This is quite a long post, so if you prefer to listen, please check out the video format that Chris links to, as well as some of the other speakers!
I had the
pleasure of participating in a Faculty
symposium on the future of academic research libraries hosted
at McGill University today. The event was live-streamed, and the video is now available. I encourage you to watch the full video, because the other talks and the question
and answer session was terrific.
Below is the text from my portion:
It is an honor to be here and to be included in this panel of really
smart insightful people who care deeply about the future of higher education
and the future of academic research libraries.
I have to be
honest though, it is not really very good timing for me. The thing is, earlier
this week we buried my brother-in-law, Alfredo “Freddy”
Cordero Jr. — A sweet kind soul, whose life was both harder and
shorter than it should have been.
And I wondered whether I should mention something so personal in a talk
like this, but I’m a long-time feminist who believes that the personal is
political is professional … and back again.
So this weekend, while I was writing this talk, my wife was writing a
eulogy for her brother.
And that certainly felt like a very strange and uncomfortable juxtaposition,
until I realized the extent to which our grief and grieving served to
crystallize just how important and precious the past can be, and likewise how
fragile and uncertain the future.
That certainly feels like a good perspective to keep in mind as we talk
about the future of research libraries.
And if you’ll indulge me one more connection – Freddy grew up in
Bridgeport Connecticut, which is the largest and also one of the poorest cities
in Connecticut.
The Bridgeport Public Library plays a
vital role in the lives of Bridgeport’s residents, and its motto is “A
gathering place for the entire community”, and its mission statement includes
the assertion that “we believe that libraries can change people’s lives and are
a cornerstone of our democracy”.
I think all
libraries (public and academic research libraries) can and should aim for the
same impact — to be an inclusive gathering place, to change lives, and to advance democracy.
In the case of academic libraries, we are and should always be a safe,
multi-disciplinary, information-rich gathering place for members of our
communities.
We do and should always aspire to have transformative impact – on
students of course, but also on faculty – by providing expertise, tools,
resources, and services that inspire new kinds of research questions and that
serve as catalysts for experiments in new forms of pedagogy.
And we do and should always take seriously our role in producing
informed citizens who participate in their own governance through the
democratic process.
There are lots of ways to think about the future of libraries, and
plenty of questions to tackle within that topic:
- what will the right mix of print and digital resources be in 5 years, in 10 years? (the correct answers to that one are “I don’t know” and “it depends”)
- what should a physical library look like as more and more resources are available and used in digital rather than physical format?
- what’s the next big technical breakthrough that will transform how people discover and access information?
These are all great questions that highlight important ways to think
about the future of libraries. And I’m glad my colleagues on this panel are
going to address most of them.
The topic I’m going to talk about is the kinds of expertise that will be
needed in the great research libraries of the future.
And I want to suggest that the expertise that will ensure that the
future academic library continues to be a central part of the research and
teaching life of a university is similar to the expertise librarians already
bring to the table – we just might need more of it.
Now, I have to take a short and I suppose slightly dangerous detour to
define what I mean by librarian.
Urban Dictionary definition of Librarian
It is tempting to use this urban dictionary definition of Librarian, but
let me at least add to that definition.
I want to talk about the human capital inherent in library organizations
– the distinct expertise, skills, perspectives, and values that people who work
in libraries contribute to the academy. And I use the term Librarian to
describe those people – the people who work in the library organization and
contribute to the core missions of the library.
To refer to a broad range of people who work in a library as librarians
– regardless of their job title or credentials – is actually fairly
controversial, so let me be clear about one thing. I use the term in this more
inclusive way not to devalue the library degree or those who hold it in any way
at all — I use it rather to value the range of degrees, skills, talents and
experiences needed to make information accessible for current and future
scholars.
And I do this because I chose to believe that professional respect is
not a limited resource; and I believe a more expansive understanding of who a
librarian is and what academic librarians do to advance research and teaching
is critical to a robust future for libraries and for higher education.
OK – back to this idea of the once and future librarian – my bottom line
is that the future of libraries depends on librarians – a diverse, highly
skilled, values-driven set of people who collaborate across and within
institutions to support, create, and inspire the very best of current and
future scholarship and teaching — And who do so with from a distinct and
important perspective.
Let me talk a little about my own journey into librarianship as a way of
highlighting some of the ways I had to learn to think differently as a
librarian — ways of thinking that make librarians key to not just collecting,
preserving, and providing access to scholarship, but to producing and shaping
it as well.
I moved to Stanford in the late 1990s, after 3 years on the faculty at
West Point, to pursue a PhD in sociology, with the sort of vague intention of
pursuing a regular faculty position when I finished.
But Stanford and Palo Alto are expensive places to live, so I
immediately got a part-time job working in the library and I worked in the
libraries throughout my graduate career.
By the time I finished my PhD I was recruited into a full-time position
in the libraries as the social sciences librarian, and for me that turn made
sense. I realized I could have greater impact on scholarship & on the
future of higher education and scholarly communication thru a career in
libraries than I could have as an individual scholar.
As I made the transition from preparing for a career as an individual
scholar to a career in librarianship, I found that being an academic librarian
require a change in perspective.
My academic background was and is very useful; but being an effective
librarian has required more than subject matter expertise, it has required a
change in perspective.
New perspective as librarian
In the most general sense, I would say that the librarians I have worked
with operate at a different level of analysis than do most individual faculty
members. So, for example, as a PhD student, you are expected to become an
expert in a discipline, with a solid grasp of the seminal works and main
journals of your field.
As a librarian, I needed to think in much more multi-disciplinary ways.
And as I built and maintained collections in several disciplines, I couldn’t
afford to select for individual authors — I had to learn the publishing
landscape for each discipline so I would know which publishers were strong in
what fields; who published quality journals at reasonable prices, and who
published monographs in fields that were most active at my university.
I learned how important metadata is … to just about everything libraries
do. And I started thinking less about specific books and articles and more
about the scholarly communication ecosystem as a whole – and how it was
changing and should change to support new modes of scholarship and to allow for
open access to the scholarly record. And, I had to start taking a much longer
view of both the past and the future.
It is this distinct set of perspectives that means librarians have been
working on and thinking about issues like open access, metadata, data privacy,
and digital preservation for much longer than most in the academy and certainly
for longer and with more rigor than most outside the academy.
This was
never more evident that when Google Vice
President Vint Cerf made big news by talking about how worried
he is that the digital documents and images we are all creating now will
disappear as software and hardware becomes obsolete. When news about Vint
Cerf’s fear of a digital dark ages reached the library community, our
collective reaction was best summarized by Dorothea Salo – one
of librarianship’s most insightful voices.
I just wanna pat Vint Cerf onna head and give him
some hot cocoa and tell him it’s gonna be okay, we got this.
— Ondatra libskoolicus (@LibSkrat) February 15,
2015
Salo took to
twitter to explain that librarians had been thinking about
digital preservation for a long time already — and that Cerf needn’t worry
because we had already built digital repositories, and workflows, and access
systems for preserving digital artifacts.
We teach personal digital archiving classes, we create standards, and we
have built the capacity to not just store, but to truly archive – for the
long-term – the digital artifacts of our culture and of scholarship. That’s our
job and its the kind of thinking and work that is a distinct strength of
librarians. We think about the long-term future of the past, so that scholars
and students can use it in the present.
At many universities, libraries and librarians have been supporting
digital humanities research, GIS and data visualization, technology-enhanced
pedagogy, and sound data management practices for a very long time. Today’s
librarians have expertise, skills, and perspectives that are absolutely
critical to the changing research and teaching needs of today’s faculty and
students. And any vision for the future of research libraries needs to include
ways to highlight and maximize the contributions of library experts to research
and teaching.
Since it is free, I will leave you with some specific advice:
One major challenge for most academic libraries I know is a lack of
awareness of the expertise that libraries and librarians have to offer. Every
library survey I have seen – from multiple universities – shows that over 80%
of faculty and students at any given university are very satisfied with their
libraries and their librarians.
That’s great of course; but those same surveys (plus plenty of anecdotal
evidence) reveal that high percentages of faculty and students are likewise
unaware of the full range of services and expertise their libraries and
librarians have to offer.
So my first bit of advice is that you should ensure that your vision for
the future of research/academic libraries prominently features librarians –
both symbolically and literally. Design spaces and services that showcase the
full range of expertise of your librarians.
And no, I don’t simply mean ensure that the reference desk is visible
from the entrance. If you want a truly great library, you have to design spaces
that emphasize that librarians have expertise in a huge range of areas vital to
scholarship and teaching – from data and metadata, to digital preservation, to
publishing, to online learning, to software development, text-mining, project
management, and yes even reference.
Ensure your library is designed to make library experts visible and
accessible to scholars and students. Include in your designs plenty of
information and technology rich environments for faculty and students to
collaborate with library experts.
My second bit of advice is that you recognize that the best future we
can imagine (for higher education or for libraries) is likely to come from more
diverse and inclusive conversations than the ones we usually have.
And I mean more diverse along all the usual axes of diversity that we
think of – race, class, gender, sexuality; and some that we sometimes forget –
conversations that include a range of neurodiversity, and that include people
with different physical abilities and disabilities.
And when we are having local conversations – about the future of our own
academic institutions and our own libraries; we still need to be very
deliberate about including as many voices as possible.
For example, if we really want to understand how students use library
spaces; and what’s missing from library spaces that students find frustrating;
I think we would do well to talk to the library support staff who work the late
evening shifts.
If we want to understand how our print collections really get used – and
here i’m talking about the full range of uses, not just what gets officially
checked out —we ought to talk to the library staff who re-shelve the books and
keep the stacks maintained and in order.
But of course, my whole point is that the future of libraries is about
much more than finding the right balance between print and digital; or
designing the right kinds of study and collaborative spaces for students —
those are important parts of it; but I challenge you to imagine a future
library where every scholar and every student has the maximum opportunity to
work with experts in the library who bring unique skills and knowledge that
could jumpstart new research and transform learning.
I said at the beginning that the future is incredibly fragile, uncertain
and nearly unpredictable. But the one thing that I am certain of about the
future is that it will be better through radically inclusive collaboration.
