Comments on 2 Questions for Academic Librarians

• Posted by Michael , Academic Librarian on January 7, 2010 at 5:15am EST

• Academic libraries are indispensable for teaching, learning, and research. You didn't mention that last function, which makes a library a work of and for time. Present needs are important, but they are not the only needs that a library must consider. An academic library is, among other things, an archive of the scholarly record. We continue to buy printed books and journals because scholars continue to produce them and future scholars will need access to them. Collaborative collection development—of all formats, when pricing models improve—is increasing and inevitable, but retrospective collection development is unfeasible.

   

   

  So to answer you questions: No and yes (eventually).

• more than Amazon
• Posted by ezry on January 7, 2010 at 8:00am EST

• I depend on my library to have valuable, credible texts that I didn't know I needed, the way I depend on databases to include journals I didn't know had resources valuable to me. The crowdsourcing on Amazon may take care of my general comparison-shopping needs, but I think there's still a role for professionals to help select, vet, and curate collections of professional resources. The librarians who help choose texts, often with the advice of colleagues who have come before me, provide an important service. Having to find all or even most of my resources by keyword drill-down of currently-available texts would require additional time and a signficant restructuring of my research strategies. I think there's room for libraries to become more flexible, but the "command and control" elements of current libraries are also important in an age when we all have to face the challenge of Too Much Information.

• Good Idea That Could Lead To Bad Consequences
• Posted by stevenb on January 7, 2010 at 8:00am EST

• I'd hardly consider myself a collections development guy Josh, but I think you'd hear something similar to what Michael had to say from that crowd. Each library is unique. Research libraries have a mission to collect as much for the present as for the future. A small institution with a professional curriculum could certainly make more use of a just-in-time model rather than a just-in-case model. No one is expecting that institution to build a collection to withstand the test of time. But let's say that an institution shifts to a patron-drive collection model. Junior Professor A is hired by languages department and he's an expert in 14th century Urdu poetry. Seeing that the library has no books on Urdu poetry he submits requests for dozens and dozens of books on the topic. Since we now have a patron-driven model, we of course buy everything professor A requests. This drains much of the budget for foreign language material. Two years later Professor A gets a better offer from Prestigious U and leaves. The department next hires Professor B who specializes in something completely different - and the same thing happens. Now the library has loads of books about a subject and no courses related to that content. So there are some good reasons for a certain degree of control to make sure that all areas of the curriculum are well supported - or supported according to their prominence - there are all types of collection building formulas in use. All that said I think you are correct that we have to take more of a risk and allow some of our collection budget money to be put into the hands of the user community members. I believe there are some libraries already doing this and we'll be giving this a try in 2010 by allowing students and faculty to request on-demand downloads of books to a few e-readers we have acquired. I could envision a future when budget dollars could be distributed to every member of the campus community to buy what they want/need - and I wrote a column about this earlier in 2009. You may want to give it a read: http://bit.ly/XFoT6

• Harsh reality
• Posted by Harry Pence , Chemistry at SUNY Oneonta on January 7, 2010 at 9:30am EST

• The harsh reality is that the publishing business has little patience. Already many books go out of print a short time after being published. If the sales of a book are diminished initially,it becomes even more likely that it will go OP faster.

  If the library waits until someone realizes that they need the book, it will probably not be available by the time they order it. That means that the typical library (and its patrons) have to hope desperately that some other library didn't follow this policy and so will have purchased the book. On my campus we have tried to coordinate purchases with a nearby college so save money. The first time that there is a budget crisis the other campus cut cut funding to exactly the areas that we were depending on them to supply. They probably say the same thing about us. When you have to cut the budget, the most likely areas to look at are those that see the least use.

  Interlibrary loan is wonderful, but if you depend on it to solve your financial problems you may soon find that everyone is saving money by cutting the same topics.

• Good Questions...
• Posted by Catherine , LRC Director at Cape Fear Community College on January 7, 2010 at 9:30am EST

• At my community college, much of my collection is already demand-based, patron driven (aka "market driven"). YES, we do buy some things because we just think that we need to have them. But, for the most part, we base acquisitions on those topics that students (and faculty) have asked for information about. Your model would work better if patrons always knew exactly what title they wanted/needed. That's rarely the case. We base purchases on what we're getting asked for at the Reference Desk. Lots of requests last semester for information on drugs--prescription drugs & abuse, steroids, meth, etc. In response, we purchased updates of many of our drug books. We also look at what patrons are asking for via interlibrary loan--books and articles. This gives us specific book titles and journals to consider for purchase.

  About your other question...Yes, it would be nice to have the same title in multiple formats--print, DVD, audio, e-book. But, right now, that usually means paying for that title multiple times, in each format. Even with a strong voice from academic librarians, it's unlikely that publishers are going to offer an "all formats, one low price" model. That's part of the role of academic librarians--to assess his or her unique community of users and develop the most balanced collection (in terms of both content and formats) to meet its needs. I will be more vocal with publishers when my patrons, my "market," ask for more inter-format portability.

• Mission of the library?
• Posted by Dr. Pepper , Academic-in-Training on January 7, 2010 at 9:30am EST

• I think it's important to take a step back and look at what the mission of an Academic library is. Only then will you be able to determine modes of delivery and how to best accomplish things.

  As for question 1: no, we won't be moving to an on-demand model. Why? Stevenb above had a great example why. We can't just determine library acquisitions based on ephemeral needs. Professor A (or student A) might be here today, but they may not stay here forever. Those specialty books may not be used by anyone else - and that is money wasted (and recently - at least in my neck of the woods library budgets have been slashed).

  One of the services that libraries provide is collocation. I've discovered many books that I used for research by looking next to the books that I found in the catalog (doing keyword searches). The books that I found in the catalog helped me with my research a bit, but the books I discovered were either really useful in my research, or they provided nice pleasure reading.

  As far as "on demand" book ordering - we've got that! It's called Inter Library Loan. I never search for books in my own library's catalog anymore. I go through WorldCat Local. If my library has it, I get it from them. If the book I need is not available at my library, there is a convenient button in WorldCat Local that helps me find it either in local libraries (to go pick it up myself) OR to have it ordered and I can pick it up from my own library. That's why libraries are part of consortia - they share resources for the benefit of everyone (plus it serves as a cost cutting measure)

  Question 2: Our Library already subscribes to ebooks (accessible via a browser). Most of these are reference texts or technology texts that tend to get outmoded quickly. My public library has books on tape and a lot of entertainment DVDs. My academic library does not. Again this comes back to the mission of an academic library. If we look at the academic library as a place for both entertainment and scholarship - then I would say yes, let's subscribe to netflix, let's develop our own video collections, let's go forth with audiobooks. I tend to see academic libraries as...well...academic. Audiobooks and ebooks (at least the current crop) do not lend themselves to research. It's not easy to "flip through" and audiobook or to skim to find relevant content. Unless you've got four of five kindles, it's not easy to have several books open to cross reference information (that's who I did most of my research paper - with lots of books and articles open, that had underlined items and margin notes in them).

  Will we move to electronic versions of content? We're already there. Will we move there wholesale? Not until the technology is capable of keeping up with needs of users, and it's cheap enough (and DRM free) to allow for people to buy enough tablets/slates/doohickies and not consider it a major investment.

• Posted by Barbara Fister on January 7, 2010 at 9:45am EST

• Where to start?

  A lot of libraries (out of desperation) are moving to buying one article at a time for their users. The library gets nothing but the bill. They are becoming purchasing agents and the command and control is shifting to corporate publishers who own the rights to most of the research created by scholars. This is progress?

  Sorry, but you're not very in touch with the sad reality of library budgets. We collect less and less and provide more access (temporary and at staggering cost) to licensed information that is controlled elsewhere. Physical access has been a shrinking piece of what libraries do for a decade or more, and humanists and many social scientist are not amused.

  Oh, and we do work through consortia constantly. Like, for decades.

• Already doing #1 (sort of)
• Posted by KarenJ , Academic Librarian on January 7, 2010 at 9:45am EST

• Many libraries already have addressed the purchase on demand idea....through interlibrary loan. And they've been at it for close to ten years. Research has shown books purchased through this method circulate more frequently than do books purchased 'just in case.' It can also be helpful to address interdisciplinary titles that may slip through the cracks of automated book purchasing plans. See: http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/lib_research/92/ and http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/lib_research/37/

  It may be happening at your library and you didn't even know it...a request is placed through interlibrary loan, item arrives, patron is notified to come pick it up, though they may not be notified that the item was purchased instead of borrowed.

  But for reasons that have already been mentioned, putting all your collection development dollars in this basket is not necessarily wise, nor is it likely to happen anytime soon. Also, librarians love to control things (whether they want to admit it or not), and giving up complete control to the patron is too scary to contemplate.

  As for journal articles, interlibrary loan turnaround times have dropped so much in recent years that same-day or 24-hour delivery is not uncommon. Perhaps this is not the instant gratification you were hoping for, but for those of us who remember the bad old days, it's not too bad.

• Posted by Barbara Fister on January 7, 2010 at 11:00am EST

• PS: when corporations have command and control, we lose a few valuable things.... see EFF's comparison of reader privacy on various e-book platforms. http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/e-book-privacy

  Your reading habits are being monetized. And as we know from various #amazonfailures, it's a little spooky when enormous corporations can make books disappear with the flick of a switch (or a "metadata error").

• Already there :)
• Posted by Colleen Harris , Assoc. Head, Access & Delivery Services at North Carolina State University on January 7, 2010 at 11:00am EST

• As for question #1 - many of these options already exist. Most libraries have a "make a request" button where individuals can request specific titles (we do this both for paper and for e-books on the kindles we circulate here at NCSU, and we had a similar request feature back when I was at the University of Kentucky). Also, a number of universities (for instance, UT-Chattanooga) tried to give buying power to the academic departments so faculty could drive the demand for their portions of the collections. What happened a majority of the time was that despite multiple promptings, faculty were not interested in making the effort to develop their own collection, and so it falls upon the librarians to ensure a well-rounded collection.

  Question #2: We're already doing this too. NCSU Libraries circulate Kindles and Sony ebook readers, and the content for those is entirely patron-driven. It makes it difficult that the legal documents involved cause some libraries to not be able to take advantage of ebook readers to their maximum potential. But libraries have been n the ebook train for awhile - ebrary, Safaritech ebook collections, various reference books in ebook format...we've been doing this for quite a long time. Demanding a digital book library lending option hasnt been viable because 1. the publishers dont make as much and are not inclined to provide it and 2. your academic libraries tend to be VERY poorly funded, and are unable to build something like this on their own.

  Libraries are on the right track and we are already actually developing down these lines. However, recent budget cuts have led to our losing not only skilled staff and librarians, but significant cuts to collections budgets everywhere. Something to keep in mind - we are here to serve our communities, but the sad truth is that we can't do that with the (sometimes far) less than 2% of the university's budget we usually receive.

• Collections: Considering the Long Term
• Posted by Melissa Levine , Lead Copyright Officer, University of Michigan Library at University of Michigan on January 7, 2010 at 11:15am EST

• Question 1: I hope not. I expect a more of the just in time, but not in lieu of collection development.
  Question 2: Yes, of course.

  About Question 1: Why do we buy and house so many paper books and journals? As a practical matter, my guess is that its less and less paper and more electronic. That said, we have much to figure out regarding long term collection development and preservation in non-paper based materials. Of course libraries can help address the just-in-time need, but part of their importance is ensuring access to knowledge over the long term through stable collections. Libraries aspire to be permanent repositories to ensure people have access to everything in contrast to the role of most publishers. Libraries do not answer to stockholders and investors in the same way as commercial publishers. (In this context I mean publishers to include creators and sellers of all media - so collections constitute print, electronic, film, papyrus, wax cylinder...) There is something to be learned from the content embodied in these media as well as the preservation of the medium itself. Its a completely different social bargain than buying or licensing an article or in electronic form in a one-off situation. Disciplines like science and medicine tend to need recent materials delivered quickly. But shouldn't those same materials be accessible to researchers a few decades from now for historical, social, or other kinds of research?

  Robust relations between and among libraries in the US and globally make it possible to have access to each others collections - and ensure that no one library has to do everything alone. Even where libraries are engaging in publishing, we do so to facilitate our underlying commitment to the increase and diffusion of knowledge, with a vigilant eye on how best to preserve and make accessible that content over the long haul. So, we aspire to have collections as well as facilitate the delivery and access of materials (regardless of form or format). This is not and need not be in conflict with the kinds of services you mention, and libraries are exploring new creative ways to help their researchers.

• Posted by Jeanne , Library at University of Texas of Tyler on January 7, 2010 at 11:15am EST

• My library is a small academic library and we are able to provide amazing online resources through our collaborative licenses negotiated for all our sister institutions in our system. We're certainly not a warehouse of books..we can't afford to be and as has already been addressed, Interlibrary Loan has been meeting the "customer" demands for at least twenty-five years. And delivery modes are changing all the time. Not mentioned yet though is the strangle hold traditional journal publishers have on content. The move towards open access is changing this, but it requires a change in thinking too over the "publish or perish" tenure model so many of our faculty are still locked into.

• Posted by Hillary on January 7, 2010 at 3:00pm EST

• Others have already said many of the same things I would say about the curation aspect of collection-building, so instead I'd like to address your question: "Would it be any more expensive to give everyone at the institution a Netflix account, allowing them to instantly stream movies and get the DVD in the mail, than it is to purchase, store and manage library media holdings?"

  I won't speak to the question of relative cost, since that's not what I see as the important point to be made. There's a crucial distinction to be made here between the mission of the research library and the mission of Netflix. Netflix's primary goal is to make money. Their mission is not to support the educational needs and intellectual development of our users. By outsourcing such a substantial portion of collection building to a commercial enterprise, we would do our users a disservice. We can't control what Netflix chooses to make available, how it makes it available, or the prices they charge. To choose a service for our users based primarily on the relatively instant gratification it offers is a mistake. The same is true (I believe) of Google Book Search. Google has a significant philanthropic aim in their mission, but they, too, are a commercial enterprise. They are marketing scanned books to libraries but there are strings attached, some of them financial. A .com should not replace a .edu or a .org when it comes to supporting research and education.

• 2 days!
• Posted by Edward , Librarian at State University on January 7, 2010 at 3:00pm EST

• One thing I haven't seen mentioned yet is often students (and sometimes faculty) need stuff today for a paper that was due yesterday. Waiting 2 days for Amazon or ILL is not an option.

• Just in time acquisitions and multiple formats
• Posted by Jonathan Miller , Library Director at Rollins on January 7, 2010 at 3:15pm EST

• What I find striking about these two questions (and what I think is revealed by the comments already submitted) is that these questions have already been asked, and answered, by academic librarians for a long time. Here at Rollins we provide just in time access to the journal literature in physics and are investigating ways to expand that to other areas. For decades our book purchasing has been overwhelming driven by faculty requests, which is a variety, albeit a slow one, of just in time acquisitions. Library consortial acquisition of resources is also well established. My guess is that you have been taking advantage of such access at Brown and Dartmouth without even knowing it.

  In terms of e-books etc. There are already more than 60,000 e-books in the Rollins catalog, about 20% of the total, our new R-Search service provides access to even more and we are eagerly awaiting the Google Book Search settlement to see if the publishers will actually understand what a reasonable institutional subscription means to libraries.

  One final point Josh, your post makes it sound as though all library users think as you do. They do not. Perhaps the most difficult job of an academic librarian is managing the conflicting demands of users and the conflicting and strongly held ideas about what an academic should be. There are still powerful faculty out there who want a departmental library in their building that buys a comprehensive book and journal collection in their discipline -- in print -- and keeps it all, just in case .....

• collection development
• Posted by Ana , Librarian on January 7, 2010 at 3:30pm EST

• my answer to the first question: I agree with many of the comments made above, especially about the truth that the market should not be trusted to continue publishing material that is not commercially viable. It's like depending on huge exhibits at museums exclusively, rather than making room for the little, out of the way artists who aren't as popular with the masses. On this same topic, it must be said that many library patrons are still 'browsers'. They like to come in to a quiet space, pull out a few inspirational books, and as some readers have mentioned, be surprised to find resources that they didn't know existed.

  to your second question: visit nypl.org for a view of the academic library future. as a card holder, you can download music, e-books, and many more things.

  ps it's ok to ask these questions--and thanks for giving the libs a forum to answer!

• Posted by CabusM , Library on January 8, 2010 at 1:30pm EST

• There are often times when I "discover" a book or article with a student, when helping with research, that we do not own. I agree that in this case, the usual method (ILL) can seem wanting, fraught with difficulties (what if the item never arrives, what if it arrives too late). I am convinced that missing an opportunity to connect a student with a resource is a big loss--that, in supporting the university mission, we are helping facilitate educational goals, in this case facilitating the engagement in works that will allow students to do interpretation and analysis.

  That being written, I am not too satisfied with the larger view of higher education (and it's myriad elements, from dorms to grades) as a consumer product. The latter element, grades, is a great example. When courses are judged based on student evaluations, and students are generally most happy and content when they receive As and get their way, there develops a pressure on professors to give the A, regardless of merit.

  My life all the better because I "discovered" authors and topics in graduate school. If we think of an institution of higher education as a social construct, the society is constructed in collaboration with students, professors, librarians--acquisitions has been an important part of the library's contribution.

  I love the idea of using technology to advance our cause, and I think innovation (that is well-thought out) is fantastic (Kindles for first-year students allowing to connect to library resources, best idea I've heard this year--can I be a student at that university? :) ). But, it is of utmost importance that the use of that technology be closely aligned to the library's educational mission...

• absolutely!
• Posted by Elizabeth , Government Documents Librarian on January 10, 2010 at 2:30pm EST

• My institution has already started to add in the just in time patron initiated collection development. We purchase books requested through inter-library loan if they fall below a certain price. We also have a really interesting program with an e-book publisher: we load the records into our catalog and rent the books for the first three times patrons access the book (a session only counts if it's over 5 minutes). The fourth time it's accessed, we automatically purchase the ebook. I think that what is holding libraries back in ebooks are the lack of reliable/sturdy ubiquitous technology, and publishers who are resistant to loaning ebooks.

  Academic libraries have the potential to do and be anything. Librarians are trained in information, not in books, and as long as the staff of a library are open to change and innovation, there is no limit to what can be done.

• Back at You
• Posted by LAC , College Librarian at Ithaca College on January 11, 2010 at 3:00pm EST

• Question 1: Do you foresee a future in which universities will transition from a command and control model of course offerings to a demand based, market driven approach to just-in-time courses? Question 2: Will universities be able to successfully transition to delivering their courses beyond the face-to-face model to real time interactive online delivery?

  As we contemplate changes to the existing methods of delivering content/knowledge, there are major organizational issues to be addressed. As others have mentioned, the scholarly information marketplace has not yet evolved to address current rights management, short-term licensing, and related access issues. Traditional library budget models are also built around ownership, not access, with capital funds provided for permanent ownership. It is easier to fund (and to budget for) content development when one has agreed-upon guidelines and mission. I am sure that new models will emerge/evolve and that libraries will continue to look for ways to best advance their missions.

• Those durn old books
• Posted by Librarian 4ever , Collection Development Librarian at University of Wisconsin-Stout on January 12, 2010 at 4:00pm EST

• The response about co-location is an excellent point--let me make one more. Just as pollution comes from point sources and nopoint sources, so it is with knowledge. Books often supply knowledge you didn't know you were looking for. Book readers will be a little less ignorant because of this. Yes, they stand on the shelves and wait for you. No they are not especially 21st century. But the estimation is that only about 20% of recorded human knowledge is resident in electronic form, and the best search engines only give you access to about 20% of relevant sites in any given search...Sadly, that 20% of 20% passes for everything one needs to know. Midwestern Universities--probably all Universities--see the trend toward illiteracy in their populations. Will academics ever go to a user-driven, on-demand model? It depends: is the user looking for the latest resarch on Milton (not profitable, hence not often full-text, online) or the latest Seth Rogan?

• How to attract students in to the library
• Posted by lee , Library at MACES on September 26, 2010 at 8:30am EDT

• Pls tell me how to attract students into our library.Ours is a nursing college..pls help me to solve this problem..students are not coming and using the library.