Libraries the first line of defence in the changing scholarly communication landscape

This is a draft (pre-print) from a series of short discussion pieces written by me in late 2008 and I am surprised to see how it’s still relevant in 2016.

Libraries have always kept pace with technology. Historically the print based libraries emerged as a result of the scarce printed resources. Books were expensive, it was time consuming to create and copy and difficult to transport. Hence collections of books developed around centres of religious beliefs, learning and wealth. It was cheaper and easier for people to come to collections. However the advent of digital content and electronic networks transformed the environmental conditions and now it is faster and much cheaper to bring collections or part of the collection to the user.

The technology with its fast pace of change provides both challenges and opportunities.

Materials created for learning and teaching such as curriculum material, examination papers, etc. Information created during research activity for e.g. working papers, report’s etc. research outputs like eJournals along with published information and collections collectively form scholarly information.

Libraries face a great number of challenges in dealing with scholarly information and discovery. The scholarly information currently can be found on varied storage mediums from printed paper, floppy disks, and repositories to University SANs. Primarily the information is decentralised, uncoordinated and not supported by institutional policies and procedures. Another challenge is varied expectations of the patrons. We have the google generation expecting fast anytime and anywhere access, whereas the emergence of social networking has given birth to Facebook and Twitter generation. There expectations revolve around personalised content and services. This generation wants greater engagement by means of content sharing, annotations, recommendations, ratings and collaborative creation of value added content. Another challenge faced is of cataloguing and preservation of content created outside of traditional publishing channels, with emphasis on quick publications of fragmented bits rather than slow synthesis of information. The economics of the hybrid model; where in the library spends on both physical and online resources, sometimes even replicating the resources; is turning unfavourable in these times of economic recession. Another challenge faced is the problem of growing accumulated print archive of scholarly communication. With the personalised service comes the issue of privacy and security. Ensuring access to historical, unmodified, organised information (without the loss of context) is another challenge. Developing discovery interfaces with easier access, seamless integration and comprehensiveness, integration of web ‘2.0’ functionality and supporting varied digital content like music, video and images along with maintaining constant engagement with the stakeholders is challenging as well.

Discussions for our plans for scholarly information and dissemination should also include a discussion of the underlying information technologies. New technologies are evolving rapidly not only in the online world but in the built environments, requiring reconceptualization of learning and teaching spaces, libraries and social spaces. Planning is an important step towards formulating a strategic policy to respond to the mentioned challenges. I advocate a long term strategic plan which needs to be revisited every year. Strategy needs to be focused in research and teaching priorities and focus on research strengths, fostering collaborations, creativity and delivering effective partnerships. The strategy should aspire to increase community engagement by providing responsive and personalised services. Increased quality of staff and students while creating supporting environments both online and physical should be a priority. The response should implement innovative, agile, adaptable and flexible initiatives. Unlocking potential of scholarly collections, shaping national and international agendas by participating in the national dialogue should be aspirations of the response strategy. The strategy should strive for information environments distinguished by ease of use, equity of access and quality of content.

Currently Libraries spend up to quarter of their operating budget on online resources which I predict to increase in excess of half by the end of the next decade. This increase in electronic content would necessitate integration development of new service layers and innovative digital and end to end discovery mechanisms.

I believe the real challenge lies not in technology but with culture and mind set.