Redefining the Academic Library

Hmmm, I think that I've been tracking all the right blogs and reading all the right news related to library & information science, and there's still stuff that slips under the radar.  It's interesting the tracks information takes before reaching any one reader.  I imagine that if one were to visualize it, it would look like fractals.  Anyhow, I just now learned of the report from the University Leadership Council, Redefining the Academic Library: Managing the Migration to Digital Information Services. Released late last year, I must have missed the initial blog postings about it while I was shifting jobs back into librarianship.  It had the usual run, including mentions on Stephen's Lighthouse, LIS Trends, and Current Cites.  Interestingly, I could not find it on the Chronicle of Higher Education or Inside Higher Ed (is there a bias against the Education Advisory Board?).

Regardless, the title piqued my curiosity when I found it rather indirectly - a posting in LISNews about a series of blog postings in Attempted Elegance (Killing Fear) that form an essay regarding the recommendations of this report.  Sort of like a friend told two friends who told two friends...and so on and so on...

This report is intriguing, summarizing the information from various resources, many of which I was already aware of (e.g. "Value of Academic Libraries", the Taiga Forum, ITHAKA, etc.).  What this report provides is the distillation of this information into a cohesive strategy that libraries could take to ensure that they remain relevant. Essentially, this report elegantly supports Ranganathan's Fifth Law of Library Science: The Library is a Growing Organism.  An organism must grow in order to survive; and growth does not necessarily mean growth in size, but also evolution or ability to adapt.

Now, the authors admit that "(p)rognosticators have been warning of the disruptive capacity of computers, networks, and other information technologies for at least three decades, and predictions of the library's demise can be found as far back as the 1960's."  The authors believe that this time, there are four key drivers of change in libraries that are "converging and pushing more academic libraries toward a fundamentally different approach."  (Note: while the report is focused on academic libraries, these drivers apply to all libraries.)  These key drivers are:

• Unsustainable costs (particularly of serials)
• Viable alternatives to patrons (I would argue the level of viability, particularly for sources of scholarly information)
• Declining usage (hmmm, maybe of circulation and basic reference services, but not of online resources and in-depth reference services)
• New patron demands

As you can see, I have some questions about these drivers, but I understand the jist of their argument.  When asked with which sources our users (faculty or students) start their research, the most common answer is Google.  That makes sense; even librarians start with Google.  But that does not mean that the library is no longer viable.  Articles from non-OA journals are still the primary source of scholarly communication, all of which require money to access the content, at least within the first 6 months to a year.  Few scholars can afford personal subscriptions to all of their journals, nor all of their books (especially in the humanities & social sciences).  I do not deny the growing trend in non-traditional scholarly communication, but perhaps our end users are still not truly aware of the extent of resources that continue to be provided by the library.


I'm also skeptical of the claim of declining usage.  Foot traffic in most libraries has actually grown, and when you measure online usage of library-provided resources, then there is no evidence of declining usage.  Print circulation, in-house use of print materials, and basic reference services have, indeed, decreased quite noticeably.  We should take into account, however, the impact that our actions have had and will have on these trends.  For instance, by providing fewer books on the shelves for browsing and advertising the use of electronic books, should we not expect that circulation of print will decline further?


From the research, the report a list of 30 "lessons learned" organized around four themes:

• Leveraging digital collections
• Rethinking the scholarly publishing model
• Repurposing library space
• Redeploying library staff

These are not new ideas, but these lessons summarized as such provide some good talking points that librarians and library administrators can use to plan their strategic objectives and make their case for "redefining the academic library."  Another useful tool is the checklist, based on lessons learned, for "understanding your current practice."  This is, essentially, a list of practical and concrete steps that address the issues in the report. While there would be no guarantee that implementing all 39 recommendations would make your library relevant to your institution, it would be interesting to see if there is a relationship between these changes and indicators of relevancy (e.g. funding levels, overall usage, integration of the library throughout the institution).  

What do others think about this report?  Is it merely another one of its ilk that is read by administrators, touted in this year's strategic planning session, and then tossed in the file cabinet never to be read again?  Does it accurately represent the research on the future of academic libraries?  Is it unjustly biased against traditional libraries and print materials?  Is it useful?

Report on Value of Academic Libraries

A new report released by SAGE and Loughborourgh University describes results of research conducted at academic libraries in 3 countries (USA, UK and Scandinavia) regarding the value of academic libraries for the research and teaching faculty and staff.  The central focus of this study was not on economic value but rather on "the value of academic libraries to academic departments."  Their research questions were about the depth of understanding librarians had of the academic and research staff needs, and the extent librarians promote their resources and services and how this may influence the perception of the academic staff. This qualitative study involved case studies at 8 universities and included interviews with library professionals, academic staff, and institutional stakeholders, as well as a survey of other librarians to confirm the experiences of those in the case studies.  I wanted to highlight a few points that I thought were most interesting.


The first point is that librarians believe they are valued differently by different stakeholder or user groups.  Interestingly, librarians in the United States believed that students valued the library less than faculty, and less than the value from the same group perceived by librarians in the UK or Scandinavia.  This is actually more difficult to describe, so here's the graph of librarians' perceptions of value displayed by different groups:

Mind you, this is how librarians perceived the value that these groups had of libraries and services.  The point is, American librarians thought that the management valued libraries more, but the faculty and students valued libraries less than their European counterparts.  The former aspect may be due to a closer working relationship of libraries to management than in Europe (this is just a supposition not based on any evidence).  The latter aspect, however, is harder to explain.  Why do American librarians think students think of the library being less valuable to them than European librarians?  Is this a reflection of librarians' concerns that the resources and services are not reaching them?  Or is it merely the presumption that American students are more detached from the libraries and the resources and services that are available to them?  This is a difficult issue to study because it is about perceptions of somebody else's perceptions of value.  There are the attitudes of both the target group as well as the librarians themselves that could explain these results.  It's disappointing that there was not a check of these perceptions with the target groups themselves, which could point to gaps or misunderstandings.

Another key difference between the countries was regarding the services considered most valuable to the teaching or the research staff.  In the case of services aimed at instruction or teaching, the Scandinavian librarians placed more importance on embedded information literacy training than librarians in the UK or the US.  Not to say these were not considered valued by teaching faculty there either, just not by as many librarians.  Conversely, more librarians in the US than elsewhere considered group information literacy training more valued by the teaching staff.  But again, this is perceptions of perceptions.  It is frustrating that no evidence of the perceptions of the teaching staff themselves were not investigated.  

The perceptions of services valued by research staff did not vary by country nearly as much as those for teaching faculty.  Generally, more American librarians thought promotion of new resources was important than in the UK or Scandinavia, whereas fewer American librarians thought one-on-one information literacy training was valued by research staff.  My thoughts on the former is a more advertising-based culture, while the latter is based on a perception of research faculty being more independent and too busy.

Perhaps the most interesting part was the recommendation to "uphold the status of librarians and information professionals".  Essentially, they report that:

[T]hose libraries where staff had an equivalent status to teaching and research staff found it easier to promote their services, as they were seen by those staff as partners in the teaching and research process.  In turn, this resulted in better perception of the value of the library - communication was facilitated and library services were more highly valued.  Where libraries were seen as a service department, responding to the curriculum, they appeared to be less highly valued by teaching and research staff.

But, again, the evidence they base their recommendation on was perception of the libraries of the perceptions of others.  Perhaps this was because the librarians who were service staff perceived themselves to be less valuable or on a lower level than the faculty they served.  This appears to be a point needing further research.

My latest obsession: Demand-driven acquisitions

This article on the Inside Higher Ed site spurred me to write about what in which I'm currently deeply involved - evaluation of our pilot of demand- or patron-driven acquisitions (DDA or PDA, which ever your preference).  Given the posting's source, it is no surprise that the focus is about the potential impact of DDA on university presses.

But how PDA stands to affect university presses -- the subject of Esposito’s Mellon-funded research, which he plans to release in full next month -- is harder to predict. If academic libraries pay only for what their patrons use, will university presses still be able to afford to publish obscure monographs that nobody reads?

Nobody truly knows the extent to which academic libraries prop up university presses that dutifully churn out hyper-specialized monographs and adapted dissertations in addition to their more popular titles, said Esposito...

But based on what little information he was able to glean through his research, Esposito did some admittedly rough accounting and estimated that ... university presses could be looking at a $32 million loss, or about 10 percent of total sales. "So a big enough number to be concerned, but it's not going to topple the business," said Esposito in an e-mail after the panel. He added that this was an extreme scenario in which libraries buy absolutely none of the titles that never get checked out of the stacks.

The point is that university presses might stand to take a hit if they do not adapt cleverly, said Esposito. “The challenge is for the libraries’ gain not to be the presses’ loss,” he said,

Well, that would be an interesting aspect to look at as I examine our own data from our pilot.  So far, I've looked at purchases by week (they appear to fluctuate similarly to circulations and e-resource usage), as well as purchases and usage by fund or discipline (there is extreme variation, with one field dominating both purchases and usage at 12%, and some having fewer than 1 percent of purchases).  I've also looked at different purchasing models we could have chosen to see which would have been more effective use of limited funds; it appears the model of "renting" the books up to 3 times before purchasing would have been a better fit, given how many books have been used less than four times.  I hope to present my results at a few conferences this year, but now I have a different aspect to examine - number of items purchased that were published by university presses.  Finally, I want to find out how well our users' selections stand against the test of time - will their selections continue to be used by others?  How does usage compare with those selected by our subject librarians?  That, I think, will be the deciding factor in the future of DDA.

I'm also interested in NISO's announcement of an initiative to develop recommended practices for DDA.  A couple of people have suggested I participate in this working group, so I think I'll look into that.  I like being involved in bigger-picture things.

 

 

Interesting reads today

Some of the more interesting or intriguing postings and news stories relevant to higher education librarianship:

• When University Presses Fail - with a nice comparison of UP's to sports programs
• On a related note: an announcement of the launch of Books at JSTOR, providing online access to the works of university presses, including University of Texas.  While I doubt many of these presses are in jeopardy of failure, I wonder if collaborations with such providers as JSTOR might help troubled UPs stay afloat by reducing their costs and expanding their exposure.
• Two items on the reported failure of remediation - particularly relevant to community colleges - one focusing on the primary attackers, Complete College America (funded in part by the Gates Foundation); the other focusing on the interpretation of the research behind the attack
• The results of the Salem Press Library Blog vote had these winners (not complete list):
• In the Library with a Lead Pipe
• Musings about Librarianship - this is Aaron Tay's blog from University of Singapore.
• Librarian by Day
• davidrothman.net

Pew Presentation: Libraries in 2020

I found this Pew Presentation on Libraries in 2020 posted on iLibrarian.  The first half of the slides is focused on the rise of use of the internet, mobile, and social networking among different population groups.  Intriguing results include:

• Much higher use of mobile computing among African-American and Hispanics than European Americans.
• 85% of those who do not own an e-reader have no intention of buying one in the near future.
• 64% of 18-29 year-olds have used their phones to "get information they needed right away" [Disturbingly, 30% of this group admitted to "pretending to be using the phone to avoid interacting with those around them."]
• App downloading is highest among the 18-29 y.o. and 64% of apps were to "learn about something [they're] interested in" and 53% were to "get info about a destination [they're] visiting"
• Over half of users of search engines consider the information they find to be fair and unbiased, as well as mostly accurate.

Regarding reading habits, the Pew groups found that 19% of respondents did not read a book (of any format) in the last year.  Interestingly, reading declined with age, with 86% of 16-17 year olds reading and 68% of 65+ year olds reading.  I'm wondering if that is due in no small part to declining eye sight.  Ebook readership is growing, with a corresponding decline in print-book use.  But e-book readers are more likely to be over 50 years of age, college educated and with household earnings greater than $50,000.  This is no real surprise.  Nor is it a surprise that most e-book readers look first to the online vendors for ebooks and only 12% look to their public library.  I'm wondering, though, if this would be any different in this demographic group for print books.  Something that is hopeful for the librarian (and the pro-reading advocate) - of those who purchased tablet PCs or ebook readers, 41% and 35% (respectively) say they are reading more.  

Finally, the presentation focuses on how all of these aspects of internet, mobile, SNS, and ebook usage will impact libraries in the near future.  First, they stress the importance of quality of information to individuals - notably regarding the "3 V's" - volume, valence (relavence), and velocity.  Next they describe the "operating system of the learning environment" which is "anytime, anywhere, any device".  Actually, this is not new - library Web developers have been working on this issue for over ten years now.  Finally, they provide a list of roles of the librarian in the near future, including:

• Sentry
• Evaluator
• Filter
• Certifier
• Aggregator/Synthesizer
• Organizer
• Network Node
• Facilitator

Hmmmm, doesn't this sound familiar?  Haven't these always been the roles of librarians?  All in all, it sounds like we should keep doing what we've always been doing.

What's Right With Publishing

What's Right With Publishing | Inside Higher Ed

I get so tired of the "doom and gloom" of the Chicken Littles who repeatedly predict the end of the world as we know it.  It is nice to read a more balanced yet optimistic look at the industry that is at the heart of librarianship.  As I've been reviewing the issues of this field, especially those of the last 3 years and those of 100 years ago, I find that we have had the same worries for some time.  People aren't reading, publishing is too competitive and libraries are on their way out.  Barbara Fister provides a bit of backdrop to bring the publishing industry down to earth, and she provides some important developments that should enable us to tune out or at least tone down both the librarian- and publisher-CLs out there.

Exploring the Library-blog world

One of the changes that I noticed when I (temporarily) switched to the clinical research/public health field was a surprising lack of online community.  As a Web developer librarian, I was very aware of the many Web sites, blogs, and news feeds relating to library and information science.  Some of the more popular Nings (the then latest online community-building tools) were developed by librarians (Library 2.0), and I was looking forward to discovering the blogs, Nings, Web sites, and discussion forums relating to biostatistics, clinical research, and public health.  Unfortunately, the landscape was more barren than I expected.  Not surprisingly, there were a number of resources relating to global public health, but precious little directly related to what I was doing.

Thus, when I returned to academic librarianship, I prepared myself to explore, once again, the dense jungle of the professional online resources in the field.  I cleaned out my Google reader and Delicious accounts, updated my LibraryThing, reorganized my CiteULike, and started this blog.  Once geared-up, I felt ready to set out on my first expedition.  Not really knowing enough about what I would be doing and in what I would be involved, I kept my eye out for the more general, librarianship-oriented blogs, and for the most part, my initial selections have been quite useful.  While over time, I've added a few others here and there, I feel that I now know the issues, ideas, and concerns that are most relevant to my position, and I'm ready to embark on a second expedition.  For this trip, I will use as my initial home based the Salem Press Library Blog Awards nominees.  Here are a few that have caught my eye:

• In the Library with a Lead Pipe - this is not your typical library blog because it is not only open to a variety of contributors, but it is also peer reviewed.  As I am trying to re-establish myself in the field, I am attracted to opportunities for publication that have established standards but are within easier reach than traditional forms.
• iLibrarian - this is more oriented to the technical aspects of online librarianship than what I need now (it would have been perfect for my last librarian position), but there are a number of posts about ebooks that would be relevant to our collection.
• Stephen's Lighthouse - A staple that I somehow missed in my first run.  Perhaps I was just trying to limit my collection...
• No Shelf Required ® - Sue Polanka's blog that was created to accompany her monograph on e-books in libraries, but which has taken on a life of its own.  
• Agnostic, Maybe - While I don't always agree with Andy's viewpoints, the scope and breadth of his blog entries are interesting enough to keep me reading.

A few others that I have added that I think are noteworthy include:

• Library Impact Data - this blog communicates info about the title project that is part of the JISC Activity Data program. Although this is focused on British institutions, I find the results quite fascinating and applicable to other environments.
• Library Data - some very interesting graphs of publicly-available data on libraries and library services.
• Musings about Librarianship - This blog from Aaron Tay in Singapore includes some interesting articles and, well, musings on issues relevant this my environment halfway around the world.

I updated the "Blogs I follow" list in my Blogger Profile. I look forward to the new items that I will be reading.