Turn Left, Out of the Parking Lot: Redefining the Academic Library

California, where I live, is a place unlike any other in the US – a land of opportunity, people, promise, and problems. It is one of the top economies in the world, one of the most diverse in its people, languages, and cultures. The recent movie “LA LA Land” opens with a freeway scene packed with cars and totally stopped. The music starts and drivers jump from their cars to sing and dance. “Climb these hills, I'm reaching for the heights, And chasing all the lights that shine, And when they let you down, You'll get up off the ground. 'Cause morning rolls around. And it's another day of sun.”

While California drivers can go straight at breakneck speed, I have been amazed at their seemingly inability to turn a corner at anything over 3 miles per hour.  Anyone who has driven with me in California has probably heard such utterances as “TURN, it’s not rocket science” or “my dead grandmother could turn faster than you.”

Libraries, have for much of our history, been conservative in nature. At times we have been stopped on the freeway, singing. While the singing has been good, it hasn’t always advanced our cause with the administration, faculty, and students.

Like lines in a parking lot, we are often constrained by the lines that other people paint for us.  Our friends and families, our cultures, our religious traditions, our politics, and our access to money and opportunities, are all lines that either box us in, or provide pathways to opportunity. Recently I attended the American Library Association conference in New Orleans where I was inspired anew. Listening to Michelle Obama, former First Lady, Carla Hayden, Librarian of Congress, and actress, Viola Davis, it is easy to see that these three women both used the lines that constrained them and also broke through them to define their own way.

As I think about the 21^st research library, I believe that we must use the constraining lines of our past (collections, buildings, traditions, and ways of looking at our work) and break through the lines and redefine our work.

Parking lots have lines that tell us where to park in relation to other cars and also in relation to the established traffic flow. While certainly some approach a parking lot and park in a helter-skelter manner despite the rigid lines, most follow the traffic pattern and park as the lines indicate. Thinking about the parking lot as an analogy for the traditional academic library, we can see how we are constrained by our own lines and traffic patterns. 

I am advocating that we “turn left out of the parking lot” and redefine the academic library and its role based on the academic teaching, research, and scholarship of faculty, and the learning, and emerging scholarship of students and not apriori on the building, collections, reference and instruction, etc. If we started with this new perspective, how might our academic libraries look different in terms of priorities, collections strategies, staffing models, the type of people we hire, the organizational models we adopt, and the type of buildings we build?

I think starting at a different point in defining our scope of work, meaning, and impact we will be a more effective partner in supporting the university’s strategic directions.

What might this look like? I would like to suggest four areas, with a number of potential ideas in each category where we might see a difference.

Roles: Historically most library roles have been defined from the inside out. The Library defines roles based on collections, spaces, services that we know and understand and we offer these roles to the campus. We market these roles to our constituencies, somewhat assured they will find them important because we do. If we turn this on its head and begin to define our roles from the outside in, we will move closer to being a key partner in the university’s mission.

How might we think creatively in understanding the “library in the life of the user” (https://www.oclc.org/research/publications/2015/oclcresearch-library-in-life-of-user.html) through roles that interface with student government, student clubs, Greek Life, etc? Some new roles might include positions devoted to student success, first-year experience, athletics, learning environments, digital learning and scholarship, diversity and inclusion, student affairs, graduate students, etc. The library in the life of the user also applies to teaching faculty and researchers. New roles might include expertise in copyright and intellectual property, data intelligence, data management, publishing, and metrics to mention just a few.

Buildings:  Almost every academic library is being reimagined, and with fundraising and campus funding, being renovated. While many libraries are moving books to provide additional space for other activities, I think we often shortchange ourselves in not thinking more creatively and holistically on how the building supports our goals of supporting student success and faculty teaching, research, and scholarship.

Students come to our libraries for a variety of purposes. If student success is one of our priorities how might we think about our space so that it supports students across the disciplines to be successful, not just providing individual and group study space but also space for creating (3D and other forms of making), virtual reality, artificial intelligence, green screen, animation, etc.

Another important aspect of our buildings should be making the space to be welcoming and affirming, aesthetically, culturally, and socially. One thing that libraries, with the full support of student affairs, should be paying attention to is students “spiritual/mental” needs.  Students often need a space to decompress, de-stress, meditate, or pray. Providing a multifaith prayer/meditations pace within the library is an effective use of library space, which provides for student needs, without them having to leave the library.

If the library is serious about understanding and supporting faculty teaching, research, scholarship, how might this change how we use library space to support these efforts? I would suggest a faculty commons with space for individual and group collaboration but also space for librarians to work with faculty as needed. The library might consider inviting some of the Office of Research into the building as a way of tying the library and its expertise to faculty and the research process from grant idea through publication and deposit of final papers and associated data. As we move to scholarship that is predominantly digital, a digital scholarship center that moves beyond support just for digital humanities to all types of digital scholarship, including library publishing would be appropriate.

Collaborations: Libraries are only one of the educational partners in the life of the university.  We sometimes think that our role is underappreciated or that we are misunderstood, or that we are ignored, or that someone else is playing in our sandbox. While the library does play a somewhat unique role in the education of students and in supporting the teaching, research, and scholarship of faculty, there are many, many places where our work intersects/overlaps/depends on the work of others on campus. Rather than seeing any of these as obstacles let’s turn them into opportunities for radical collaboration.

Student Success initiatives often find their home in Student Affairs, with perhaps contributory efforts from the various colleges and schools on campus. While libraries feel, and rightly so, that they contribute to student success, few libraries have a person or a team of people dedicated to student success. Such an approach would require diligent attention to student success initiatives, First-Year Experience programs, summer prep camps, and programs, etc. and the creativity to develop a partnership that focuses first and foremost on students and helping them be successful.

Graduate Students and International Student often go hand in hand because of the large population of international students in various graduate programs. Both groups often get shorted on the attention they get from the library, especially if there is a strong emphasis on student success in the undergraduate program. International students are a key part of the global perspective of the university, and they have much to add to the rich diversity of the campus. Partnerships with various international student groups, many of whom have a strong educational as well as cultural mission, should find resonance with the library, provided the library builds relationships with them. Likewise, graduate students are a key partnership opportunity. Strong relationships between the library/librarians not only helps graduate students be successful in their research and writing, but because many graduate students also teach, their experience with the library has a direct impact on student’s view of the library and its services. This partnership also provide the library the opportunity to help graduate students understand Open Access options for their own scholarship.

Jobs/Personnel: This new way of thinking will require that we define new jobs and hire new sets of expertise as well as use existing personnel and provide professional development to enable them to take on new jobs. These new roles will directly support a new approach to our work. Such job roles might include some of the following

• Director of Student Engagement: someone that facilitates student engagement across student life. Interfaces with student success/first-year experience, student affairs, Greek life, athletics, student clubs, tutoring, etc.
• Data intelligence officer: An all-purpose data guru that has outward and internal facing duties. Outward facing would help facilitate working with data management plans, data archiving, metrics (traditional and alt-metrics). Inward facing would provide data analysis skills to help the library in building a data-driven decision culture.
• Open knowledge, open access librarian: A librarian who supports open knowledge, open data, open access initiatives. Outward facing duties in working with faculty, the office of research, and graduate programs. Inward facing duties
• Research partnership librarian: A librarian who’s predominant responsible is partnership with the Office of Research and its various offices (sponsored programs, grant prep, compliance) and gathers intelligence on research projects, timelines, data and information needs and reports back to appropriate library colleagues (collections, data management, IR, etc.).
• Digital scholarship, digital humanities, digital publishing librarian: A librarian responsible for supporting the growing arena of digital scholarship including digital humanities and digital publishing. This position would provide broad support for faculty as well as graduate and undergraduate students involved in major digital projects that represent new forms of scholarship.
• Research collections strategist: A librarian closely connected to faculty research, including local and national research being funded by major funders, and builds collections that support that work at the university. Also pays close attention to new tenure-track and cluster hires to ensure these new faculty/researchers have the necessary collections to be successful in their careers.
• Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, makerspace librarian/technicians: Librarian and IT professionals that can help students use AI, VR, and makerspace technologies to do assignments, be creative, and create new knowledge/projects.
• Building success strategist: Library buildings play a pivotal role in student success (https://lrlacw.blogspot.com/2018/05/libraries-and-student-success_20.html).  This strategist (a librarian, or an architect, or, learning design specialist) looks at how the building supports the dual strategic roles of student success as well as supporting faculty teaching, research, and scholarship. She/he pays close attention to building use, potential, and helps align library strategy to ensure the building supports the library’s goals.

These suggestions do not mean that we abandon collections, or cataloging, or information literacy, or integrated library systems, but rather we approach each of these tasks with a different framework on why we are doing these things.

Turning left or right, should not, in this context, be construed as a political statement.  Left turns are typically more difficult/challenging/dangerous as we are crossing on-coming traffic. The challenge here is to do the difficult work of thinking differently and building a new 21st-century library model.

Let’s turn left and get out of the parking lot and move our libraries forward!!!!