Tough Question 7

This is a question many academic libraries are struggling with today. At the Iowa State University Library, we are expanding our electronic access to academic journals and actually shrinking the print collection in the process. What this has done is allow us to have more room for users to get to electronic content in the library where subject specialists are available while providing significant print publications that are not available electronically. Additionally, we have provided electronic access to library faculty through email and chat software ad well as having our faculty go to departments on campus for open office hours.

One of the most important things we have done though, is continue to educate our student population that there really is more out there beyond Google, and we have the expertise to find it.

Bring the library to the students through some of these means and I think Central will keep its library vibrant.

As one of Central College’s librarians, I’d like to extend my thanks to all who have contributed to this thoughtful and interesting discussion. Nick Richtsmeier, I appreciate your point that online library catalogs and electronic reference materials are, in fact, digital media and are already part of the library landscape.

Students, their parents, and alumni may be interested to know that Central’s librarians have been following this thread with interest and strive always to be leaders and change-makers in a dynamic information environment. As my colleague Mara Egherman pointed out below, librarians are leading the field and framing the debate in areas of digital learning and scholarly communication on a national and international scale.

New information technologies have the potential to open up amazing possibilities for what Central students and faculty will be able to both discover as researchers and accomplish as creators of new knowledge.

In a context of change and growth, a strong library can be a dynamic force in the larger learning/teaching environment by advocating on behalf of the communities it represents in a competitive information economy, by striving to make information (in any format) accessible and affordable, by demanding high standards for information quality, by supporting innovation in scholarly communication, by protecting intellectual freedom, and by supporting and empowering our students as they become increasingly active and engaged learners for a lifetime.

I envision Central’s library as a gathering place . . . a campus hub where learners gather for collaborative learning outside of classrooms, where a variety of educational media and materials are readily available for use by individual learners or collaborative learning groups, and as a portal through which learners may access digital reference works and journals, as well as other Internet resources. Although Ivan Illich wrote Deschooling before the advent of the Internet, I wonder if his “learning networks” or “learning webs” might not offer some clues for the future shape of college libraries. Peer matching, skill exchanges, educational objects, and learning specialists would be among the components of this campus network hub.

The library is critical, both as a study hub for the campus, but also for a place to learn the value of critical evaluation of sources. With the abundance of information available to students at the touch of a button, librarians provide help not only to separate the good, reputable information from the bad, but also how to search efficiently and intelligently, so that students get the best information, not just what is convenient or pops up first in a Google search.

Part of Central’s job is to train students to seek information by consulting card catalogs (though they may be digital) and reference books. If Central’s administration buys into the fallicy that all information is equal, and moreso that information and knowledge are equivalent then shutter the doors right now. Just because students have been allowed to make it through their high school lives by usuing websites as references, doesn’t mean that Central should go with the proverbial flow. I highly doubt there is a similar blog at Stanford or Notre Dame or Duke where someone is asking alumni how the library should be affected by facebook.

Unlike most indiviiduals, college and university library services have the ability to subscribe and otherwise obtain online access to peer-reviewed scientific, disciplinary, and interdisciplinary journals in a manner that allows students and community members to review a far wider range of source material in less time than it would take to find and return paper copies to the stacks. Rather than devoting space to shelves and shelves of paper periodicals, campus library services do well to provide the above-described access services, and great places for individuals and groups to study. That being said, I have great memories of studying in the “old” library.

A library is the door by which we enter the ever-expansive cultural memory of civilization. In an age of the information super highway, libraries provide opportunities by which one may search for the truth.

A library is vital. The whole issue of electronic rights is still being worked out. New content needs to be funded somehow. Not everything is public domain contrary to what Google might have everyone believe.