3 Questions for Retired Academic Librarians

In an email reply to my article How Do Academic Libraries Spend Money? David Lewis accused me of not doing the research he needed to answer the questions posed.

David has spent the last 40 years as a university librarian and the last 20 as a librarian, so his criticism carries some weight. (David e-publishing journal.)

To correct and learn a few things, I wrote these questions about academic libraries and librarians and asked if David would agree to share some of his thoughts.

Q: David, thank you for agreeing to this exchange. First, I would like to ask about your career. Do you have any advice for early to mid-career academic librarians to navigate their careers?

A: Thank you for inviting me.

I think it’s useful to start with demographics. Academic library Baby Boomer cohorts were large, but now they are finally retired, and Gen X cohorts are relatively small. This means that younger libraries will be needed to fill both leadership positions and positions that bring new skills and expertise to the organization. Even if you don’t have a lot of experience, if you have the necessary skills and expertise, you should have a chance.

Academic libraries are changing, and if you work with them, they must grow and change as well. More importantly, change must be reached and created. Now strap on and get ready to ride. In particular, we recommend:

1. Don’t be afraid to change jobs. Especially if you’re early in your career and your life is less disruptive. Being in different situations broadens your horizons and helps you build a personal network.
2. Find a group of colleagues inside and outside your organization to make what you think is important happen. It’s a lot easier than you think, and a lot of fun.
3. Work with non-librarians whenever possible. It opens the horizon.
4. Look for organizations that encourage experimentation, embrace failure, and learn from failure. I want to work in an organization that prioritizes action over discussion. These may not be the most authoritative or most extensive libraries. Change often comes from your surroundings, so don’t be afraid to go there when you get the chance.
5. You have to keep learning, so read and study, especially in areas beyond the librarianship, and bring these ideas into the way you think about library issues. Also read science fiction.
6. write and publish. You need to focus your thoughts and work on the research literature.
7. Take long walks without earpods or let your mind wander with other activities.
8. At the end of the day, exercise, cook meals, and spend time with friends and family. You are in this for long distance and stamina issues. Take care of yourself so you can wake up tomorrow, keep up the good work, and put up a good fight.

Q: From your point of view, what are the big themes, trends and facts that we who do not work in academic libraries should understand about the structure, challenges and places of academic libraries?

A: The core of academic libraries is to make scholarship available to students and faculty and to preserve it for future generations. The shift in scholarship from print to digital networks is fundamental and will change many things in the Academy beyond the library. This is a revolution and it’s just the beginning. As Clay Sharkey put it, “That’s what the real revolution is like. The old is broken faster than the new can be put in place.” Scholarly communication, and hence academic and library work, Probably at least the next 10 years or he’ll be weird for 20 years. Faculty and campus leaders need to be tolerant of this strangeness and the library experimentation that comes with it when figuring out how new things work.

The economics of digital content require us to break with print-based conventions and reinvent the means by which we create, access, evaluate, and preserve scholarship. Digital content is, as Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson write, machine, platform, cloud, “Free, Flawless, and Instant.” A copy identical to the original can be delivered instantly anywhere in the world at zero marginal cost. Zero marginal cost means that the most efficient price for digital content should also be zero. Open access should therefore be the primary business model for scholarly publishing. However, the cost of the first copy is still covered. This will require new funding models and new methods of transferring funds. Changing the way money moves in college is always nearly impossible. This change is no exception.

Established interests, especially commercial publishers hoping to keep profit margins and stock prices high, but also many academic bodies will resist change. Hardball baseball will be played. Libraries will inevitably be the leaders in these battles. Everyone is busy, but faculty, presidents, and presidents need to pay attention and foster conversations on campus that lead to concerted action to protect academic interests and values. An example of how the University of California handled its recent negotiations with Elsevier provides a good example of how this should be done.

Q: During your career, academic libraries have moved (to my understanding) from primarily analog to primarily digital. Is it an accurate (if simplified) characterization? What do you see as the big story for academic libraries in the next 40 years?

A: In the 1970s, when I was in graduate school to become a librarian, I learned how to punctuate catalog cards. Libraries early in my career, especially large research libraries, had one important task. Millions of tiny pieces of paper had to be stored in the correct order. If they couldn’t do that, nothing else mattered. That was 40 years ago. When I tell librarians who come to academic libraries about this now, they roll their eyes appropriately, and it seems silly to think about the world 40 years from now. prize.

I expect almost all scholarships to be open to everyone in the world. Inclusion of data and methods that support reported findings will become standard. New methods have been developed to assess research and researchers, taking into account current informal means of communication, blog posts, videos, and what else they are considered to know. Work will continue to be reviewed and revised. Importantly, a financial model is created that allows this. Scholarships are considered public goods and are funded as such.

This means that the library’s role as the local campus provider of scholarship will be greatly reduced, as most of what is important will be served by network-scale resources. Think legitimate Sci-Hub. Libraries, as regional institutions, primarily store and make accessible their own regional content, helping students and faculty engage with network-scale resources in their role as both consumers and producers of scholarship. .

Since Moore’s Law does not appear to be slowing down, it seems inevitable that some form of machine “intelligence” will contribute. You can imagine an assessment engine that ingests massive amounts of data and accesses the ‘impact’ of researchers. Large commercial publishers are now actively working on this. It is important to learn how to document the contributions of machines to scholarship.

My optimism, or mere hope, is that I envision network resources to be controlled or regulated by governments or international bodies in a way that preserves the values ​​of the Academy and resists capture by profit-maximizing organizations. It is said that it will be done. But it could easily go the other way. To solve the big problems we face today, such as climate change and inequality, everyone must contribute to and have access to a common global body of knowledge. Who controls the knowledge of the world and how is of paramount importance, so we need to get it right.