My University research library is disappearing. It is sad, tragic and totally unnecessary. My University library is slowing be transformed into another student center, replete with places for the student to lounge about and hang out with their friends, but the books and periodicals are disappearing into storage. The internet is blamed, but the culprit is the University administration.
The library blames the internet – the fact that more and more research is available online is said to be cause of the decline of the library. The narrative goes like this. First, journals like Gordon and Breach (before acquired by Taylor and Francis in 2001) and then Elsevier, boosted the subscription charges to libraries much faster than library budgets increased while at the same time the number of serials they published increased astronomically. So the lots and lots of journals were dropped and libraries subscribed to a smaller and smaller fraction of journals. So the backlash was more and more “open access” publishing and lowering costs by subscribing only to the on-line version periodicals. So one approach would be to blame the big scientific publishers – it has appeal. All true but why did this kill the library ? The truth is very different.
Let me offer a different narrative. Not that I am a fan of Elsevier, but in reality the library has decided that the printed word does not matter, and began to care less and less about the library user.
First the physics library disappears – no place for me to sit down and just browse the journals. Did the library think I liked doing this better on line ? Forced to the internet, I cannot browse the subscriptions. And I am alienated.
So then library responds to the difficulty of finding research papers online by urging us to put our materials and research papers on a digital commons. The principle is a little dubious and now I have sympathy for the publishers, because this cannot be good for them, but the library is now wasting my time (and their money) because I am suppose to help them do this. Are they trying to do a better job at this the social networking sites serving a large cross-section of the science and engineering community (Researchgate or LinkedIn) ? Well, unlikely the library can succeed at that ! I don’t do anything in the way of supporting the social networking sites yet Researchgate updates my scientific profile almost daily and Google Scholar at least weekly, without any effort on my part. So the library pays $50,000 a year to maintain the digital commons and one staff member to compete in an arena where the library is already outclassed. This is the cost of at least 10-16 journals at Elsevier prices and 30 journals at the scientific society journal prices. In this digital common helpful ? Maybe to somebody, but I never use my digital commons nor that of anyone else as a place to find a published paper.
So to be “in touch” with the library user, the library staff now makes short movies of how to use or access library facilities and capabilities. Helpful ? Not in the slightest. Not anything I can read or skim through to find needed or desired information but a short movie. I have to sit in front of my computer and watch the whole thing to see if there is any helpful content, and no way to capture essential information as one might from an online or written document. So those who manage my research library have lost sight of the value of the printed word. Why ?
And to ensure I get the point, the head of libraries, at great cost to the University, has moved stacks upon stacks of books to long term storage, creating nice open spaces where there used to be a library. The library needs all that open space so that the students will have another student union, right next to the student union. So the students have nice “comfy” place to hang out, but no longer know what a library looks like unless they go to the public library. And now to get a book from storage, I have to wait a week. But I can book my request to get the book from storage over the internet immediately.