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Academic Libraries: 2000 and Beyond.

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Title: Academic Libraries: 2000 and Beyond.
Language: English
Authors: Neal, James G.
Source: Library Journal. Jul 1996 121(12):74-76.
Peer Reviewed: N
Page Count: 3
Publication Date: 1996
Document Type: Reports - Descriptive
Journal Articles
Descriptors: Academic Libraries, Access to Information, Construction Programs, Copyrights, Employment Patterns, Futures (of Society), Higher Education, Librarians, Library Acquisition, Library Funding, Library Role, Library Services, Organizational Change, Skill Development, Technological Advancement, Tenure, User Needs (Information)
ISSN: 0363-0277
Abstract: Predicts the changes and issues facing academic libraries. Discusses the movement toward a virtual library environment where the acquisition of digital technology and patron-initiated transactions over campus information networks will increase. Other issues include organizational experimentation, library funding, librarian employment, skills training, user needs, building construction, tenure status, copyright, and the monitoring of access. (LAM)
Entry Date: 1996
Accession Number: EJ528047
Database: ERIC
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  Value: <anid>AN9607307638;LIJ01JUL.96;2001Nov13.16:52;v6.0</anid> <title id="AN9607307638-1">ACADEMIC LIBRARIES: 2000 AND BEYOND </title> <p>The library will play a central role in the development of the, campus information environment. Rather than being told what technology to adopt, library staff will be integral in determining what the next innovations will be </p> <p>Academic libraries are at the center of a tempest of societal transformations. As the year 2000 approaches, there is a growing passion for millenialist thinking among librarians. Just as those in early medieval Europe responded to the projections in the Book of Revelations with frenzied anticipation of a new world order, many in the higher education library community cower in the face of fundamental changes in the scholarly, information, and fiscal environments. </p> <hd id="AN9607307638-2"> Virtual/virtuoso/virtuous library </hd> <p>Part of this transformation in higher education is due to the oft-maligned conception of the virtual library. Through a combination of local resources and external connections, the virtual library is able to put users in touch with the information they need when they need it. The ability to make information available in a timely, convenient, and cost-effective manner becomes the true measure of high-quality service. Virtuality promotes the academic library as both historical archive and research laboratory. And because of the rich combination of powerful workstations, sophisticated software, the ubiquitous network, expanding electronic publishing, and extraordinary user expectations, virtuality will increasingly mean ownership and access. </p> <p>But virtuality also demands the virtuoso library, with the expertise and resources to locate, acquire, and access vast amounts of information on a global scale. The growing volume, cost, and diversity of scholarly information will require a continuing investment in subject and language expertise and professional skills to select, organize, service, and preserve. Information that is not acquired and archived cannot be provided virtually. </p> <p>Furthermore, we need the virtuous library to share collections, technology, and expertise and to partner in the packaging and delivery of information. The virtuous library is able to preserve and advance the fair use rights of faculty and students in the face of the complex rethinking of copyright law. The paradigm of virtuality, virtuosity, and virtuousness will define academic librarianship into the next millenium. </p> <hd id="AN9607307638-3"> Period of perceived chaos </hd> <p>Over the next decade, the traditions, historical strengths, and values of the academic library will increasingly compete for attention and priority with new opportunities, needs, and expectations on campus. It will be a period of perceived chaos, a condition addressed in The Education of Henry Adams: "Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit." What might we expect in the new millennium academic library? </p> <hd id="AN9607307638-4"> Libraries will take over campus computer centers </hd> <p>Academic libraries will pursue bolder organizational experimentation. This will include focusing on the information and services needs of users. There will be wider distribution of administrative responsibility and authority, as hierarchical structures are broken down and key activities and operations are integrated. We can expect more fluid and flexible structures, enhancement of team and small group processes, and more collegial and collaborative working relationships. Continuing a trend that is already taking root, the academic library will assume administrative control of campus academic computing services. </p> <p>With the expanding mandate for accountability, there will be a greater focus on data collection and analysis. This will entail a rethinking of standards and benchmarks for assessment and more creative approaches to defining output measures and quality impact. </p> <hd id="AN9607307638-5"> Academic library funding will remain stable </hd> <p>Responsibility-center budget models will expand across higher education, embracing the library. This relatively new system of distributed financial authority places libraries into a more rigorous fiscal relationship with academic programs. Units will be taxed to support library operations, requiting intensified communication and accountability. </p> <p>Library funding will remain stable. The greatest growth will continue to be in collection and information access programs. The library budget as a percentage of total campus budget will not change substantially. </p> <p>Library development and fundraising activities will accelerate, as more colleges and universities pursue external funding from private, corporate, and foundation sources. This will involve a greater focus on endowments rather than on raisin funds for specified capital projects. Library budgets will increasingly fund research and development, infrastructure upgrade and replacement capabilities, and risk capital for innovation and advancement. </p> <p>The trend toward outsourcing of library operations and services will accelerate. We have already seen substantial success with serials jobbers, approval plans, binding, photocopy services, building maintenance, and security. This will lead to further experimentation in cataloging, collection maintenance, document delivery, and preservation. </p> <hd id="AN9607307638-6"> Digital acquisitions budgets will quadruple, and more, eating up 40-50 percent of acquisition budgets </hd> <p>Print-based collections will remain dominant over the next decade. However, substantial resources will be allocated to the acquisition of electronic information, as reference sources and scholarly journals become computer-based and the economic feasibility of the scholarly monograph is increasingly questioned. The percentage of investment in digital information will grow from the current 5-10 percent of acquisitions budgets to 40-50 percent. There will be an ongoing need for investment in local collection building, however, because what has not been acquired and preserved cannot be made available to users and other libraries. </p> <p>Even as collections continue to expand, the gap between what is being published and what we can afford to acquire will continue to grow. As a result, there will be a dramatic decline in ownership: new information accessible through libraries will plunge dramatically. Nevertheless, the role of the academic library as a depository and gateway for government information will expand, as traditional print-based distribution models are eliminated. </p> <p>The academic library will expand its role in scholarly publishing and communication. Project Muse at Johns Hopkins and Highwire at Stanford, and the Journal Storage Project (JSTOR) spawned by Mellon are examples of the library's central involvement in the management of current and retrospective electronic publications. </p> <hd id="AN9607307638-7"> More than 50 percent of reference transactions will take place over campus networks </hd> <p>Patron-initiated and -controlled services will expand rapidly. </p> <p>Libraries are already beginning to employ self-circulation, computer renewals and recalls, direct interlibrary loan, and document delivery. Full-text databases are becoming commonplace. The role of library staff as interpreters and mediators of user information transactions outside of local collections and services will decrease. Inside the university, the librarians' role as instructor will be formalized in a separate college department focusing on information and network literacy. </p> <p>Online catalogs will increasingly define accessibility and not just local ownership. Thus the links between the local collection, the bibliography of a discipline, and the text of the publications/sources will become blurred. Levels of all traditional collection circulation activity-general and reserve borrowing and interlibrary loan-will decline significantly. They will fall prey to the rapid growth in options for electronic document delivery and the implementation of electronic reserve systems. </p> <p>Academic libraries will house and manage campus usability laboratories focusing on the needs of the user and will involve users as part of the design team. Reference assistance to users will be electronic-based, with more than 50 percent of transactions taking place over campus networks in batched or real-time communication, up from the current negligible levels. User profiles linked to SDI-type services (selective dissemination of information) will ensure delivery of relevant, cur-rent information to faculty and students on a scheduled basis. </p> <p>Academic librarians will increasingly pursue service goals as part of multiple consortia-based relationships. There will be joint investment in commercial services and acquisition of materials, in the purchase and use of technology, and in the hiring and development of staff. </p> <hd id="AN9607307638-8"> Librarians will be key players in developing technological innovations </hd> <p>Technology is currently poised to transform the fundamental nature of operations and services. From the early days of automation in the 1970s, academic libraries have moved to the cur-rent distribution and individualization of technology and digital conversion and production. The challenge of the next decade will be the application of intelligence to the searching and retrieval capabilities of library systems. </p> <p>The library will play a central role in the future development of the campus information environment. Rather than reacting to campus technology decisions, library staff will be integrally involved in determining what the next innovations will be. In the new world of the desktop workstation, academic libraries have a mandate to integrate high-speed access both to scholarly and institutional information. They need to provide tools for filtering, analyzing, and manipulating information. </p> <p>The predominant mainframe-based library management systems will be completely replaced by client-server technologies and applications that include robust full-text content and intelligent links to network-based sources. Automatic language translation software will be introduced, contributing to the development of a renewed global acquisitions program for both based and digital sources. </p> <p>Campus network infrastructures will extend to all student, faculty, and staff work and living areas. This will provide dependable connectivity for a growing array of applications, including distance learning. Wireless technology will be introduced and will receive its initial testing in library services. </p> <p>The retrospective digitizing of library collections, particularly unique materials, will evolve as a central activity in academic libraries. Newly formed digital knowledge centers will manage the operations and partner with academic departments, publishers, and other libraries. </p> <hd id="AN9607307638-9"> The number of librarians working in academic libraries will decrease </hd> <p>Libraries will increasingly view staff development as an integral and essential component of organizational success. With retooling of skills emerging as a three-to-five-year cycle, participation in training courses will be mandated for all employee groups. </p> <p>As technology programs advance and dominate library collection and service activities, technical staff as a percentage of total staff will increase significantly. This will produce a net reduction in the number of librarians employed in academic libraries. It will also promote more effective working relationships between librarians and technologists, improving current conditions marred by distrust, inadequate communication, and lack of shared investment in planning. </p> <p>Academic libraries have not responded effectively to demographic cultural, racial, and ethnic shifts. They will collectively enter the next century still recognizing the important trends producing a more pluralistic society but without well-developed and well-coordinated strategic directions for the role and contributions of the library. </p> <p>Telecommuting, which is increasingly commonplace in commercial settings, will become a viable and acceptable option for academic library employees. An expanding array of library operations and services will be performed from home, enabling improved competitiveness for the recruitment and retention of talented staff. </p> <p>Academic libraries and library education programs will collaborate on the development of internship and certification programs for new professionals. This will be necessitated by the anticipated rapid increase in retirements in the next 15 years, as well as by the need to develop new approaches to the preparation and orientation of the next generation of academic librarians. </p> <hd id="AN9607307638-10"> New building construction will decline sharply </hd> <p>As academic libraries and their parent organizations assess the cost and impact of future library construction, there will be a sharp decline in the design of new buildings. In spite of the wide recognition given to new national library facilities in France and Britain and the new central public libraries in major American cities, colleges and universities will focus on modest expansion and large-scale renovation of existing buildings. Despite continuing acknowledgment of the importance of library as a place and the role of human mediation in library services, other organizational pressures will work against the investment of $25-50 million for a new building. The use of dedicated or shared collection storage facilities and the expansion of digital network delivery directly to faculty and students also minimizes the need for new building construction. </p> <hd id="AN9607307638-11"> There will be more pressure, from both inside the university and out, to monitor user access to information </hd> <p>The capabilities of technology and the freedom of the network means that academic librarians will face increasing challenges to the principles of privacy and intellectual freedom. Both university administrators and internal and external advocacy groups will apply pressure on libraries to monitor information use and to control access to sources that violate community standards. The recent court ruling on the Communications Decency Act suggests legal support for longstanding library principles. But as the academic library extends its resources and services more widely into the larger community, it will encounter a more diverse and contentious set of values. </p> <hd id="AN9607307638-12"> The library tenure battle will escalate--again </hd> <p>Tenure for librarians with academic appointments will be rigorously questioned by college and university administrators. In spite of a more intimate working relationship with academic departments and an expanding teaching role, librarians will be at the front lines of the tenure debate now percolating across higher education. Questions and suspicions about librarian status will be resurrected, and the academic library community will be severely split in its defense of this hard-earned set of responsibilities and opportunities. </p> <hd id="AN9607307638-13"> No issue will challenge librarians more than copywright </hd> <p>Academic librarians will invest more aggressively in public education and lobbying activities to influence government policy and legislation. This political action will be bred by the experiences of the current copyright and network advocacy efforts. It will result in a package of new federal funding programs and a continuing and substantial federal presence in support for libraries. </p> <p>No issue will challenge the ability of the academic library to advance electronic collection and service programs more than copyright. Though accommodations have been reached under the 1976 legislation for various "fair use" practices, the proposed law and the controls being developed by commercial interests will seriously undermine the ability of the library to support teaching and research in a digital environment. </p> <p>As so effectively discussed in a recent issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, academia will continue to be split between "have" and "have-not" institutions. The touting of technology as the "great equalizer" is countered by the inequalities in the availability of resources. </p> <hd id="AN9607307638-14"> Marginalized--or taking the lead </hd> <p>In the new information environment, the academic library will continue to be responsible for the preservation of recorded information; the organization of information to enable effective retrieval; and equal opportunity for access to information. Whether information is delivered in the library or at individual's homes and workplaces, libraries and librarians are well-suited to be the important and essential link between information providers and consumers. They will provide the critical infrastructure for a rapidly changing information environment. </p> <p>In a recent interview, writer Ken Kesey stated, "You can count the seeds in the apple, but you cannot count the apples in the seed." The virtual, global, digital gateway libraries we are striving to plant today will be nurtured and will grow and flower to serve students and faculty with quality into the next millennium. </p> <aug> <p>By James G. Neal </p> <p></p> <p>James G. Neal is Sheridan Director, Milton S. Eisenhower Library, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore </p> </aug> <sidebar> <title id="AN9607307638-15">12 REVOLUTIONS </title> <p>The organization and delivery of services will be shaped by a series of radical changes in the following areas. </p> <p>Quality. Dictating a new philosophy of service and an expanded focus on student and faculty as customer. </p> <p>Reengineering. Demanding fundamental rethinking of processes and structures in the face of economic trends and expanding market competition. </p> <p>Demographics. Reflecting dramatic trends in the diversity of the populations and the sectors served by higher education. </p> <p>Personal Computing. Expanding the power to access, analyze, and control information individually. </p> <p>Electronics. Producing vast amounts of digital information in all media and developing increasingly intelligent software to enable effective search and retrieval. </p> <p>Network. Creating a vast telecommunications web and critical platforms for organizing and delivering a renaissance in personal communication, scholarly publishing, student learning, and commercial experimentation. </p> <p>The MTV Generation. Cultivating a generation of new learners and consumers who demand a more graphical, integrated, and interactive multimedia presentation of information. </p> <p>Values. Highlighting the growing political schisms in society and the increasing threats to intellectual freedom, privacy, and the open flow of information. </p> <p>Accountability. Requiring new strategies for organizational support and survival as funding agencies, investors, and political leadership seek to control costs and assess productivity and quality. </p> <p>Higher Education. Redefining the nature and focus of learning and scholarship in colleges and universities as institutions seek to reposition themselves as agents of economic growth, social change, and upward mobility. </p> <p>Partnership. Promoting higher levels of cooperation and collaboration among organizations as a fundamental requirement of success and as a tool for resource sharing. </p> <p>The Knowledge Worker. Dismantling many of the traditional and rigid definitions of job and employee, and encouraging a team-based workforce of self-adapting and self-improving individuals. </p> </sidebar>
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  Data: Predicts the changes and issues facing academic libraries. Discusses the movement toward a virtual library environment where the acquisition of digital technology and patron-initiated transactions over campus information networks will increase. Other issues include organizational experimentation, library funding, librarian employment, skills training, user needs, building construction, tenure status, copyright, and the monitoring of access. (LAM)
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