The Future of the Academic Library Symposium: Bridging the Culture Gap

An academic symposium in Philadelphia on November 11 engaged a roomful of librarians in a lively dialog, as both panelists and attendees focused on the gaps that impede progress in academic libraries. "The Future of the Academic Library Symposium: Bridging the Gap," held at Temple University and shepherded by associate university librarian (AUL) Steven Bell, was sponsored by EBSCO.

North Carolina State University's Kristin Antelman kicked off the day with a keynote identifying some of the "culture" gaps that exist, including those between IT and the library, library administrators and front-line librarians, librarians and support staff, the university administration and the library, and traditionalists and Millennials. How do we overcome these culture gaps?

Antelman challenged academic librarians to move beyond the hierarchical organization prevalent in most libraries to an "adhocracy," which encourages creativity. "We pay lip service to innovation," she said, "but a lot of ideas never leave the starting gate," because of the fear of failure.

We need to be in a state of "perpetual beta," she said, and align our goals with the power structure of our institutions if we want to effect change.

That resonated with panelists Bill Mayer, University Librarian at American University, and Jessica Rossi, from the Community College of Philadelphia, who alluded to "serious gaps" with university administrators that resulted in librarians being left out of campuswide strategic planning. Mayer connected with students and university leaders to raise library awareness and remedy that.

Haverford College Library's Laurie Allen and Columbia University's AUL Damon Jaggars discussed the effectiveness of affinity groups, which bring together various stakeholders and, by doing so, bridge the culture gap.

Similarly, a second panel on "Strengthening the Culture," moderated by Penn State Penn State Greater Allegheny campus's Courtney Young, echoed some similar points. "[We need] an entrepreneurship class in library school," said Champlain College librarian Andy Burkhardt. Long Island University's library dean Valeda Dent called for across-the-board teams that bring people together-from student employees to librarians-rather than breaking people down by job category. "We are all stewards of our profession," she said.

Diane Skorina, of Ursinus College, highlighted what she considered a misperception emblematic of many of the culture gaps under discussion. She cited the unexpected enthusiasm of a long-tenured colleague whom everyone assumed would essentially be forced into retirement because of a major system change. Instead, "she put off her retirement to try the new system," Skorina said.

Finally, Erin Dorney, of Millarsville University, noted that culture gaps within the library can also be detrimental to the institution's presence on campus: "If we're all fighting individual battles, we don't appear as a cohesive unit to the rest of the institution."

The afternoon focused on the user gap, with two panels, one featuring students, one faculty, that confirmed some preconceptions but blew the lid off others. (See "The Future of the Academic Library Symposium: Bridging the User Gap," and Steven Bell's From the Bell Tower column, "A Prediction-Free Symposium on the Future.") In between the morning and afternoon "gap" sessions, Jody Condit-Fagan from James Madison University and Beth Bernhardt from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, recounted the doubling, tripling, even quadrupling of database usage (including the library's own catalog) with EDS (EBSCO Discovery Service), which gives users a Google-like single search box and a more flexible set of search results.