Graham Jefcoate

Introduction

Predicting library futures is as difficult as predicting the future of any kind of human institution or endeavour. The title of this chapter is clearly intended to recall books such as Andrei Almarik’s Will the Soviet Union survive until 1984?, published in English in 1970 (Almarik, 1970)¹ (the USSR collapsed in 1991, making Almarik’s prediction pretty good), rather than Harrison E. Salisbury’s less cautious The Coming War between Russia and China, published in 1969 (Salisbury, 1969)² (thank goodness, forty years later that war hasn’t happened yet). Caution is called for: prediction is not an exact science, even when based on well-founded assumptions by experts in their fields. How many librarians or academics wrote articles on ‘The coming Internet and its fundamental impact on scholarly communication and libraries’ during the late 1980s? Not too many, as we know. In other words, predicting the demise of the library by 2020 could be too optimistic (it could disappear sooner) or maybe too pessimistic (it may never happen at all). What we can do is to make our best guess, hoping to follow the example of Andrei Almarik rather than that of Harrison E. Salisbury.

Let me make my own position clear at the outset. I believe that something we might reasonably call ‘the library’ may well (indeed should) survive as an element within the university of the future and that professionals with particular knowledge and skills relevant to the provision of scholarly information will also be needed (let’s call them, for argument’s sake, ‘librarians’). I do not think, however, that the future academic library or librarians will necessarily (or indeed should) look much like they do today. But that’s just about as far as I’m prepared to go in my predictions and you will note that much of this paragraph and a lot of what you’ll find below is written in the conditional mood.

In this chapter, I attempt to sketch what universities in the future will need in terms of scholarly information and learning spaces and how something called ‘the library’ might meet those needs and continue to add value to the university. Let me further make clear that I don’t think professional librarians should set out to prove that libraries have a future. Libraries, like any other institutions, are simply means to an end. Instead of asking: ‘Will libraries survive?’ we should be asking: ‘Will libraries be needed?’ I think the answer to that question might well be ‘yes,’ although I would also contend that the library as an institution will have to change much more radically than is sometimes supposed. The picture that emerges is complex and possibly unsettling. The year 2020 is not so very far away (that’s the point of titles like these – doomsday is always the day after tomorrow), and well within the range of long-term planning.³

Contours of change

Most people in the library profession will have noticed that library managers (including this one) talk incessantly about change and the need to adapt ever more rapidly to developments in information technology and the exponential growth of digital content. ‘Library management today,’ we argue, is essentially just ‘change management.’ A relatively small group of well-known gurus jets around the conference circuit in North America (and occasionally turns up in Europe or even Australia) teaching us about change, being as amusingly outspoken or provocative as possible in the process (‘Embrace Web 2.0 or die!’). The senior library staff who generally attend these events appear to savour the masochistic pleasure of their performances (and the gurus invariably get invited back to give more of the same). But the impact of all this energy and enthusiasm on the development of library services remains unclear.

The good news is that there are a number of current initiatives attempting to establish a framework for a more sensible debate among information professionals and stakeholders about the possible future role of the academic library. In the UK, JISC (the government-funded body coordinating the networking and ICT activities of universities) has recently initiated a debate on Libraries of the Future (JISC, 2009).⁴ Rather strangely perhaps, the terms for the debate seem to assume that academic libraries do have a future, although I for one don’t believe we can necessarily make that assumption:

Really? The topics for the debate about Libraries of the Future, however, do at least appear to reflect a growing consensus about what the issues are:

Although the library is still perceived by many university managers and faculty staff as a physical location and space, traditional library services, often associated with the provision of print materials in the physical library, are in decline almost everywhere. The students that fill the spaces are generally seeking places to study, to surf the net or chat with their friends rather than consulting library collections in a true ‘information and study environment.’ University staff – especially in the fields of science, technology and medicine – are hardly to be seen in the physical library.⁵ Meanwhile, the use of digital collections, online databases and search engines continues to increase exponentially (along with the associated costs). When academics use online resources, however, they rarely seem to associate this service with the university library. Indeed, some are beginning to ask questions about the costs of the library (by which they invariably mean a physical location with traditional services and current levels of staffing) because the search engines and information sources they use now appear on their laptops, apparently quite unmediated and effortlessly. As Jerry D. Campbell said in an influential article published as long ago as 2006, ‘Today the library is relinquishing its place as the top source of inquiry’ (Campbell, 2006).⁶ We should now have to say: for many, the library is no longer considered to be a source of inquiry at all.

Advocacy for the library within the university at a time of financial storm and stress for public and private institutions everywhere is (not surprisingly) especially difficult. Although the provision of increasingly expensive scholarly information and study space for students might be accepted as priorities within the university as a whole, libraries often have difficulty positioning themselves convincingly as core academic services (rather than ‘facilitating’ or support services). It is hardly surprising that some are beginning to question the need for libraries run on traditional lines, so where does this leave the ‘traditional’ professional librarian?

Many librarians are busy redefining their roles and striving to offer services more appropriate to the current information behaviour of their users (in other words, online). Despite all the current concerns about costs and the apparent flight from the reading rooms by many faculty, there have been relatively few examples of universities making radical favoring changes to library services, let alone closing them completely or making staff redundant. As organizations, we clearly prefer incremental change. Meanwhile, the library workforce seems to remain what it has been for decades: we are still overwhelmingly white, middle-class and over 45 (sorry, over 55 in my case). There is still a gender imbalance (more women than men except in senior management positions) and too few younger people and members of ethnic minority groups entering the profession (or responding to advertisements). In Europe, most academic librarians work in the public sector, which is generally not well known for favouring organizational flexibility. In the United States, many library jobs are still being advertised requiring the MLS qualification, a sure way of excluding many of the kinds of people we probably need to recruit (see also below). When can we expect the big bang to happen? Will we have all retired by then?⁷

In other words, I would question the assumptions behind JISC’s The Libraries of the Future programme. I don’t think we can assume that libraries will continue to be seen by their parent institutions as ‘essential to academic success and the future of education and research,’ let alone that they will continue to occupy their ‘traditional place at the heart of campus life.’ I don’t find this approach particularly useful. Instead, we should be trying to establish what the information needs of the university in the future will be and only then considering structures that might deliver the range of services that will meet those needs.

What will the university’s information needs be in 2020?

Predicting future information needs, of course, is as difficult as predicting anything else. Asking users might deliver useful insights and be good in terms of customer relations, but often they (faculty, students) are in no better position to make predictions about future developments in scholarly information than information professionals themselves (think about the advent of the Internet). Nevertheless, it will be necessary to have some kind of plausible working model of the future information needs of the university itself.

In the absence of conclusions from programmes such as JISC’s Libraries of the Future, I have been re-reading an earlier contribution to the future library debate which might still be broadly valid today. In his 2006 article already cited above, Jerry Campbell predicted we had about a decade in which to sort ourselves out, which leaves us about six more years. His predictions on what the academic library might look like at the end of that transition period are still, I believe, among the best summaries of their kind. He groups them under the following headings:

These are certainly topics that have been taken up in the Libraries of the Future debate and elsewhere. However, I should like to shift Campbell’s perspective from the ‘supply side’ (the supposed future library) to the ‘demand side’ (the information needs of the future university itself). We need to re-examine the list, asking the following questions: What will the university need? What will this mean in terms of products and services? How will these services be delivered? And what skills and competences will be needed to deliver them? Only then should we speculate on possible organizational solutions to these questions. I suppose I’m advocating a zero-based approach.

Based on the items in Campbell’s list, but adapting them to this different perspective, we might agree that universities will probably need the following products and services relating scholarly information and learning spaces in 2020 (not in priority order!):

I would probably add:

In his model, Campbell suggests that traditional library activities will decline or disappear and that new activities (and opportunities) are emerging. The list above certainly assumes that many ‘traditional’ services now offered by libraries will have disappeared (including personal enquiry services) and that others will mostly be carried out at the level of a consortium or collaborative (including the acquisition of most content and the creation of metadata).

The ‘library’ in 2020

In a recent seminar held at the British Library, Michael Jubb, the director of Research Information Network in the UK, made an interesting, indeed crucial point. Jubb trained as a professional archivist (rather than a professional librarian) and has a background in research and research administration. At the seminar he made the very valid point about the quality of the information resources and services available within a university being what was important. He was agnostic about the future existence of the library as an institution or librarianship as a profession. If a library were the best means of ensuring researchers and students had access to quality information services, so be it. If the library as an institution turned out to add no value, then the appropriate conclusion should be drawn.

Following Jubb, it might seem sensible to abandon the emphasis on the future of the institution ‘library’ in order to concentrate on the products and services described above and consider how they might best be delivered. Each individual service might find its own particular niche in the organization. For example, many services will need to be embedded in faculty environments; maybe these could be ‘spun off’ to faculty control? Others might sit (relatively) happily alongside ICT services or buying units. On balance, I doubt this would be a good idea, and for the following reasons:

I think what I’m saying here is that something we might call the ‘library’ could (and probably should) continue to form a coherent and coordinated organizational unit within the university, even in 2020. That being said, the ‘library of the future’ could and should look very different from the present-day library in terms of its products and services and the way that it’s ‘embedded’ in the university as a whole. What we will need, in any case, is much greater organizational and operational flexibility. (By the way, this will be true for all organizational elements within the university – not merely the library – and of course the university itself as a whole!)

What might this leaner, fitter, meaner(?) library look like in terms of products and services? Let me make a few incautious (but, I hope, not ill-founded) predictions:

‘Librarians in 2020’

This sketch is merely intended to show how radically different the future library could – or should – be in 2020. In a paragraph on the meaning of his agenda for change, Campbell points out that ‘the skills needed to work with metadata, IRs, and other similar sources are much more technical than those possessed by most of today’s academic librarians.’ He suggests we may be facing extinction ‘over the next decade’ (i.e. by about 2016 – ironically, the date I am due to retire!). The ‘new activities’ will demand in-depth knowledge of particular domains, expertise in specialized areas and a wide range of generic skills, technical, managerial, marketing, and presentational skills. We will need people competent in fields as varied as relationship management, research analysis, and conservation. What is obvious is that the skills and competencies needed in the ‘future library’ cannot easily be transferred from the ‘traditional library’. For example, there seems to be little scope in the future library for the generalist librarian or the paraprofessional (excepting student assistants in learning spaces). Nor do the skills and competencies required in the future library fit very well with current librarianship qualifications.

In a recent blog entry about library organization, Lorcan Dempsey of OCLC has drawn an analogy of developments in library organization with cloud computing, citing a presentation by Mark Dahl.⁹ He points out that there has been a general shift of services to ‘webscale’ (see also above for the relevance of this for libraries) and he continues:

In other words, libraries in 2020 will be smaller, more nimble organizations offering a different range of products and services requiring fewer but more specialized library staff. Library training would be focussed and modular rather than generalized as at present.

For example, universities could consider:

Some conclusions

Predictions are often more about what one thinks should happen rather than what one suspects might well happen. I’m sure that Almarik was not upset by the thought that the USSR might not survive (though I hope that Harrison E. Salisbury wasn’t hoping for war to break out between Russia and China!). My predictions, of course, are as coloured by wishful thinking as any others. On balance, I do think that the library will (and should) survive as a separate element within the university. I think that there should always be a focus for scholarly information and I also believe there will be a closely related range of products and services that might best be organized in something we might not unreasonably call ‘the library.’ But I am also certain that those products and services will be radically different from those we offered in the not too distant past. In addition, library management will become ever more complex as products and services are ‘externalized’, developed collaboratively or ‘embedded’ in other campus agencies. The analogy of cloud computing seems to me an appropriate one.

Finally, library staffing will look very different, with fewer (or maybe no) full-time, professionally qualified librarians. If ‘the library’ becomes a responsibility of all, and many on the campus (as students or faculty) have personal experience of working in it, then perhaps a sense of ownership will develop and (in the distant future, beyond the year 2020), the library will truly have become ‘the heart of the university’!