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Future of Academic Libraries?

Librarians reacted "coolly" to a presentation by Daniel Greenstein, Vice Provost for Academic Planning and Programs at the University of California. The presentation was part of a meeting on sustainable scholarship sponsored by the Ithaka group. Greenstein's presentation was the subject of an article in Inside Higher Ed. According to Greenstein, the "university library of the future will be sparsely staffed, highly decentralized, and have a physical plant consisting of little more than special collections and study areas." He believes that outsourcing some library functions is the answer to universities whose budgets have been hit hard by the economic downturn. Cataloging, for instance, could be shared among universities or "contracted out to providers such as Google." Collections could shrink as libraries share repositories of print and digital materials, which will save space and money. Ultimately, as "individual libraries' archives and services shrink ... so will their staffs."

I can understand why the audience's reaction was cool. Greenstein's presentation completely missed what libraries are actually about these days. He seems to think librarians are presiding over book museums, when in fact a majority of our time is spent teaching students how to use resources in all formats, proactively supporting faculty scholarship, creating user guides, getting involved with and supporting educational technology, and generally anticipating and meeting the needs of our communities. Outsourcing cataloging really bothers me, in particular the notion of outsourcing cataloging to Google given their track record with metadata. Furthermore, I have worked with cataloging provided by vendors, and rarely is it up to the standards that we have set for our library. Outsourcing sounds like a great idea to administrators until they realize how much control over the process they have lost. It can also be more expensive than anticipated. I think that Greenstein does not understand that libraries today should be judged by the quality of the services they offer, and that is dependent to a great degree on the quality of the staff.

Full post as published by Out of the Jungle on September 24, 2009 (boomark / email).