Ask any
group of students, faculty, librarians, and administrators the question “what
is a library?” you will get as many
answers as people. Those answers will run the gamut from very traditional ideas
of the library as a place for collections
and individual study, to very social learning spaces with few books and
predominantly digital collections. As academic libraries look at the future and
administrators and outside funders, ask serious questions about the nature of
libraries, it is important to have a
basic set of values/principles that most people can agree to.
I
participated in a library visioning exercise several years ago which included
librarians, classroom faculty, students, and administrators. I was struck by both the commonalities and
differences of thoughts around the role, value, and purpose of the academic
library in the 21st century. Not surprisingly there was a strong
emphasis on “acquiring knowledge” which invokes the use of both physical and
digital collections. Equally close was the idea of collaboration. Collaboration
evokes the idea of group projects as well as a collaborative learning
environment that involves students, faculty, librarians, information
technologists, and writing professionals. While we often talk about the very
social and gregarious nature of today’s library, the discussions placed a
significant value on the idea of “sustained and singular focus” in terms of internalizing knowledge.
The idea of “socializing”
within the library resonated more with students and librarians. The planning
group that we have been working with saw “socializing” very broadly. It
encompassed more than meeting with friends in the library to chat or to have a
cup of coffee but also the more diffuse idea of “alone together” which denotes
sitting and working in proximity to other students even if there is no
conversation or exchange of ideas. The idea of
“experiential learning” within the library context carried less weight, even
though this seemed prevalent among other academic libraries. Within
Special Collections there is a sustained effort to engage students and faculty
with primary sources as objects as well as texts. The Makerspace movement, that
is gaining traction in the public library and academic library space, is
another example of “learning by doing.” Close to the bottom of the list was
“conveying” which has the idea of students/faculty using the library as a
space/venue to share what they have learned. While the uptake of this idea by many
faculty is small, there are a number of faculty who have used Special Collections to
have their students do curated physical
and digital exhibits as a way of conveying what they have learned.
Having been
through several discussions/visioning exercises,
it is quite clear that there is not always agreement on “what is a library?” It is clear, however, that the library is
valued and important to teaching, learning, and knowledge creation, and each
faculty and each student who comes to the library brings a set of expectations of
what they should find. As teaching, learning, pedagogical styles, and
scholarship changes, it is critical that “what is a library?” grows and changes
to support learning and scholarship across all disciplines.
I think it is important
to move from a series of disparate voices to a set of shared values and shared
expectations around the 21st century academic libraries. I propose
the following nine values/expectations that I think might bring some common
understanding.
Libraries are a place of
learning: Libraries,
from their inception, have been places of
learning and will continue to be so in the future. Learning in libraries
happens in a variety of ways – reading, writing, discussing, disassembling, and
reassembling ideas to create new
knowledge. In the past learning and scholarship in libraries came from books,
journals, archives, a librarian, pen and paper, and perhaps a typewriter.
Today’s library with its computers, visual display walls, digital scholarship
centers, librarians, and technologists, as
well as books –ejournals, digital
collections, and special collections are still places of learning. New forms of
content and new technologies expand options on the ways and types of learning
that a library can support.
Libraries collect and provide information: Libraries have, since the time
of the Library of Alexandria, been places that have built collections.
Collections are normally curated and come
in a variety of formats (scrolls, cuneiform tablets, incunabula, printed books,
journals, indexes, LP, DVDs, microforms, digital, to name but a few). For most
of the 20th century, the
collections were in physical formats that were
housed in one or more campus libraries. Currently,
most academic libraries spend 70% or so of their collections budget on digital
collections. With the advent and growth of digital collections, collections are still essential but much more
invisible and easily accessed from outside the library building. Special
Collections, those things that are unique, are increasing in prestige and
libraries are devoting more space, budget, and staff to support these
collections.
Libraries provide tools of scholarship: The Library has always provided some tools
for scholarship. Historically the tools
were metadata based which enabled access to the collections; book and card
catalogs, indexes, finding aids, etc. With the advent of computers and digital
information, catalogs, indexes, finding
aids, and discovery tools, again all metadata based, changed the format and are available through the web or apps. Libraries supplemented these tools
with computer labs and laptop checkouts. Apple and Google and a variety of
others provided smartphones and apps that
provided a complimentary set of tool. In the last several years we are seeing a new set of scholarship tools
emerge that challenges libraries in terms of
space and expertise. These newer tools
include large-scale data visualization
studios, makerspaces, digital humanities/digital scholarship labs, and virtual
reality and artificial intelligence labs. New tools
of scholarship will be developed and
expand the opportunities libraries will have to support teaching, learning, and
knowledge creation.
Libraries provide expertise: Librarians and staff have been and will continue to be an essential
component of libraries. Without adequate professional and support staff, libraries devolve into a physical or
digital warehouse.
Libraries provide space: Libraries provide space for
collections and people. Historically, new libraries were built or expanded to
provide for collection growth, and to a smaller extent to provide additional
study space. As the rate of growth of the print collection has slowed, and
student populations have skyrocketed, it is student space that is driving
renovations, and in some cases new buildings. Libraries also have provided
space for display of unique and special
materials as well as space for lectures and events.
Libraries support individuals and groups: Libraries have historically
supported the work of individuals, be it individual students, or the solitary
scholar. This is still an important part of the space that libraries
provide and one that many students take advantage of daily. However, as
learning has become more social and also more project-based, the need for
different types of spaces has grown. Group study rooms, places for informal
conversation and study, places where students can study in proximity to others
(referred to as “alone together”) are all needed in a modern library.
Libraries support a variety of learning styles: We recognize that people learn
in different ways and libraries work at supporting different learning styles
through types of space, furniture, and services they provide. Students will use
different parts of the library with different furniture and levels of
collaboration or solitude depending on their needs at a given moment.
Libraries support diversity and inclusion: While I believe most people
would agree that this should be a library value for the 21st
century, it is the one, that as a profession we struggle to realize. Not only
do we need to diversify collections, but we must make our libraries places that
are welcoming and inclusive to all of our students regardless of race,
ethnicity, gender preference, sexual orientation, country of origin, language,
socio-economic status, etc. Equally importantly we need to build a staff that
more closely reflects our student bodies, and make those diverse librarians and
staff feel welcome, included, and provide them opportunities to grow, thrive,
contribute, and lead.
Libraries support the whole person: The library of the past placed
many restrictions on how people used the library and collections, and people, in order to use the space and the collections, mostly complied. Over the last few
decades we’ve moved from a model of the “user in the life of the library” to
one of the “library in the life of the
user” (See: Lynn Silipigni Connaway. The Library in the Life of the User:
Engaging with People Where They Live and Learn. https://www.oclc.org/research/publications/2015/oclcresearch-library-in-life-of-user.html).
Flipping this model on its head, in reality, reflects that our users are “whole
people” and they see the library as only part of what they need for their own achievement. When they come to the library they bring their whole selves – a self that
is social, a self that will use a variety of spaces and technologies depending
on the their need, and a self that doesn’t understand why creature comforts
(food and drink) which they use at home when they do similar activities would
be banned from the library. This reality causes us to rethink our
approach to food and drink, to space, furniture, hours, services, and
technologies. This whole person approach has also led to libraries creating
spaces for meditation and prayer.
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