University Libraries and Digital Learning Environments

Jill Beard, Penny Dale

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317004325
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Library & Information Science
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

University libraries around the world have embraced the possibilities of the digital learning environment, facilitating its use and proactively seeking to develop the provision of electronic resources and services. The digital environment offers opportunities and challenges for librarians in all aspects of their work - in information literacy, virtual reference, institutional repositories, e-learning, managing digital resources and social media. The authors in this timely book are leading experts in the field of library and information management, and are at the forefront of change in their respective institutions. University Libraries and Digital Learning Environments will be invaluable for all those involved in managing libraries or learning services, whether acquiring electronic resources or developing and delivering services in digital environments.

Chapter 1
Here Today and Here Tomorrow

Sue McKnight

Introduction

This book describes the significant role that academic libraries have in creating and supporting digital learning environments, and participating in them today and into the future. This chapter will outline the evolution of the academic library over time, demonstrating the resilience and adaptability of library services and library management.

Many previous authors have focussed on what the future might look like, offering glimpses of possibilities envisaged given the knowledge and experience at a particular time. Looking to the future is a positive process, as creating a vision of what might be possible helps to define the steps that can be taken to turn aspirations into reality. Even if the prophecies are not always accurate, establishing a goal to head towards ensures that the library service will be moving in the desired direction. Imagining a utopia of excellent services to support learners, teachers and researchers will encourage those coming behind to make the envisaged services a reality. For example, Bush (1945) wrote about the Memex, a technology that would be used to access, organise and contribute to the store of human knowledge, which anticipated the development of Web 2.0 type collaborative and joined up information services at least 60 years before its time.

The other chapters of this book provide insights into specialist areas of academic library practice, focusing on digital services and resources. Therefore, the observations in this introductory chapter focus more on where academic libraries are today, in a general sense, and where academic library services may go in the future, and the challenges ahead for academic librarianship in making the future a reality.

The future will be built upon a solid base. ‘The library is the heart of the university’, attributed to Charles William Eliot who was President of Harvard University from 1869–1909, is an often-heard phrase and, until recently, it was an earnestly held belief by many in academic libraries and universities generally. It even appears on library buildings, such as at Sterling Memorial Library at Yale. However, as Lorcan Dempsey (2008) posted in his blog, this assertion is beginning to be challenged from a variety of fronts.

The debate as to whether libraries are at the heart of their university can be unsettling for academic librarians. Because of the move to digital information and online services, it is argued by some that the library can no longer be the heart of a university, because many of its most valued services and resources are now located in a virtual library environment. This perception presumes that the heart has to be a physical manifestation and downplays the very important responsibility of the library in actually making the virtual library an easy-to-use space, complementing the physical spaces already occupied. The academic library can be a physical and virtual heart of a campus.

As a great deal of the existing and future services and resources of academic libraries belong in a virtual environment, then our brand associated with an iconic building at the heart of the campus is no longer as relevant. Today, there is much discussion on future learning spaces, and a great deal of this discussion revolves around re-conceptualising the lecture theatre or tutorial room, rather than embracing the substantial role that can and is being played by the library in a world where students learn in a social networked environment. Over the past decade, there have been great advances in establishing physical libraries as a location of choice for students who undertake group assignments, online learning and ‘traditional’ library study, through the establishment of learning commons, such as at the University of Guelph1 and the University of University of Massachusetts Amherst2, learning grids such as at the University of Warwick3, and learning hubs (for example the one under development in early 2010 at the University of Adelaide). While we can still remain the heart of the university, our challenge will be to take information and knowledge services to an entirely different place, not constructed on the concept of a library per se, but taking the wealth of information, data and knowledge accumulated in academic libraries and enabling it to be accessed, consumed and remixed in the personal places of tomorrow’s scholars, teachers and researchers.

However, perhaps the greatest challenge will be changing the mindsets of staff in academic libraries and capitalising on the fact that academic librarians are blended professionals, with multi-faceted skills and responsibilities that transcend the physical and virtual library. As more and more learning becomes supported by blended and online modes of delivery, the library and the librarians have to move out of their silos and engage in the virtual learning environment, as well as the physical and virtual library. These skilled staff will develop new ways of working and new partnerships.

The future will not recognise the silo of the academic library, or even an academic library and information technology converged service. The library’s services, its staff and the resources that it manages and delivers will engage across the campus and be embedded into the curriculum and the administration of our universities.

Evolution (and Revolution) of Academic Libraries

Academic libraries have moved a long way from the early beginnings at institutions like Oxford University in the 1400s. The contents of libraries have diversified from hand crafted parchments and illuminated manuscripts, through a revolution brought about by the invention of the printing press and movable type, which resulted in the mass production of printed books. Today, academic libraries collect books, pamphlets, newspapers, journals, indexing and abstracting resources, multi-media resources (film, audio, image) on a range of technological platforms (tapes, compact discs, digital video discs, microforms etc). The libraries seek to preserve and maintain collections of the past, while embracing the multiplicity of formats that information is published in today, with an increasing emphasis on creating digital versions of collections already held.

The management of information resources has also seen a vast amount of change over the years, moving from limiting access by chaining books and gating stack areas to keep people away from the collections, to book catalogues, card catalogues, and today’s online public access catalogues to help academic library customers to find the resources available.

The advent of affordable computers, personal computers for individual use and the development of the Internet have transformed the ways libraries operate (Billings 2003). Today, there are discovery aids such as federated search engines enabling access to a multiplicity of data sources, both local and remote. Even more technologically advanced is the capacity for a scholar to embed library-supplied catalogue search widgets in their preferred digital space, such as Facebook and MySpace, so that searching the library’s catalogue does not have to be done from the library’s home page, but from their personalised portal. So, rather than restricting access to a library’s physical and digital collections, academic libraries are providing the tools for individuals to find useful information regardless of where it is held. With the development of the new generation of search engines, academic libraries can make available resources that are not normally associated with academic libraries, such as organisational data, in-house web pages, and primary research data.

Not only has the content of our academic libraries changed over time, access to information resources has been transformed. Today’s students and academic staff want easy access to information resources, and this is fulfilled through extended opening hours, 24/7 access to digital resources from anywhere with an internet connection, self-service loans and book returns, virtual reference desks and realtime chat to a librarian, as well as through physical access to print and multimedia resources. In addition, academic libraries facilitate access to the myriad of digital resources by providing vast numbers of networked PCs and by providing wireless networking and power sockets in libraries so that visitors can use their own laptops. Whereas many libraries today lend laptops for in-library use, in the future, portable digital book readers will be available for loan. Greater emphasis is being placed on rendering library digital content, including web pages providing access to online services, to formats that can be used by mobile devices, such as smart phones and personal digital assistants. Easy access to information will, most likely in the future, also make use of geo-spatial tags so that an item in the catalogue can be located in the library through the wonders of global positioning systems.

The type of scholars accessing academic libraries has also changed significantly over time. Where once there was little diversity in the students or mode of study (male students and face-to-face learning), today we have a broad range of learners: male and female students; school leavers and mature students; international and local students; on-campus and distance students; full-time and part-time students; students with disabilities; students sitting for foundation degrees, undergraduate degrees, post-graduate taught and research degrees; students studying for continuing professional development and academic curiosity; and the list could go on. Today academic libraries are serving students and staff who have vastly different experiences of and skills in working with digital technologies. Sweeney (2005, p. 165) emphasises the impact of digital natives on libraries:

… They make up the demographic tsunami that will permanently and irreversibly change the library and information landscape.

However, it would be wrong to focus on this demographic (those born from 1982 onwards), as we all have expectations of the web and what it will offer us.

While we frame digital natives as a generation ‘born digital,’ not all youth are digital natives. Digital natives share a common global culture that is defined not by age, strictly, but by certain attributes and experiences in part defined by their experience growing up immersed in digital technology, and the impact of this upon how they interact with information technologies, information itself, one another, and other people and institutions. Those who were not “born digital” can be just as connected, if not more so, than their younger counterparts. (Digital Natives, n.d.)

This diversity, which will only increase in the near future, adds a complexity to the way academic libraries deliver services and resources, especially in areas of academic literacy, which will be discussed elsewhere in this chapter and in detail in a later chapter.

Emerging Digital Technologies and Academic Library Futures

There can be a sense of déjà vu reading some accounts of the more recent history of academic libraries and the projections for the future. For instance, Holley (1999), looking back on 25 years of academic librarianship in the United States of America, wrote of the challenges of trying to keep up with the output of scholars and spiralling costs of serials, and the financial challenges faced by libraries in 1976 when there were pay freezes and staff cuts, which are realities being faced by academic libraries in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in 2010.

Lyman (1991) wrote of a system of scholarly communication in crisis and the emergence of the digital library. These two themes appear to have a long tail. People are still speaking of the crisis in scholarly communication. And the digital library is still be become a reality in many developing economies (Harle 2009).

Dougherty and Hughes (1991; 1993) reported on the outputs of a series of workshops with academic library directors that were aimed at identifying preferred library futures. There was a view that there would be a scholars’ workstation that would deliver a myriad of information to the desktop, but the leaders at that time were unsure how this was going to be achieved, except through an understanding that leadership would be a key enabler. They recognised the need for innovation in the development of demonstration projects, and the need for ‘long-term, strategic reallocation of resources if the vision of the future is to be more than a mirage’ (Dougherty and Hughes 1993, p. 1). Again, these themes are as relevant today as they were almost 20 years ago: leadership, innovation and reallocation of resources towards new services.

Hawkins (1994) recognised the potential wonders of an electronic, information-rich environment, and the realisation of the dream seemed imminent with the advent of the ‘information superhighway’, a term today that seems almost quaint. Hawkins envisaged the electronic library supporting distance learning and life-long learning: ‘a library is not a place and is about much more than books’ (Hawkins 1994, p. 27).

He correctly emphasised the need to define technical standards, and to develop tools to organise and search massive amounts of information. Developments of the semantic web, enterprise search engines, data mining of research, standards for open educational resources etc. have occurred since Hawkins’ article.

Hawkins also envisaged the library portal:

The library of the future will be less a place where information is kept than a portal through which students and faculty will access the vast information resources of the world. (Hawkins 1994, p. 46)

Lombardi (2000) wrote a challenging article highlighting that, regardless of the fact that digital library portals are available,

… Students have little patience with the formal organizational structure of the library and the authority of the librarian.

Ten years later, academic libraries are still developing and maintaining portals, and the very real challenge still being faced is that of developing the academic literacy skills of learners, so that they should not rely solely on the search services of Google and Wikipedia and the like.

A seminal work on the future of academic librarianship was edited by Lancaster (1993), which collected essays on the library of the 21st century. One paper, in particular, resonated with the situation today, in that it advocated a focus more on the services delivered and not on the assets controlled (Penniman 1993). With the reality of the digital library, academic librarians are able to concentrate on what is required for supporting research and teaching regardless of where the information is held.

The 1990s was a decade of huge developments in digital technologies and digital information resources. However, not everyone saw the advent of these as a panacea. Crawford and Gorman (1995) cautioned that there was no real need to go ‘all digital’ and to avoid ‘technolust’ in favour of technology as a tool that may be able to perform functions more efficiently. Going ‘all digital’ seems to be a trend today, with growing numbers of libraries moving from print to digital information resources if these are available. The use of technology as an efficiency tool has been embraced for a range of library services: from backroom processes in acquisitions and cataloguing to front line services such as self-service borrowing and renewals.

Another dissenting voice was that of Mann (2001, p. 268) who claimed ‘Although libraries must continue to provide electronic resources, the distinctive strength of research libraries lies mainly in their ability to provide free access to preservable book collections that facilitate understanding of lengthy textual works that cannot be tapped into from anywhere, at any time, by anyone’. The Google initiative to scan both out-of-copyright and copyright works to create an international library of digital books certainly challenges this assertion. The Google Book Settlement is still not settled so how large and what impact this mass digitisation of print-based collections will have is yet to be seen. But tomorrow’s academic libraries must focus on the value-adding that can be delivered by the librarians and the contextual knowledge they have of their organisation’s teaching and research profile, rather than on what information they control.

New Partnerships – A New Future

None have gone so far as to predict the death of the academic library, although there are conflicting predictions, such as an exchange reported in Inside Higher Ed (2009) in an article on libraries of the future:

Daniel Greenstein, vice provost for academic planning and programs, University of California System was quoted as saying ‘the university library of the future will be sparsely staffed, highly decentralised, and have a physical plant consisting of little more than special collections and study areas.’ … Deborah Jakubs, vice provost for library affairs at Duke University countered ‘I see the exact opposite happening, that libraries are taking on new roles [such as] working with faculty in introducing technology into teaching … there’s a lot more intersection with libraries and faculty than he would lead you to believe’.

The above exchange highlights the dichotomy between those who see the library as the physical entity, as opposed to those who see the benefits of partnerships required to maximise services and resources. Clearly, digital technologies have changed the way academic libraries do and can operate.

Foo et al. (2002) emphasise the importance of new partnerships and new endeavours in addressing the opportunities offered by a future in which digital technologies are dominant. They speak, in passing, of the convergence of libraries and inf...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Editors’ Introduction
• 1 Here Today and Here Tomorrow
• 2 It’s All About Social Media, Stupid!
• 3 Information Literacy in the Digital Environment
• 4 Professional Education for a Digital World
• 5 The Library Chameleon: Physical Space
• 6 Virtual Advice Services
• 7 The Reading E-volution
• 8 Institutional Repositories – Now and Next
• 9 Making the Repository Count: Lessons from Successful Implementation
• 10 Building Useful Virtual Research Environments: The Need for User-led Design
• 11 The HE in FE Digital Dilemma
• 12 Online Support Offered to International Students by UK University Libraries – What are we doing, and why are we doing it?
• 13 Library Performance Measurement in the Digital Age
• 14 Library Resources: Procurement, Innovation and Exploitation in a Digital World
• 15 Continuing Professional Development and Workplace Learning
• 16 Librarians as Midwives of Change in Scholarly Communication
• Index