UK study tour

I have just returned from a two-week visit to the UK with more than 20 of my Canadian colleagues. I hope you will take a few minutes to read this brief message as it outlines the trends that we saw in academic libraries in the UK. These trends have important implications for our libraries at McMaster as well.

Once every three-four years the directors of the Canadian research libraries conduct a study tour abroad. The purpose of the tour is to meet our international colleagues and discuss the approaches we are all taking to the challenges faced by academic libraries today. This year more than 20 directors took part in a tour of many of the major academic libraries in England. Included in the sites we visited were: The British Library, University of London, Oxford, Cambridge, Manchester, and Warwick. Also included were visits with JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) and SCONUL (Society of College, National and University Libraries).

The visit included tours of the various facilities as well as sessions for information exchange. Our counterparts were given a list of topics that the Canadian library directors were prepared to present and asked to put together an agenda based on their interests. I was honored to be asked by my colleagues to give the “Canadian perspective” at the SCONUL annual conference, which was at the conclusion of our tour. For the purpose of my presentation I focused on the development of Web 2.0 initiatives and the role of the library in supporting innovations in teaching and learning.

Over the course of our visit there were several apparent trends taking place in the UK. From my experience in the US I would add that these really are universal issues for academic libraries in the 21^st century. Clearly, academic libraries are changing significantly from what we all remember from our own academic experience. My favorite quote came from the JISC presentation: “When simple change becomes transformational change, the desire for continuity becomes a dysfunctional mirage”.

The trends included:

1) Re-inventing physical spaces

At Oxford, Sarah Thomas, the Bodley’s Librarian and Director of University Library Services, made the statement “libraries are not just about books anymore”, which set the stage for the remainder of our visit. The academic library of the 21^st century is a mix of comfortable space, social space, performance and exhibition space, collaborative work spaces, technology, restaurants and coffee shops, classrooms, group study rooms, multi-media production suites, and centers for faculty development. Challenging traditional assumptions, these academic libraries are leading the movement away from “library as warehouse” to “library as learning space”. Major renovations have been completed or are well underway at these institutions. Books have been relocated to storage. Book stacks have been replaced by technology, performance spaces, exhibition spaces, and comfortable seating for individual or group study.

Images from my visit

2) Emphasizing the undergraduate experience (recruitment, retention, skills, employability, widening participation, achievement, etc.)

As more research at the graduate and faculty level takes place electronically, fewer are visiting the library physically on a regular basis. Therefore, libraries are focusing space on enhancing undergraduate education. The physical changes are reflective of the changing role in libraries from one of service (checking out books or answering a reference question) to a culture of learning (understanding how students learn, behave, and interact).

At all of the UK institutions students were visiting the libraries in greater numbers than ever before. However, their reasons from coming in are different than those of previous generations. Technologically adept and highly social, these students prefer spaces where they can engage in intellectual discourse as well interact socially with their peers in an environment that integrates current technologies with the resources and services they need to be successful.

While this is clearly the most technologically competent/skilled generation to date, where these students do need the libraries is in the development of “21^st century fluencies” (information fluency, numeracy, visual fluency, media fluency, and geospatial fluency). Many of the institutions we visited partnered with or developed their own writing centers, data centers and other services emphasizing the development of 21^st century skills associated with these fluencies. The libraries focused on the development of 21^st skills either online, in the library, or in the classroom.

 

3) Partnering with faculty/graduates in teaching, learning and research

The greater emphasis on facilitating access to e-content has lead to a shift in libraries’ focus with the faculty and graduate students to:

 

<· Building infrastructure to preserve and provide access to locally generated research including the development of institutional repositories, data repositories, and local journal publishing;

· Building content by working nationally on commercial journal purchases but also working collaboratively with faculty to migrate their personal research and teaching materials from print/analog to digital;

· Collaborating in teaching and learning with faculty by teaching undergraduate students skills associated with 21^st century fluencies; by providing access to emerging learning technologies (blogs, wikis, etc); by creating library environments that enhance the classroom experience; and

· Collaborating in and supporting faculty research by developing virtual research environments that facilitate innovations in research.

4) De-emphasizing print collections

While all of the libraries we visited had recently completed additions, major or minor renovations, none of them emphasized print collections in the traditional sense of “book stacks”. (Some, like Oxford, were concentrating on the movement of collections to new storage facilities.) Instead, the focus was on the development of new spaces for teaching and learning.

JISC, in partnership with the major research libraries in the UK, has just launched an E-book initiative called the National E-Books Observatory. Comparable to Canada’s national licensing of journal literature, this program provides e-book licensing to all of the major research libraries in the UK. Currently the program only covers business, management studies, engineering, media studies, and medicine but there are plans to expand. The program has been so successful that the UK research libraries are anticipating that within 5 years their book budget will be evenly split between print and e-book purchases. There was even some speculation that with 10 years the percentage spent on e-books could be close to 100%.

It is interesting to note that UBC has recently closed two of their libraries: Math and Agriculture. Rising costs associated with services and maintaining the space along with decreased use of the print collections prompted the move of the entirety of both collections to closed storage facilities.

 

5) Mass digitization

While all of the libraries were engaging in some level of digitization, the British Library and Oxford in particular were focusing on mass digitization, the digitization of large portions of their collection through the use of advanced, automated scanning technologies. Oxford has entered into a partnership with Google while the British Library had chosen instead to work with Microsoft. Cambridge implied that an announcement was forthcoming regarding a partnership they were launching. Again, the preference by users for electronic access and the increased visibility of their collections through “discovery” via Google and other search engines is driving the move to digitization.

Technological change has had a profound impact on library resources and services over the past 20 years. While McMaster’s libraries have, until recently, been slow to change we now have an opportunity to learn from others as we move forward. Clearly academic libraries are moving from an emphasis on traditional library spaces and services to organizations supporting teaching, learning and research in the digital era. While it is still not clear to many of us what the future will hold for academic libraries it is certain that the older model of “library as warehouse” is no longer needed or sustainable.