Research Libraries As Knowledge Producers:A Shifting Context for Policy and Funding

ARL Membership MeetingOctober 18, 2006

Yvonna S. LincolnPrincipal Investigator

Texas A&M University

A Rapidly Changing World for MajorResearch Libraries

More diverse student and faculty bodies

The globalization and internationalization of university missions and outreach

The ability to deliver high-quality content to faculty and student desktops

The shift from text- and print-based collections to digitized collections

Copyright and intellectual property issues attendant to digitization

Print-on-demand capabilities

Shared storage and non-duplication of resources

Physical space and workstation renovation and/or creation

“What is really central is discovery, and our role is shifting to one where we need to understand that what our public wants

from us is a really high level of effective discovery that leads to powerful linking”

(FG1Ott.YSL5)

Reformulated Mission for the21st Century Research Library

Consortial arrangements

Metrics which capture other, emerging services: helping faculty develop courses; locating primary source and other high-quality materials for teaching; designing targeted and appropriate assessments to track student learning

Measurements which demonstrate library contributions to faculty research productivity

Means for determining what is, and what is not, being used in the collections

Systems for determining who is, and who is not, being served

Nominations of Critical New Metricsfrom Deans and Directors

1. Collections, esp. unique collections

“…one of the things the historical collections do, though, is maintain a lot of unique materials that others can then rely on, that other institutions can rely on…It’s an input measurement. But one metric that may be very valuable is the number of unique items that a particular library makes available through its community, or to the community….It seems that’s the stewardship role because that material, if it’s unique, then the library is providing an extremely valuable service….it’s still a very valuable service and has to be captured somehow.” (FG4Ott.YSL/27)

Categories and Metrics That Emerged via a Formal Content Analysis

2. Defining and Recognizing Consortia

“In our system, the role of consortia has become significantly thicker and more substantive. It’s no longer just—at least in our case, you know—buying, or the interlibrary loan network. The layers of services built for the resource development and the delivery and the staff planning, the number of projects that are very collaborative…um, it’s very intense.”(FG6Ott.YSL/1-2)

Categories and Metrics That Emerged via a Formal Content Analysis

3. Administrative and Budgetary Efficiencies (esp. for the purpose of creating flexibility, “agility,” or “fluidity” in resources, whether fiscal or human)

4. Linking Libraries to Student Outcomes, Student Learning, and/or Graduate Success

Categories and Metrics That Emerged via a Formal Content Analysis

5. Contributions to Faculty Productivity, esp. Research Productivity

“We provide an ‘extraordinary library experience’” (FG5.Ott.YSL/4)

“We are looking for ways to permit users to have greater and greater personal control in the 21st century library….One of the best ways of doing this is something known as ‘social tagging’, where users create their own meta-data, and we deliver the high-quality content [matched to their meta-data] directly to their desktop once a week.” (I-M.7/12/06.YSL/4).

Categories and Metrics That Emerged via a Formal Content Analysis

6. The Creation of Social Frameworks and Intellectual Networks

Shifting from thinking of “library as place” and beginning to think of “place as library”.

“…we are almost the Switzerland of the academic world. We are a neutral agency. We are a domain agnostic….We are trans-disciplinary. Universities are looking for the environments where this can be accelerated and facilitated.” (FG7NO.VL/2-3)

Libraries will function as intellectual centers for campus, where faculty who have similar or related interests, but who do not know about each other’s research, are brought together so that exploration of mutual research interests can occur, and new lines of inquiry be opened.

Categories and Metrics That Emerged via a Formal Content Analysis

7. Generation of New Knowledge

“…our role isn’t about access, it’s about making sense, making sense of the universe. And how you move from a paradigm of access to sense-making, I think, is one of the biggest challenges. And that sense-making is always in context” (FG6Ott.YSL/23).

We are also creating knowledge “trees” and meta-data organizational systems for the knowledge being generated by the scholars on our own campuses. Librarians have always engaged in ordering knowledge. What they are doing now is creating the meta-data for new knowledge, and linking it to other, related bodies of knowledge and those related meta-data.

(I-N7/12/06.YSL/5)

Categories and Metrics That Emerged via a Formal Content Analysis

8. Creating the Collective, or “Public” Good—with Reusable Assets

One of the things we don’t take account of is that “libraries have a role in creating “the collective good” or “the public good” (FG4Ott.YSL/20-21)

We are managing the “legacy” of an entire civilization, the “historical record of a culture”. We thus contribute to larger, national goals. (Ibid.)

Unlike consuming other goods and services, libraries provide an almost endless font of “reusable assets…or goods”. I use a book, or a journal article, but the “asset remains intact for an infinite number of other users.” (Ibid.)

Categories and Metrics That Emerged via a Formal Content Analysis

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