1.1 What is “The Library World”?

We like to think of “the library world” as the realm in which library faculty and staff work and even live, surrounded by other like-minded library professionals. One of the first things you will learn when you enter the library world is that it is—in fact—its own world. A colleague from another university once asked: “Where in the world is my dean going all the time?” She found it nearly impossible to maintain regular meetings with him due to his busy travel schedule. What she didn’t understand is that library people attend many academic and professional conferences. There is a plethora of library groups divided into countless specialty divisions such as: public, academic, research, medical, technology, social media, informed learning, and collection development—and that’s only to name a few! This isn’t to say that library staff and faculty don’t collaborate on campus. Absolutely no academic division collaborates more than the libraries. But as is the case in any specific area of expertise or research, library professionals tend to hang out with each other. In all the various sectors of the nonprofit world we’ve encountered during our careers as fundraisers, we found library professionals to have some of the most dedicated professional organizations and well-attended conferences. It’s hard to imagine any other professional meeting where attendees perfectly combine expert professional training with significant social experiences. It is important to understand them and to cultivate your place in the library world. Build the connections with the professionals in your organization, but also take advantage of the wealth of scholarship, training, and professional networking available in the library community.

1.2 A librarian plays many roles

It is important to understand how the mission of the modern academic library is exactly the same as the image you have in your mind—only better! The way most people understand a library is as a repository of books. In the old model, a patron (with a little training or the help of a librarian) can find a book on the shelves or peruse the stacks and find something of interest. Pretty simple. When you put that model into a university context, you might imagine resources like books and journals with relevance for different areas of study being available for students and faculty, with or without the assistance of a librarian. The first problem is that even the old model is very limiting in defining the value of the library. What patrons even in early days probably never realized is that before resources even made it out onto the floor, they were carefully selected based on demographic information and the usage history of the population served. Some librarians never answer a patron’s question, but they are specialists in choosing appropriate resources. Other librarians working behind the scenes are experts in getting resources they don't have into their patrons’ hands when needed. Still other librarians serve as the genius behind how all these resources are arrayed so that patrons may browse them easily.

Forgive the simplicity of the above description, but it’s important to understand the various roles librarians play in the information process. These roles have not drastically changed in the library world over the years. What has changed is how resources are delivered. This is a good statement to put to memory because it will come in handy with older donors who grew up in the old model and think that everything has changed. It hasn’t, really. The difference now is that users rarely need to go into stacks of dusty journals from the past 40 years. Articles are delivered digitally through computer terminals in the library, through a student’s own laptop if it is connected to the library network, and through applications on smart phones. An interesting but serious barrier to people realizing the value of the library in terms of resources is that most people never realize that the searches they make in the campus network are more robust because they include resources provided by the library. Google is great, but it only provides open source resources and the science behind search is not always about the best or most appropriate resource. Scholarship under copyright and publisher-owned articles show up in campus searches because the library pays tremendous fees for licenses to make professional content available to students and faculty.

Are you shocked? Most people are. As a student said, “I know I should know better than to say this, but oh my gosh, there is so much stuff, and they let you have it for free!” This is how you start to fall in love with the library world and find your passion for fundraising in the library environment. And the resource part is only the beginning—there is so much more!

1.3 Positioning library resources to your donors

Many higher education fundraisers and development officers lack an understanding of how fundraising unfolds in the academic library. Unless you are a library fundraiser, or work closely with one, you’ve likely never thought about how to sell the library to donors. Good news—resources, faculty and staff from the libraries can help strengthen your case with donors.

1.4 Library space on a university campus

It’s important to understand how integral the physical space of the library is within the university environment. There is a compelling response to a potential donor’s claim that “I only ever went to the library for the peace and quiet to study.” That value in itself is an opportunity to cultivate interest. Connection to space can be powerful and, therefore, developed for support. There is a reason beyond the evolution of the computer that library spaces look so different now than they did before, and it’s based on a tremendous amount of research. It is no accident that these spaces support and encourage quiet or focus or collaboration. The use of the space and the way space supports student success is an area of research in libraries. So before you let someone off the hook for an excuse like the one above, talk to them about the sophisticated design in library spaces that rivals the science and intention behind cutting-edge retail and corporate space design.

As we delve into the specific means of raising money for the academic library, we want to help you as a higher-education fundraiser get a sense of the opportunity in this area. Although the process is complicated a bit by having to educate the donor before cultivation can begin, the libraries offer opportunities that can resonate with donors from any age group or discipline. For library professionals hoping to increase their knowledge about development, this perspective should be very valuable. Not only will it illustrate the very common failure among constituents to understand the full scope of the modern academic library, but it will help you see how the many cases for giving can be positioned to prospects. The first step is appreciating that libraries have missed the boat in many cases in the areas of communication tied to alumni relations and developments. There is a real need to play catch-up here, and through this book we hope to help that happen.

1.5 Bridging development efforts with library staff

Before we get into our discussions about the various ways in which to raise funds to support the library, we want to acknowledge the common misconceptions that staff and faculty often have about the process. As a development officer working in the libraries, it is so important to build relationships with faculty and staff. By nature, many of those who choose to work in this field are hesitant to participate in fundraising endeavors. The reasons are varied but some common ones include an aversion to the very idea that libraries have to participate at all in fundraising. The mission of libraries is very much about equal rights by providing knowledge and technology to everyone, and some in this profession feel that private support should not be necessary to begin with. Another reason is often associated with a personal commitment to service. The passion to provide information to those in search of knowledge is so fundamental to many that they feel asking for money is a betrayal of that mission. Such barriers may undermine the development of collaboration between development and library staff, so it is important to assuage fears and recognize the good work that is going on throughout the library. It could also be helpful to remind library professionals that giving and receiving support in higher education is a celebrated tradition in our country—one that other countries wish they had and often try to emulate (Thelin and Trollinger, 2014). It is not a “bad thing” to solicit and receive support, and it is the job of the development director to cultivate the staff towards that understanding at the same time prospective donors are being cultivated.

Finally, it is essential to understand and help others to appreciate that studies show “philanthropy has to be stimulated” (p. 145). Even though spontaneous giving does occur on occasion, for the most part people need to be asked.

We are nearing the 400th anniversary of fundraising for higher education in the United States (p. 146)! We are passionate about development, the mission of libraries in higher education, and the opportunities we have identified to connect libraries to donors. We think library fundraising is a very special piece of higher education, and we think you will feel the same when you become a part of the library world.