The Current Landscape

(Here's something I'm working on by request. I'm thinking about how the current information environment provides us with opportunities to fulfill our inherent librarian values. I'm trying to address the need for academic libraries to change in a short and succinct statement. This is part 1 of about 4 parts. I'll be writing this over the next few days.)

The Current Landscape

The internet and the world wide web are causing scholarly communication to change at a faster pace than libraries are accustomed to evolving. Admittedly, libraries have changed, to a certain degree, by providing web based services such as online catalogs, electronic document delivery, and subscriptions to online databases and journals. But most of these changes represent adapting traditional services to an online environment rather than providing fundamentally different services enabled by new technology. The online catalog is analogous to the card catalog. Electronic document delivery is a digital version of interlibrary loan. Online database and journal subscriptions are similar to print periodical indexes and serials collections.

Scholarly communication, on the other hand, is changing in revolutionary ways. Networked digital content possesses qualitatively-different essential characteristics than print and other physical media. For example, when a library purchases a printed monograph, it owns that item and retains certain rights, including fair use and right of first sale, by virtue of ownership. On the other hand, commercial online content is typically licensed for use, providing the library with (usually) significantly less rights with regard to the content.

Due to its essential nature, networked digital content has the capability to virtually eliminate spatial and temporal barriers to access, and these characteristics provide tremendous value to information seekers who appreciate efficiency in access to information. A digital item on a web server can be copied and accessed by multiple, simultaneous users. Contrast this with one print volume of a monograph, which can only be checked out by one person at a time and must be physically retrieved from the stacks in the first place. Digital resources have the capacity to be far more broadly utilized by our information seeking patrons than print volumes. The upshot of this is that efficient access to information allows creative minds to have more time doing what they are good at, whether it is research, teaching, creating art, starting businesses, making laws, etc.

This inherent "access efficiency" of digital resources harmoniously converges with librarian values. The library profession is based on the presumption that access to information is a good thing. This is reflected in various documents, including ALA's "Freedom to Read Statement," "Library Bill of Rights," and "Mission Statement." According to the mission statement, the fundamental priority of the American Library Association is that "ALA will promote efforts to ensure that every individual has access to needed information at the time needed and in a format the individual can utilize, through provision of library and information services."

The question for libraries is how will we fulfill our values in this new information landscape?

(Next, I'm going to look at what libraries need to do to adapt.)