Libraries in peril

Recently I was present at a conversation between two university librarians, and it was not an uplifting experience. Coming from very different types of university, both had identical concerns about the future. Libraries, they suggested, were now so expensive that most institutions could no longer afford them – partly because of the unreasonable greed of the major publishers. Funding sources were drying up, books and journals were becoming much more expensive, nobody had quite worked out the appropriate relationship between online sources and hard copy, some academics had become lukewarm about the importance of libraries, and so forth. Libraries, one of them suggested, were in many ways still treated like the old monastic depositories of books, in a world where such facilities were not readily understood – but were not resourced anyway to carry out that role successfully. Many had reinvented themselves as providers of digital resources, but sometimes without that being worked properly into a teaching and learning strategy of the host institution.

Were they right to be so pessimistic? Actually, when I visit other universities and get a tour of their campus, I can still expect, every time, that my tour will take in a major library and that will be presented as a core facility. But you need only take a short walk in one to see how confused the planners sometimes are. You might see computer workstations scattered around the place, or you might see shelves, but often these are just hosted in different parts of a building that does not seem to have a clear information strategy. Computers and the information they contain are treated as if they were books and journals that just look different, whereas in reality they are very different research tools. Study spaces, collaboration spaces and social spaces are usually there, but again without the building having been designed to develop these strategically and integrate them into learning techniques.

But in the end it is funding issues that most threaten libraries. As universities experience ever more severe cuts, library budgets are obvious targets. Stocking libraries with books has become almost an eccentric pursuit, as limited budgets go into journal renewals and online subscriptions; and indeed not enough of these. Right now students increasingly vote with their laptops and stay at home to surf out their sources, which we can only hope they will credit. But because of the explosion of information that is freely available, the library has become ever more necessary. But universities need to have a policy for developing libraries that goes beyond just stocking them; they need to use them as learning and research development tools, properly supported and used appropriately as students are trained to find and evaluate information.

A modern university library needs to be something more than a slightly gloomy building in which everyone says ‘Sshhh!’ They need to provide structured and then independent learning tools. And they need to be equipped to play that role.

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