The Future of Campus Libraries? ‘Sticky Interdependence’

Campus libraries are anticipating a new era — a codependent one.

Librarians at universities in the Big Ten athletic conference wrote recently that they would work toward managing their separate collections “as if they were a single, shared” one. They said they must move away from a mind-set of independent libraries, motivated by self-interest, cooperating only sometimes.

Emerging in its place is a vision of a more codependent system in which research libraries pledge to preserve individual collection areas, allowing other institutions to allocate spending elsewhere. In a large, fully networked library system, users could more regularly get materials from other campuses, similar to an interlibrary loan, as individual collections would be more specialized and distinct. It’s an idea, long building, that acknowledges that the competition to acquire, acquire, acquire must change.

The Big Ten Academic Alliance’s statement, posted last month, is notable for its scope — its members’ collections represent 22 percent of North American print titles — and focus on prospective collections development.

“If it were to be fully realized, it could be more like the interdependence of the libraries of a single campus than it is like the libraries of separate institutions, which is a really radical and exciting, and in some ways overdue, proposition,” said Roger C. Schonfeld, director of Ithaka S+R’s libraries, scholarly communication, and museums program.

Outside of the Big Ten alliance, known as BTAA, groups nationwide are sounding similar notes. The Association of Research Libraries last month started a two-year task force on digital content, trying to provide “barrier-free access to information.” Two library groups endorsed BTAA statements on sharing resources and special collections. And at a spring meeting of the Coalition for Networked Information, a panel urged a more collaborative model.

“We need to think more coherently and in a more coordinated fashion about how we collectively keep the scholarly record,” said Wendy P. Lougee, dean of libraries at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and chair of the BTAA’s group for library deans and directors.

‘As Much Stuff as We Can’

James L. Hilton, speaking last year at the University of Texas at Austin, described what once was the status quo for libraries. In an analog world, he said at an event on the future of campus libraries, universities could operate independently, without considering what peer institutions were doing.

No more, as the sheer number of digital materials soars and library users expect to be able to use most anything at any time, said Hilton, dean of libraries at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He predicted that in a decade or two, just a few dozen research libraries would commit themselves to full preservation, collection, and curation. The others would rely on those campuses. He called the strategy one of “sticky interdependence.”

“We actually need to latch ourselves together in some pretty sticky ways,” he said. “I need to be able to say, ‘You can count on Michigan in these areas,’ and you need to be able to say, ‘You can count on Texas in these areas,’ and it has to stick … beyond changes in provosts and beyond changes in local faculty’s tastes.”

The alternative? Every library would have to keep buying “as much stuff as we can.” And it’s hard to imagine libraries’ being able to do that amid today’s constraints.

A 2016 survey by the Association of College and Research Libraries showed that 60 percent of libraries had reported flat budgets for the previous five years, and 19 percent had seen decreased funding. Those campus spaces have made big changes in how they use their square footage and budgets, including backing away from bulk journal subscriptions to cut costs.

Hilton, who signed the BTAA’s letter, said in an interview before the group’s announcement that within the library ecosystem, there is “more than enough money” to support shared print collections for the next 200 years — enough to make existing resources feel “like a world of abundance.” “What there’s not,” he said, “is enough money to support it at every institution.”

Part of the concern driving a need for shared collections is a fear of what could be lost if libraries fail to compare notes on what materials they have and expect to maintain.

For years, libraries have acknowledged that not every institution needs a print back issue of, say, every journal. But there’s a risk of not preserving enough, Lougee said. “How many copies do you need to have of something to mitigate the risk of one copy being lost or deteriorating?”

Schonfeld, of Ithaka S+R, wondered what would happen if a university joined or left the Big Ten, an athletics conference whose membership has fluctuated since it was founded, in the late 19th century. The association is a nonprofit institution, separate from the conference and governed by provosts, but Lougee said new members of the athletics conference would join the academic alliance. She said the group had not determined what would happen if a university left, adding there was no indication that was likely.

The library cooperative OCLC and consultants examined the idea of collective collections in the BTAA in a report released in August. Investments in shared capacities would be crucial, they found. They urged libraries to make explicit commitments, create a clear and holistic view of what is there, develop a framework across all institutions to allow users to discover interesting resources, and shape collections prospectively.

Lougee said the BTAA had taken several of the group’s recommendations, including creating groups that will focus on content and technology.

‘A Big, Bold Move’

How would such a network work? Say an English professor is interested in a text unavailable at his or her home institution. Lougee said that if the Big Ten built up its infrastructure, an available version at another campus would appear to the user, and a request for delivery could be made digitally.

“This is trying to make it as frictionless as possible,” she said. “It’s building intelligence into the system, which right now has a lot of human mediation.”

A typical university’s research library has pieces of that goal. Google in 2004 launched Google Print, now Google Books, and digitization has exploded since then. Hathitrust, created by several campus libraries, is an international online academic library with millions of works. For decades, campuses have used interlibrary loans to shuttle materials to far-flung readers, and regional networks, like the Maine Shared Collections Cooperative, use a joint approach to print-collections management.

But the scope of Big Ten libraries’ acquisitions, particularly in print, sets the new statement apart, said Mary Lee Kennedy, executive director of the Association of Research Libraries.

“This is a big, bold move,” she said. “It’s not that it’s not happening in other places, but the fact that it represents such a large percentage of the print collections in the U.S. — that’s big.”

The BTAA, Lougee said, will first map out libraries’ collections and plans for preservation. Prospective collections-building will take more time, she said.

To envision such a system, turn to New York. A collaboration between Cornell and Columbia Universities, started about a decade ago, meant that they could intentionally cut back duplicative Slavic collections to reduce spending — and ultimately widen their collective holdings.

Robert H. Davis Jr. has directed it from Columbia, and at first, it wasn’t universally cheered. Shortly after it began, a colleague approached him at an academic conference. First, she wished him well. But then, in a hushed voice, she confessed the truth: She wanted his project to fail.

Some faculty members saw the announcement as a signal of retreat, Davis recently recalled. Others wondered: Because Davis is at Columbia, visiting Cornell occasionally, would Cornell professors’ concerns be ignored?

“The concern was that this represented a diminution of university investment in collections,” he said in an interview before the BTAA’s letter was released. But such worries didn’t materialize, and the number of duplicated collections dropped. “It simply was an opportunity to be a bit more careful in terms of how we develop our collections.”

More libraries have since joined Cornell and Columbia’s Slavic partnership. The two universities now pay for fewer duplicative materials. For example, from 2006 to 2010, 18 percent of the libraries’ Serbian monographic titles were duplicated. From 2011 to 2015, that figure shrank to less than 1 percent, according to a 2017 analysis by Davis.

“It behooves us,” Davis said in a recent interview, “to think outside the box and think of ways to be more efficient, and capture more of what is being produced.”

Lindsay Ellis is a staff reporter. Follow her on Twitter @lindsayaellis, or email her at lindsay.ellis@chronicle.com.