Feb 19, 2019 Topics of Interest to Academic Librarians

By Robert Nelson

Greetings,

I am a member of an ACRL (Association of College & Research Libraries) Committee called University Libraries Section: Current Topics Discussion Group. At our Fall Conference call, the Chair said that she was unable to lead the discussion session at the Midwinter ALA (American Library Association) Conference in Seattle.

Since I was going, I offered to fill in and lead the meeting. We had about 15 attendees from across the country. Academic Librarians at institutions large and small.

I was tasked with asking each attendee to identify themselves, their home institution and one topic of discussion/concern/curiosity.

Here is what is on the minds of the nation’s Academic Librarians:

• Open Education Resources & Institutional Repositories
• Academic affordability
• Open textbook network
• Money for faculty to publish open source
• Open source course packs
• Librarian attrition – retirees/empty positions require justification to re-fill
• Student government alliance on textbook costs, open access texts
• Faculty fear/skepticism in publishing in Open Access journals
• Hiring freezes. Farming out duties to third parties outside of the University
• Growth mode yet flat budgets or cuts to programs, services. “What do you stop doing when Librarians tend to say ‘yes’ to everything?”
• Graduate Students in Institutional Repository; Undergraduate Research Office – expositions, posters, Honors College, Capstone projects; “Pay it forward”
• Limits of Open Access for students
• Million-dollar budget cut: cut hours, staff from 120 to 80. Students no longer Library advocates in an austerity Campus environment
• Scholarship and research expectation: 1 day a week for research; Sabbaticals; research leave. Higher number of level days for tenure track Faculty Librarians
• Open Education Resource funding from the government. But what happens when the money runs out? How is OER sustainable?
• Too many books: What are the affordable solutions for off-site storage and rapid retrieval/delivery of requested materials?
• Tech Services no longer located in the Library

Summary: The repeating themes centered around open source publishing; especially regarding textbooks. Other topics were librarian attrition: as the baby-boomers retire, Libraries are having to fight to have personnel replaced. Budget cuts, books and journals, play into that austerity vibe along with staff reductions. How do you add new services in a static or budget cutback environment?

What is the role of scholarship in Academic Libraries? What are the mechanisms to convert book stack space into remote storage?

This was my bullet point representing the Marriott Library:

• The creation of a multi-disciplinary Digital Humanities Center located in the Academic Library.

Robert J. Nelson | Head of Media Studios & Audio Projects Librarian
Creativity & Innovation Services / Media Studios
robert.nelson@utah.edu