Shaking the Bedrock of Academic Libraries

This morning a colleague shared an editorial written by Rick Anderson in The Journal of Academic Librarianship. The article from the July 2011 issue is titled "The Crisis in Research Librarianship."

Rick is someone I love to hear talk at conference. He is articulate and bold in his statements, the insights he provides bring to the conversation context for thinking about who librarians are as a profession and what libraries will be as institutions. In this commentary, Rick had me at "Perception matters more than reality." The older I've gotten the more I have found this to be an universal truth. Perceptions are so important to any human interaction or assessment.

Rick brought his assertion about the crisis to bear through three points:

1. Perception matters more than reality;
2. Patrons genuinely do not need librarians as much as they once did;
3. Value that is not valued is not valuable.

Media and mastery, or at least functionally literate use of the media has brought more awareness of information to the masses. Finding value, determining what our value or the value of libraries is really becomes the key to success. I'm thankful for my own library education, and I don't mean my MLS. I was an early bloomer with research in libraries thanks to Mrs. Fleischer, my grade school librarian. We had bibliographic instruction from grade three through the end of middle school. My high school librarian, Mrs. Wolf, continued the education. Once I was off to my undergraduate experience, I was chagrined to find that the reference desk was no longer the welcoming place it had been for the ten years prior. I felt as though I was facing an Oracle each time I needed assistance to jump start my research. This was less than comforting, and it took some time to shift to meet the needs demanded by those librarians. I was determined to complete my research, so I plowed through.





Apparently most students are confident they can find the resources needed, and that confidence is a good thing--it signals they do know where to locate information. When it comes to identifying the value we bring to the table, there is opportunity. Opportunity to provide access. Perhaps the access we can provide is exposing our content and making it relevant and findable in a sea of vague search results. Opportunity to bring the library as concept to the researcher. Outreach is a term that I've found overused lately, probably because I'm not always clear what is meant by the term. So many ways exist for librarians to reach out to our communities.


I've been talking with a colleague at a community college lately about reading I've been doing on poverty and its effect on our society's access to a range of things, including education and health services (Payne, Ruby). The question of relevance for libraries may well be related to matters of privilege and entitlement. The very fact that the patrons we serve are enrolled in a research library program signals the likelihood of a privilege background. Rick made the point in his commentary that university students prefer comfort over resources. The media exposure, life-long focus on education and near ubiquitous access to technology these students have had brings to bear an entirely different perspective on their research needs, even from what I experienced as an undergrad not so long ago.

As these students become graduates and faculty themselves, the academic research library will need to flex and bend to meet the next generation's perceived needs. I've studied change management, and the first principle I hold to be true is that you cannot change others, change comes from within. The only change you can control is your own. How do we as librarians change our understanding of the value we provide to this generation of researchers?