, goals, and priorities we check these
operationalizations against what the university community needs.
Collaboration: The library cannot be self-sufficient. The attitude of self-sufficiency
is arrogant and certainly does not build community. The library must
collaborate across campus with other learning, teaching, and research partners. It must also work locally, regionally,
nationally to build scalable and sustainable solutions. Examples where collaboration is necessary are stewardship
of legacy print collections, digital preservation, data management/data
curation, large-scale digital libraries,
global learning communities. Collaboration takes work, trust, talented people,
and sometimes money. We must be strategic in our partnerships so that we
maximize our efforts for the benefit of the university and our students,
teachers, researchers.
Embracing Change: Change is the hallmark of life. Rapid and disruptive change is
the hallmark of now. The library must embrace change as an opportunity; an
opportunity to meet new challenges, change current practices, explore new
opportunities, move forward. Embracing change means we are alive and growing.
Responsive and Nimble: Paired with the idea of constant change, some of which we cannot
control, the library must be nimble in responding to change. We must not be
constrained by historic or past models of collections or services in making
decisions to meet new demands. We must not build organizational structures that
can’t be changed in response to new needs. We must not plan to plan. We don’t
have the luxury of taking a year to make a decision on most things. We won’t
always slay the sacred cow, but we need to be able to ask the hard questions
and make appropriate and sometimes difficult choices. Like change, some people find it difficult to be
responsive and nimble (after all we are people of habit). How many of you park your car in the same place, sit in the same
chair at meetings, etc.). I think it is the role of library leadership to
support people well in times of change.
Change affects all from the custodian to the Dean.
Innovation and a Can-Do Attitude: Our students, faculty,
researchers live with constant innovation in technology and services, mostly
driven by the consumer marketplace. If they cannot accomplish what they need
with an existing company or service, they go elsewhere. The Library must be constantly innovating; be
in constant beta mode. NO is not a word that is tolerated well so we must have
a can-do attitude in our approach to
helping students and faculty be successful.
High-touch/high-tech: Users expect and need a high touch and high-tech approach. While
not everyone will need an in-person
interaction every time they come to the library, or interact with the library
virtually, the expectation is that the library and library staff are
approachable and are eager to help with the work in which the user is engaged. High-touch
builds community and inclusion. Because we live in a highly technological age
the library must be where the users are in terms of technology, and in some
cases out ahead, so that we can respond to anticipated need. The library and
its services must work for the iPhone and the Android tablet, and the high-end graphics-intensive
workstation. We must embed ourselves in appropriate
apps and web applications. We must use these technologies ourselves and be
comfortable and fluent with them. We expect students to learn to understand the
library and some of its weird jargon and ways – we must feel comfortable with
the tools they use too.
User-centered: We must meet the needs of our
users. We must work constantly to understand the needs of our users (all of our
users) and design, change, evolve services and collections to help users be
successful. We do not design services primarily for our needs/convenience.
Being Smart: The academic library will
survive and thrive based on its people. The
library staff is the library’s greatest asset. All members of the library
organization must contribute to its success – to think and work smart. We must
support and develop our staff from entry level position to the Dean in order to
continue to move forward. We must provide a work atmosphere and a work culture
that support the staff in the critical work they do in working with students,
faculty, and researchers. This takes time and money.
We must also
help our users to be smart. We must provide them with critical information
skills and technology skills for the future. (Critical thinking, information
fluency)
Values-driven: We must adhere to and live our
stated values: These values will be ones
of the library profession (patron privacy, freedom to read/freedom of
information, collection and preservation
of knowledge), human values (open communication, trust, respect, diversity),
leadership and business values (creativity and risk
taking, great customer service, staff development), etc. These values
help provide the raison d’etre and esprit de corps for what we do. If we espouse values and do not follow them
then we have failed in our mission and our strategic directions and work will
falter and be damaged. We will lose the trust of our users.
Sustainable and Scalable: Since we are unable to mint our own currency, we must build models
of collections and services that are sustainable over time and scalable to meet
the needs of a large university. This is where many of the points above come in
(innovation, nimbleness, collaboration/partnership). Sustainability in terms of
“green” must also be a priority for the library- reducing the carbon footprint,
waste stream, and costs.
Global and Diverse: We must be global and diverse in our outlook, our service, our
collections, our policies. We live in a global world and the curriculum
increasingly reflects a global perspective. Global resources does not mean the
same as international- we must represent the world to reflect our users’ needs
and our commitment. Our staff must also be global in their perspective and be
comfortable in a diverse environment.
World-Class: What does it mean to be a
“world-class” research library? In the past,
we would have said that was Harvard, or Oxford, or Berkeley, or MIT. More often
than not our view of a “world-class” university library was defined by the
size, depth, and breadth of its collection.
In today’s digital world the onsite collection issue is not nearly as
salient, as there are ways to provide ready access to much of the world’s
knowledge whether you are a researcher in a small town like Waterville, ME,
Memphis, TN, or right here in Los Angeles. I think today the World-Class
library is characterized by its staff, its services, its innovation, it
willingness to be engaged across the campus as a key learning partner. It also
means a constant striving to be better – to do the best in all that we do. It
certainly is not the attitude of the “Rolls-Royce” – I’ve arrived but more in
the attitude of Southwest Airlines – great customer service with a constant
learning and improvement cycle.
Leadership: The Library has a leadership role that it can and should play.
Because the Library belongs to the whole campus (not vested in one
department/division), we have the opportunity to lead without stepping on too
many toes. Major university libraries have taken the opportunity to step to the
foreground in providing state, national, and international leadership in the
library space and must continue to do so in strategic and collaborative ways.
Advocacy: The academic research library must play a strong advocacy role,
not only in the university but in the state, the nation, and the world. We live in a world where governmental forces want to limit rights,
sequester/block /censor information. We
have publishers who want to change copyright for their benefit and not ours or
our users. There are forces that want
suppress publications that show certain groups in positive light (LGBT, Muslims, etc). The library must play a strong advocacy role
around freedom of information, open access, copyright and intellectual
property, diversity, and fairness.
It might be easy to say that all modern organizations need to have these attributes,
and for the most part, I would agree. In
the past we have defined the library in terms of collections, buildings,
services, with a predominant emphasis on collections- we were in the collection
building business. Today that is not our business. We are in the learning,
teaching, and research business. Our collections, our staff, our facilities,
our technologies are all tools that help us in that business.
Let me switch gears and talk about the future library in terms of some
more tangible elements:
Collections: Collections will continue to be a critical focus of the academic
library with digital collections being a primary focus though print will play an
important role in some disciplines- e.g. the arts. Some of the changes in print
will be caused by market forces beyond our control, e.g. e-books (in various
formats) and e-journals (almost complete).
Other changes are the result of large-scale
digital collections (HathiTrust, ECCO, EEBO, etc.) or aggregations (Digital
Public Library of America and Europeana). Other changes are because of new
forms of media (MP4, streaming audio and video) blogs, twitter, etc. and new
forms of scholarship which are moving beyond print.
Research
libraries have large legacy print collections and a move to a collaborative/shared
model is necessary for long-term sustainability. We already see this with
journals (West Storage Trust, CIC), monographs (Maine Shared Collections,
Eastern Academic Scholars Trust, and HathiTrust) and government documents
(Association of Southeast Research Libraries).
We will see this continue to scale up to a national solution. Faculty acceptance of shared print models is
directly tied to access and delivery- the US is geographically large so
delivery models need to match.
Special
Collections will increase in strategic value and will be a distinguishing mark
of a research university. SC must engage students as well as faculty, external
researchers, and the community. We must showcase our treasures. SC provides
opportunities for outreach and funding as well as collaborative research
projects that build inter-institutional cooperation as well as community
research partnerships. This is an interesting and challenging area of the
future – collecting and preserving the physical heritage but also ingesting new
digital special collections and making them available.
Services: The
services the library provides will constantly evolve. We will probably still be
circulating some books in 10 years but not necessarily laptops or even things
like Kindles. The need for information
literacy training and research help will not go away and the library will have
to find ways to embed elements of these in various services. We will never have sufficient staff to meet
with all the classes we should. We will need to experiment with new
technological or partner solutions to provide a scalable and sustainable
service (MOOCS or something like
that). It is doubtful that we will have
“reserve services” or scanning services – other than specialized options in 10
years. We will probably do more print on demand or purchase on-demand options.
Facilities: We live in a hybrid world of physical and virtual. While our
students and many of us spend hours online, the physical library still is a
critical value to a research university. Facilities have become less print
collection focused and more focused on learning spaces. Spaces may be technology-rich or quiet and contemplative. The
library can and should be the intellectual center of campus; that place on
campus where intellectual curiosity runs rampant and students and faculty
engage in conversation with each other and with ideas ranging from Plato to
astrophysics, race relations to aesthetics, queer theory to economics,
presidential politics to poetry. Today, more than ever, library as place plays
a critical role in the educational process. Libraries are not mere study halls
but laboratories of scholarship, creativity, and
innovation where people interact with information and ideas.
The 21st-century research library should have a
reading room that provides contemplative space to read, think and write. The
library should also be replete with technology
enabled spaces to access information, create digital projects, and
communicate and collaborate with others. Space for individual study, group
study, and casual conversation over coffee, space for lectures and special
events, and places to display physical and digital collections are all critical
parts of the 21st-century library.
Technology: Technology is ubiquitous and fluid. We live in a technology saturated world and the saturation
level will increase, some in ways that we have yet to imagine. The library must
provide the technology that our users expect to be able to do their work (writing,
research, creating, innovation, inventing). Staff must also have the technology
they need and of the types that our users have.
We must have a robust infrastructure that continues to be refreshed to
meet the bandwidth needed. We need 99.9% reliability.
Staff: Staff is
the key resource of the library and the key to the library’s success.
Librarians and staff need to be in constant learning mode and the library needs
to support that learning with professional development funds (conferences,
online courses, etc.). When positions open they need to be examined to see if
they should be deployed in new ways and then we must hire the most talented
people to fill those positions. We must create a work environment and
compensation that helps these people to succeed and contribute to the mission
of the library and the university.
Funding: Funding,
while always an issue, will increasingly be a driving force in changing what
happens in academic libraries.
Collection costs for more than 20 years have risen at a rate far higher
than inflation and campus supplied budgets.
University campuses are receiving less money from state government. It
will be increasingly necessary to raise funds to support operations and to find
grant funding for specific projects. There will be a need overtime to endow positions to ensure that we
have the staff resources that we will need to serve the university community.
Conclusion
Drawing this
all together (Connecting the dots)
The academic
library of the future needs to be one of engagement, collaboration,
re-imagination.
The future
of the academic library is tied to engagement with the university community
which we serve. Engagement means conversation with students, faculty, research,
administrators, with funders, with policymakers,
and media pundits – not once but on an ongoing basis. The Dean and the Executive Council can set
the tone, and provide leadership and support, but engagement is everyone’s job.
Libraries don’t fall into the guaranteed category of “death and taxes”. We will
be an essential part of the university’s mission and the university’s success
as we show the fundamental and indispensable role that we play in the learning,
teaching, and research process. We won’t calculate a return on investment (ROI)
that reduces facilities, collections, and staff to mere numbers (though spending
our resources wisely is key). We can and should calculate an ROE- Return on
Engagement that shows that the Library is integral part of the university – a
strategic asset that helps ensure success and long-term
sustainability. The Return on Engagement shows that we make a measurable
difference to students (in and out of the classroom), graduate students,
faculty and researchers, administrators, -the business, cultural, and scientific
community, the world.
The academic
library is not a solo enterprise. Our future is a community and collaborative
one. Collaboration will involve the whole of the university community. Collaboration
will also involve building collaborative partnerships with regional, national,
and international partners around collections, services, technologies, etc.
Collaboration is built on trust and mutual respect – it comes from building
community (engagement, conversation, shared values). Community takes time to build. It is a job for
everyone – a job that is local in its touch, global in its outlook.
Re-imagine,
is for some a scary word, or at least worrisome. Will the academic library of
the future be one that I recognize – one that I feel that I can be part of?
Like my opening statement of “the academic library is dead. Long live the
academic library,” re-imagination is a way of looking at the essential role of
the library and imagining new ways of making the library essential to our
users; not essential for its own sake but essential in providing users with the
resources and skills to learn, invent, create, teach, and thrive in a global
world. Libraries have always changed; we
have always re-imagined our services, our collections, our roles.
We must
engage, collaborate, re-imagine all the time.
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