Value and Visibility
Note: Roger Schonfeld, one of the authors of the study, commented and corrected some msiconceptions I had about the report. I’ve responded to him in the comments section - I’ll leave the original post unaltered, so you can see the context of his comments.
A recently released report by Ithaka - a nonprofit higher education and technology organization - discusses trends in the attitudes toward library importance, library role, resource format (electronic vs. print), and publishing method among faculty and librarians at various higher education institutions.
The report is interesting (I’m always interested in reports about how libraries are perceived), especially the section on attitudes toward library importance. The Chronicle of Higher Education, in the 8/26/08 issue, also commented on the report:
“Since 2003, faculty members across the disciplines have shown a marked decline in how devoted they are to libraries as information portals. Eighty percent of humanities scholars are still devoted to library research-although that may be not because they’re traditionalists but because they can’t yet get what they need in digital form. But only 48 percent of economists and 50 percent of scientists value libraries as gateways.
That should worry librarians whose budgets are eaten up by high-priced science journals. What if the designated users of those materials are sidestepping the library altogether?”
-Howard, Jennifer. “FYI: Scholar’s view of libraries as portals shows marked decline.” Chronicle of Higher Education, 8/26/2008.
The comment is more interesting than the report (which is a bit dry). So, anyway, the alarms sound because the trend shows that libraries are becoming less important in as gateways to information in the eyes of faculty: they don’t come to the library anymore to begin their research; nor do they start their research in the library’s OPAC. In turn, this threatens the viability of “librarian” as an important figure on campus.
However, I don’t actually think this report actually says quite what the quote from the Chronicle claims. First of all, the questions don’t particularly focus on “devotion” to library research - I would find an unusual devotion to library research a bit odd, actually. What’s more, the Chronicle author (and the report itself) seem to use “library research” to mean “research done while sitting in the library.” It should come as no surprise that much library research is done while not at all close to the library; this remote access has been a service goal of libraries for a long time. It’s laudable that you don’t have to actually sit in the library to conduct research using its resources.
Second, if you consider Figure 5 of the Ithaka report, it illustrates that the majority (something like 70%) of research is started using library resources in one way or another. It’s simply that it is conducted remotely (in fact, the report points out that ultimately, resource access is often via the library’s license, but the search starts somewhere else) or it may not start with a “generic library resource” approach. Breaking this down by discipline provides some no-brainer info: science faculty, for instance, rarely start in the library or the OPAC when they begin research, but rather in a specific electronic database.
This is not a surprise: science research is almost entirely journal-based, and the best way to access them is by going to the specific database in which the journal is indexed. The OPAC offers little support to science research when it starts (save for, possibly, knowing what journals the library owns), and given that the resources are electronic, and online, there’s no reason to come to the library. On the other hand, humanities scholars often have a more monograph-based research mode, and so they’ll begin in the library or with the OPAC.
In any case, while I think the library may in fact be less valued as a portal to information, this does not actually make the library less of a portal. After all, as pointed out elsewhere in the report, faculty don’t want to pay for access to the resources themselves; that’s the library’s job. However, faculty do wish to enjoy library-mediated access to those resources (and they get it, often no matter where their search actually starts). To me, this blurs the (somewhat artificial) distinction between “gateway” and “purchaser.” Without the library’s license to the materials, access would need to be mediated via some other means (which the faculty are loath to do, and rightly so, because that stuff is expensive) - ergo, the library is the gateway to the resource.
Of course, that doesn’t mean they know the library is the gateway, and that is where the report, I think, is really going. I don’t dispute the report. In fact, I thoroughly believe that the perception of value is a real problem. However, I think it’s heavily related to visibility: we’ve become so very good at providing seamless remote access to resources that nobody realizes that the library makes it possible for them to use these resources.
Hi Chris,
Thanks for your interest in our study. A couple of reactions.
You are right to point out that we do not directly address “devotion” to the library among faculty, but rather we used the following approach to reach the findings in question. Our questionnaire asked faculty members, “How important is it to you that your college or university library provides each of the functions below or serves in
the capacity listed below?” We then provided three functions, one of which was “The library is a starting point or ‘gateway’ for locating
information for my research.” In no way was the language of this question, or our interpretation of it, restricted to the physical library building or print-related services.
As we have observed, the faculty responses to this function differ starkly by discipline, with scientists and economists valuing the “gateway” function as much less important than do most humanists. Many observers believe that the gateway function is at the core of the value that libraries add to the faculty experience as a user. If they are correct, then our findings may raise important questions about whether for these disciplines the gateway service is valuable but not perceived as valued - in which case there is a communications problem - or whether the services themselves are declining in importance for the work of these faculty members - in which case we should be asking how libraries should better direct their limited resources.
I would like to learn a little bit more about your statements: “However, faculty do wish to enjoy library-mediated access to those resources (and they get it, often no matter where their search actually starts). To me, this blurs the (somewhat artificial) distinction between ‘gateway’ and ‘purchaser.’” Elsewhere you mention the importance of faculty receiving “seamless access” to resources that are purchased. That would seem to me to suggest that the distinction between the buyer and gateway function is actually quite clear. Can you explain what you mean here, in particular about the blur between the buyer and gateway functions?
Thank you again for your interest in our work.
Best,
Roger
Roger,
Thanks for commenting. First, let me apologize - in attempting to dispute some of the phrasing of the quote in the Chronicle article (specifically, the idea that resources are being “bypassed”), I unfairly conflated the report and that quote. Compounding this is the fact that I overlooked the definition section of that footnote (or didn’t internalize it, at the very least), and subsequently mischaracterized what “library research” means in the context of your study. I do apologize for that. However, you pose good questions, so I will still attempt to address the remainder of your comment.
To address your second question, regarding the distinction between purchaser and gateway, as I said I simply felt that the distinction felt somewhat artificial (noting, however, that your respondents evidently clearly saw a difference).If I can try to boil down this notion of mine into something resembling coherence: the issue as I see it is that the act of purchasing or licensing the resources is the gateway service, without which there is no access (or no access the researcher really wants to arrange for, as it would be expensive to them).
As an example, in my experience, requests for new resources carry the implicit assumption that the library will also act as the gateway for their use. For example, when I am asked to acquire a database for, say, geological sciences, the implication is also that we will provide access to that resource (or perhaps more specifically, it’s access-limited content).
I suppose in the simplest terms: if a science researcher (for the sake of argument) begins his research in a science-focused electronic resource paid for by the library, even if he did not get there by way of the library’s website, how is the library not the starting point for his research? This material is a library resource and would probably not be accessible without the library’s acquisition (or would pose a financial barrier to access that the researcher would not want to surmount). In that sense, I think that regardless of how seamless the researcher’s experience is, it starts with the library. He may not think of it that way - which is part of the communication/visibility issue that I think is so central - but it is mediated by the library nonetheless.
Again, I don’t think the results of the report or its methodology are flawed - I’ve seen the same things, anecdotally, that the report confirms. I think it’s fascinating that that the respondents valued the library’s financial role more highly than its access/gateway role. However, to me, separating the gateway function and the financial function conceptually was not so easily done.
Thanks again for your comment - I appreciate you challenging me to clarify my thoughts.
-Chris
Hi Chris,
Thanks for this very helpful reply. I think I now see better how our perspectives here differ, and I think it comes down to how we each imagine the “gateway” role operating.
Although we did not specify the “gateway” services we intended, my belief is that they incorporate discovery and search resources, such as A&I databases, Google Scholar, meta-search engines, the library OPAC, WorldCat, PubMed, archival finding aids, and of course reference librarians.
While many of these services are provided directly by the library or at least paid for by the library, in other cases they are provided by outside organizations. If the discovery tool was provided by Google, the NLM, RePec, or another outside entity to which the library pays nothing, then it would be reasonable for some faculty members to see the importance of the library’s gateway functions to be in decline - even while they recognize the library’s ongoing importance in purchasing resources for their use.
And there is much strategic relevance to these “gateway” services. Even to the extent that faculty members underestimate the resources and expertise that the library actually invests in providing search and discovery services, their perceptions here may still matter.
High-quality, individually-tailored gateway services are desperately needed but extraordinarily difficult and expensive to provide. If the faculty believe that the library provision of these services is declining in importance to them, the library will find it harder to argue successfully that it should be provided with resources to invest in such services. And of course, if in fact others have successfully competed with the library in providing these services to faculty members, then the library’s dilemma of whether to compete more aggressively or concede in some cases to outside competitors is very much before us.
I hope this helps to clarify our interpretation of the survey findings.
Thank you for the opportunity to have such a fruitful exchange on these important topics.
Best,
Roger