The Future is Now
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The Future is Now! How the Academic Library can Thrive in Uncertain Times Lynn Sutton, Ph.D. February 3, 2012
description
Presentation delivered to Clemson University Libraries, February 3, 2012.
Transcript of The Future is Now
The Future is Now!How the Academic Library can Thrive in
Uncertain Times
Lynn Sutton, Ph.D.February 3, 2012
Where we are
Where we need to go
Advisory Board Company
Four Horsemen of the Library Apocalypse
– Unsustainable costs– Viable alternatives– Declining usage– New patron demands
Unsustainable costs
Abandon the arms race
Viable alternatives
Google: mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”
amazon.com: April 2011, e-books out-sold all print books
WikipediA: beats libraries
7 to 1 on where
students start searches
National decline in circulation
Circulation0
20,000
40,000
60,000
80,000
100,000
120,000
140,000
160,000
180,000
200,000
19982008
National decline in reference transactions
Weekly Ref-erence
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
19982008
Discovery failure
Where do students start a search?
83% Search engine7% Wikipedia<1% Library website
Predicting our own doom
“The new consumer utopia of instantly available digital books is leaving the library behind as a relic of a bygone age when users were not self-sufficient and when the information or book a user wanted was not simply a click away.”
Dennis Dillon, Associate Director for Research ServicesUniversity of Texas at Austin Libraries
Straddling two eras
• Demand for traditional services declining
• Model for meeting digital demand not yet sustainable– Copyright issues not yet settled– Budgets flat while costs rise– Conflicting demands of users
Two different constituencies
Students Faculty
Transformational change
The Way Forward
(Things to Do)
Flip Your Mission
Old: The mission of the XYZ Library is to select, acquire, organize, describe and provide access to yada, yada, yada
New: The mission of the XYZ Library is to help our students, faculty and staff SUCCEED!
New:
Not about US
All about YOU
Embrace Digital
Digital content: • Journals (went first more than a decade ago)•Newspapers (fastest popular media to fall)•Books (tipping fast right now)•Media (with mega storage needs)•Data (next frontier for academic libraries)•Publishing (born digital publishing )
•Digitize your own unique material
Love up the rare books
Experiment
• Try Patron-Driven Acquisitions for a “just in time” strategy.
• Mix of free access, short term rentals, purchases
Weed
• Identify pre-1923 out-of-copyright titles already available digitally from HathiTrust; either store or weed those titles from your collection
• Use ASERL’s shared journal repository to weed print journals
• Ask R2 Consulting to help expedite weeding
Government documents
• Reduce footprint to reflect use of collection• De-select print wherever practical• Minimize processing
Scholarly communication
• Work to achieve fundamental, radical change in scholarly communication
• Consider an open access mandate for faculty; start with library faculty; subsidize fees
• Be politically active against bills like SOPA/PIPA• Sign the Berlin Declaration• Educate your faculty on author rights• Build digital/institutional repository
Repurpose library space
• Move books out, move people in• Welcome campus partners to share library
space; one-stop shopping for academic success
New roles for staff
• 70-30 challenge for technical services• Maximize shelf-ready• Right-size Reference– Tiered service– Staff at peak hours only– Combine service points
More new roles for staff
• Teach, teach, teach• Embed in classes, departments, websites,
CMS, residence halls
More new roles for staff
• Emerging technologies• Data management• Publishing partnerships
The Way Forward
(Things to Stop Doing)
STOP!
• Buying print when digital edition available• Binding• Journal check-in• Authority control• Automatic replacement of lost books• Double-staffing service desks• Keeping unnecessary statistics• Item level processing for low demand material
Lead the campus
• Scholarly communication• Student success• Technological change• Curriculum innovation• Online education• Use your imagination!
Continuing Roles for Libraries
Library as Teacher
Library as Technology Leader
Library as Place
Library as Thinking Partner
Image Credits• Jump: uploaded to Flickr on October 6, 2008 by rosiehardy• Change: christianmenchristianwarrior.files.wordpress• Baby: http://www.flickr.com/photos/umpcportal/4581962986/• sizes/m/in/photostream/• Old men: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicnac/3121705656/• sizes/z/in/pool-554700@N23/• Footprints: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kfergos/37070037/• Gutenberg: http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/permanent/• gutenberg/
Lynn Sutton, Ph.D.Dean, Z Smith Reynolds LibraryWake Forest UniversityWinston-Salem, NC [email protected]
