‘Tis the Season To Discuss Our Future, Part I | From the Bell Tower

Steven Bell, Associate University Librarian, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA -- Library Journal, 6/18/2009

The final week of my academic library course takes up the matter of the future of academic libraries. I remind myself the audience is a group of LIS students, some who are about to graduate, and do my best to be optimistic about the future of the profession. I hardly want to give them reasons to give up before they start. Fortunately I’m generally enthusiastic about the prospects for a bright future for academic librarianship, but the truth is that these days pessimistic outlooks tend to outpace the positive ones. That’s a good thing though because it forces academic librarians to work harder to create their preferred future, one in which they remain relevant in higher education.

No dearth of futures
Over the years I’ve stockpiled my course site with articles and papers that communicate a vision for the future of academic libraries. The list grows longer each year. This year, in the week prior to the last class I came across two: a scholarly journal article that argued for a particular future for the academic library profession and the data from a survey of faculty about information technology. The latter, data from the 2008 MISO (Merged Information Services Organizations) survey of faculty and their information technology needs, communicates current trends more so than the future, but speaks volumes on the challenges we may face. The former is Pongracz Sennyey, Lyman Ross, and Caroline Mills’ “Exploring the Future of Academic Libraries: A Definitional Approach” (The Journal of Academic Librarianship, May 2009).

A very digital future
Sennyey, Ross, and Mills explore the future of the academic library as three distinct entities; the building, the collection, and the staff. The library became a valued place, they contend, because of the collections and services. But as the collections and services go digital, what will become of the physical facility? It will still exist, but its value needs to shift. They see the library transforming into a student center that would be viable only if it integrated non-library partners, such as the writing center or the IT help desk. Implementing co-located services with the learning commons model is accepted practice at academic libraries, so this is hardly a radical call for transformation.

They then accurately point to the shift from print to digital library collections, but more importantly the increasing amount of information that exists outside the academic library entirely through Google books, open access collections, and other freely available content. “At the same time the universe of information is growing, discovery is becoming a greater challenge, yet librarians are no longer associated with that critical service,” they write. “Google is.” Again, the Google threat is hardly new to our profession.

Finally, the authors point to the death of the librarian gatekeeper, writing that researchers and teaching faculty are now “more knowledgeable about the collection than their counterparts in the library.” That may be arguable, but there’s no denying that academic libraries need to transition by reinventing traditional positions and innovate with a host of new, non-librarian professionals.

Which is the best bet?
With the value of their buildings, collections and staff diminishing, what are academic librarians to do? The authors lay out three thought-provoking options, asking which of three entities should we optimize. Well, the authors don’t see much value in the building. They think it will best serve the campus as a student center and study hall more efficiently run by the campus building management team. That’s hardly encouraging given my previous column on the library as a sacred campus space. Nor are they enthusiastic about building the future academic library on collecting and building portals to digital collections. They think the best bet is to optimize the library staff, though in transformed roles as text miners, statistical analysts, data visualizers, and data curators; no mention of reference or instruction librarians here.

The missing ingredient
The authors make some valid points about decreasing dependence on the academic library for traditional services, and I can consider a future where the building and collection are less central. But perhaps we can shape a different future for academic libraries, one that emphasizes our role as educators. A future in data mining, visualization, and e-data curating sounds interesting, but I became an academic librarian to work with people, not data. Furthermore, I want to help students become better researchers, and I want to work with faculty to help them more deeply engage students in the research process. Without this special ingredient, the academic librarian as educator and partner to the faculty, the future could be bleak indeed.

In Part II, I’ll share information about the MISO survey and what the findings say about the future of academic libraries.

Steven Bell is Associate University Librarian, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA.  For more from Steven visit his blogs, Kept-Up Academic Librarian, ACRLog and Designing Better Libraries or visit his web site.

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