If there is
one thing that is constant in the academic library sector it is change; and if
there is one factor that has been the greatest agent, or enabler of change, it
is the continuous advancement of information and communication technologies
(ICT) (ALIA, 2013). As well as offering opportunity an environment of constant
change also presents challenges. For example, change presents new opportunities
in pedagogy and the creation of new services to meet the evolving needs of the
community; and offers challenges to information professionals in reskilling or
keeping up with professional development; and the organisation which must be
agile to remain relevant and of value to its stakeholders (ALIA, 2013; McRae,
2017).
The
advancement of ICT has underpinned the most significant changes in the library
sector in modern times and will continue to do so well into the 21st
century and beyond (Gunapala, 2017, p. 40). This essay will compare and
contrast the greatest challenges for the academic library sector in the next
five years. This will be achieved by looking at some of the issues in a number
of key areas: evolving information technologies, changing professional
contexts, evolving organisational and societal contexts, and relevant legal,
ethical and policy frameworks. Finally, a discussion will be provided to
examine the role that LIS research may be able to play in meeting these
challenges.
The Internet
can be defined as a networking technology that connects millions of devices
globally enabling fast and convenient transfer of information; it carries
information resources and services such as hypertext documents and the World
Wide Web (Gunapala, 2017, p. 4; Beal, 2017). The Internet and World Wide Web
are not synonymous – they are two separate but related things. In this regard,
the World Wide Web is simply, ‘a way of accessing information over the medium
that is the Internet…[i]t is an information-sharing model that is built on top
of the Internet’ (Beal, 2017).
The rapid
advancement of information and communication technologies (ICT) such as the
Internet and the World Wide Web is a major factor driving change in academic
libraries (Baker, 2014; Campbell, 2006, p. 18). As an evolving information
technology, the Internet has had a profound effect on areas such as higher
education pedagogy, student learning behaviour, and scholarly communication and
publishing (Gordon, 2014; Kling and Callahan, 2003). In some cases, it is
argued that due to this technological change, the academic library has lost its
role as the “heart of the university” as it is no longer the “gateway to
knowledge” (Gunapala, 2017, p. 37). According to Johnson et al (2015, p. 26),
[b]efore the rise of the Internet, libraries were widely
perceived as the ultimate gateways to knowledge. They served as central
locations to discover new information, compile research, and consult with
librarians to find the most helpful resources.
Due to
competition from alternative sources of information discovery, such as the
Internet, the perception of academic libraries as portals for information, and
of librarians as gatekeepers of knowledge, is declining as the library is no
longer seen as the first place that users go to find information (Anyangwe,
2012; Brabazon, 2014, p. 191). In other words, academic libraries are becoming
disintermediated, especially those libraries that have defined their value in
terms of the collections they hold rather than the relevance of their services
(Sandler, 2006, p. 241).
According to
Brabazon (2014, p. 192), disintermediation ‘is a characteristic of peer-to-peer
networks, where links are removed from the traditional supply and distribution
chain.’ For librarians, this phenomenon is apparent in changes around
collection development, the acquisition of large publisher packages, such as
the ‘big deal’, the open-access movement, and Google Scholar – all of these
changes are due to ‘the removal of the intermediary from the process…creating a
direct link between, variously, the producers or suppliers of academic texts
and their consumers – or readers’ (Ball, 2012, p. 2).
The shift
from “just in case” to “just in time” collection development is an example of
where the librarian is removed from the process of selection and acquisition.
Historically, it was the practice of academic libraries to build their
collections around content that their users might need to use – in other words,
material was acquired “just in case” (Gunapala, 2017, p. 221). Whilst this
model served libraries well by assuring users access to an exhaustive
collection of diverse material, it engendered a false sense of value where the
library was evaluated in terms of the amount of material it collected, and
ultimately, failed due to ‘unsustainable increases to costs and reduced
acquisitions budgets, but more importantly a variety of factors including
technological advances’ (Arougheti, 2014). In reaction to this failure, and due
to static or declining budgets, reduced shelving space, along with advances in
online publishing and other ICT technologies, libraries have had to streamline
their collection development policies by adopting a use-driven or “just in case”
model (Arougheti, 2014).
The advent
of use-driven acquisition (UDA) models, such as demand-driven acquisition
(DDA), also known as patron-driven acquisition (PDA), and evidence-based
acquisition (EBA) have brought about significant changes in collection
development practices for academic libraries particularly in the acquisition of
eBooks (Levine-Clark, 2011, p. xiii). In a UDA model, the choice of selection
is put in the hands of the user by providing access to a large pool of online
content that can be discovered and accessed through the library. The library
only acquires the content that is used, which when compared to usage of content
acquired “just in time”, provides a better return on investment for the library
(Sharp & Thompson, 2010).
The
disintermediation of librarians from the practice of selection presents
challenges and opportunities around professional knowledge and the role of
academic librarianship. Driven by changes in ICT and the research environment,
the role of the academic librarian has gone through significant change (Toohey,
2016). No longer focusing on collection development, academic librarianship has
had to evolve (and will need to continue doing so) to align with the strategic
needs of the institution by supporting areas such as research and scholarly
communication (Sewell & Kingsley, 2016).
An ongoing
challenge for libraries is the increasing power and monopoly of publishers in
scholarly publishing, which has had a detrimental effect on libraries by
restricting choice and increasing prices (Tillack, 2013). For example, with the
‘big deal’, publishers provide libraries with ‘an aggregation, package, or
bundle of online journals, often the entire collection of a commercial
publisher, licensed to libraries for a fixed period of years, via a contract
negotiated at a standard price’ (Cleary, 2009, p. 364). The problem with these
‘big deals’ is that libraries are usually locked into these arrangements on
multi-year deals, which increase in price year on year above the rate of
inflation, and above any increases in budget, and the library is restricted
from cancelling, or unbundling individual titles (Tillack, 2014, p. 211).
Whilst the model is able to deliver a large amount of content for users, in
tying up a large proportion of the budget, ‘big deals’ restrict collection
development due to eroding the library’s ability to purchase new resources and
formats (Tillack, 2014, p. 215).
Academic
libraries and the scholarly community have responded to the monopolistic
practices of publishers in two ways: cancellation of ‘big deals’ and open
access publishing. In the first instance, what some years ago would have seemed
impossible, academic institutions around the world are holding publishers to
account and taking the bold move to cancel their large publisher packages tied
up in ‘big deals’ (Anderson, 2017). As well as cancelling for the reasons cited
above (price, restrictive collection development, etc), libraries are taking
publishers to task over their open access policies.
The ongoing
development of ICT, and attitudes in society towards openness, have created
high expectations for improvements in scholarly communication and scholarly
publishing. From the 1990s, it was envisaged that electronic publishing of
scholarly content would make resources accessible to users anytime, anywhere,
and due to the economies of scale and production efficiencies, at a cheaper
cost in a wide variety of formats. In particular, there was great expectation
that scholarly publishing would be ‘more open and democratic and the papers
available to a wider audience’ (Kennan, Cecez-Kecmanovic & Underwood, 2010,
p. 5).
This
sociotechnical change has provided opportunity for libraries to challenge the
hegemony of publishers through the Open Access (OA) movement. In the Budapest
Open Access Initiative (2002), the Internet was cited as a new technology with
the potential to provide unrestricted access that is free of cost to
peer-reviewed journal literature. It noted,
[r]emoving access barriers to this literature will accelerate
research, enrich education, share the learning of the rich with the poor and
the poor with the rich, make this literature as useful as it can be, and lay
the foundation for uniting humanity in a common intellectual conversation and
quest for knowledge (Budapest Open Access Initiative, 2002).
Researchers
can publish their work open access by either publishing their peer-reviewed
work in a journal that provides open access (the gold model), or by depositing
into an institutional repository (the green model), which is free to access and
most likely governed by a mandate (AOASG, 2018). The ongoing challenge for
libraries will be to monitor the various OA models, which seem to keep changing
in the favour of publishers (for example, hybrid or Gold), as well as assess
the real economic benefits in terms of whether OA is having a positive impact
on subscription prices for libraries.
With
advances to ICT also come challenges around legal, ethical and policy
frameworks. In a presentation aptly titled, “How to keep your Vice-Chancellor
out of jail”, which was presented at the 2017 THETA Conference, the author
sounds a warning to academic institutions on the risks of data breaches and the
consequences of such events (CAUDIT, 2018). Whilst an important issue at the
time, due to the recent legal changes in the European Union (EU) in the
regulation of data protection and privacy through the General Data Protection
Regulation (GDPR), the issue of digital privacy is now more than ever a
critical challenge for all academic libraries, which will continue into the
future.
In a briefing on the impact of GDPR, the
International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) noted
that, ‘it is very important for libraries and archives to…comply with the new
regulation, which puts a positive obligation on organisations to responsibly
protect and use information that identifies a living person’ (IFLA, 2018, p. 1).
In terms of rights to library patrons, they will have the right to know what
personal information is held by the library, and its purpose, and be able to request
data to be removed or deleted from library systems (IFLA, 2018. p. 2).
Whilst GDPR
only affects EU citizens, it is a new model for regulation of data privacy,
which may become a template for other nations to follow. The urgency to address
privacy both on a national and global scale will force libraries to address
moral issues around the use of personal information. For example, in the United
States, in the case of learning analytics, which is a form of education data
mining, it is argued that the practice of data mining runs counter to ethical
principles in the American Library Association’s Code of Ethics (Jones &
Salo, 2018, p. 305).
The LIS
research community can play an important role in meeting current and future
challenges facing the academic library sector. According to Abbas et al (2016,
p. 96), ‘the role of research is to help us understand complex phenomena and to
inform practice and LIS education.’ Research can be a positive force in
promoting the profession ‘by enriching professional knowledge, demonstrating
the reputation and value of the profession, and having an increasing impact on
society’ (Nguyen & Hider, 2018, p. 5).
However, to
achieve this, information professionals working in academic libraries will need
to close the gap between theory and practice; be supported by their employers
to encourage engagement with the research community; and ultimately, develop a
research culture that will be necessary for success (Nguyen & Hider, 2018).
Professional associations such as the Australian Library and Information
Association (ALIA) and similar organisations can play a role in cultivating the
necessary research culture. For example, Library and Information Science
Research Australia (LISRA) is a research project funded by the Australian Research
Council, which aims to encourage and enable research culture and practice
within Australia’s library and information profession (LISRA, 2018). With
involvement from ALIA, and other key project partners, LISRA is a step in the
right direction and will be a key enabler in meeting the challenges of the
future.
This essay
has provided a discussion on the challenges facing the academic library sector
in the next five years. Due to the continuous evolution of ICT technologies,
academic libraries are challenged to adapt and evolve in a highly complex and
shifting environment. To understand the challenges of the future it has been
necessary to examine a range of contexts including technological, social,
professional and policy frameworks, both past and present. Due to the
ubiquitous nature of online information, the library may become further
disintermediated from its users, which will force academic libraries to
evaluate their services, and ultimately, the value they bring to their
stakeholders. Finally, the profession will need to close the gap between theory
and practice, and with the support of professional organisations, cultivate a
research culture that will be necessary if the sector is to meet the challenges
of the next five years.
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