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I apologize in advance for the length of this post. I remember by typing and I didn’t want to forget anything.

Brother Can You Spare a Dime? 2009 ACRL Trends for Academic Libraries

In a smart move, the planners of this session retooled it completely from what they had planned to do a year ago (revealing one of the flaws of ACRL conferences that they are planned WAY too far in advance to get current material) to consider the effects of the global economic collapse.10 days ago, ACRL re-did its Trends document, “Strategic Thinking Guide for Academic Librarians in the New Economy.” They invited the four panelists to respond to this new document. They identified these key drivers:

Changing economics in higher education

Changing student demographics

Changes in information technology

Charles Lowry, ARL Executive Director, didn’t talk about the ACRL document but instead listed out ARL’s own environmental scan document.

• Trends in scholarly communication: budget reductions in acquisitions; new model publications beginning to have effect;faculty are innovators so build relationships with them; bring dissemination back to the academy; re-engineering library services; embed yourself in research practices; library’s role in research, training and education; large funders specify management of content

• Trends in public policy:economy and national security will be dominant; Congress and Administration to revise Bush policies; focus on technology and innovation; enhance search and access capability; focus on copyright and intellectual property; cyber infrastructure developments; difficulty in balancing competing interests; environmental; accountability and assessment. FRPA reauthorization would extend NIH rule to other agencies to counter Conyers’ House Bill 801; USA PATRIOT Act coming up, fighting the national security letter provision to let it sunset. Section 108 of Copyright may see action.
• Trends in teaching, learning and research on our campus: ran out of time to enumerate.

Deb Gilchrist, Pierce College: Deb is known as a strategic thinker. She mentioned a prophetic article from Change magazine in 2003, “Dealing with the future now,” which stressed looking ahead instead of looking at the present. (Reminds me of my favorite hockey saying, “skate to where the puck is going to be.”) Two common choices in dealing with a crisis are 1) muddle through or 2) make a radical transformation to totally reconceive our business (Rahm Emanuel’s don’t waste a good crisis philosophy).She advised looking at the broader picture before designing library services.Content is leaving us as educators; the future is in process based pedagogies, that is, teaching students how to think, and how to reason rather than how to remember facts.

Community college students are more fragile, the average age 29 at Pierce. [Reminds me again of how small the Wake bubble is, compared to the real world.] Their role is to serve as economic bridge, to do this they collaborate with public libraries.She is looking at a creative re-design of structures as they face a 12% cut at her college. They developed institutional outcomes for technology, rather than continuing to work in separate silos. She has taken to hiring to the mission, not the job description [excellent pearl of wisdom] and mainstreaming services, putting the research in front of others. Student success is what it’s all about by stepping up the librarian’s role to work side by side with faculty.

Annie Paprocki, University of Illinois, Reference Librarian

Paprocki asked how can academic librarians think strategically? The time has come for the Big Idea. (Again, don’t waste a good crisis) This economy will touch everyone and everything. The difference in this recession is everyone is in this together. Robert Reich says there is more innovation in times of depression though it might look different. Change in scholarly communications is at the tipping point; this crisis could push us over into the valley of open access.

Jose-Marie Griffiths, Dean, School of Information and Library Science, UNC-CH

Even though people will be working longer and not retiring as soon with the collapse of retirement funds, eventually we will need to replace 50% of academic librarians over the next 10 years. Up until now, library jobs have been increasing, we don’t really know if this recession will behave differently. Think of the effects on the library of institutional change; think on library’s role, what should be centralized or decentralized, (again don’t waste the crisis). Griffiths sees more and more user instruction, helping them to help themselves. Libraries are not the only game in town anymore regarding bibliographic control. See LC’s new publication,On the Record. We are about to see a cyber (I’ve never liked the word cyber) infrastructure revolution, which is included in President Obama’s main infrastructure initiative. There is a network layer, a computation layer (hardware and software), a content layer (in the infrastructure, available to all) and a tools and service layer. It is time to move broadband to deeper penetration, but the last mile is the responsibility of the institution. Technology question: where in the learning workflow can the library insert services?

Confronting the Business Lens for Accountability of General Learning as it Pertains to Information Literacy. Marilee Bresciani, San Diego State

Bresciani invited us to consider the context for accountability of general learning. Specific disciplines (Engineering, Nursing) have their own specific accountability engines, but general learning typically compares institution to institution (rankings), not outcomes. Higher Ed as a whole usually says “you just don’t understand us” and have gotten away with it up until now; but no more.

How do those in the business world evaluate the quality of their product? How could we do that with the quality of student learning and present evidence of it? What is the purpose of information literacy? How does it fit into learning expectations? [Here is where she started to drift as I’m not sure she herself understands what information literacy is.] Is it skills or knowledge?Is the disposition toward finding an answer or a process?

We should organize ourselves around the information (like food in a restaurant). Interaction with the consumer is key. A really good meal is a constant interaction to make sure the quality of the experience is optimized.Likewise, information literacy or the whole library experience.

For lunch, I went to Pike Street Market, the coolest part of town, and met the Pike Street pig.

Conflict and Consensus – Clusters of Opinions on E-books, Aaron Shrimplin, Andrew Revelle, Miami Universit, OH

I’ve often wondered why e-books have faced a much slower adoption rate than e-journals.These two young librarians wondered the same thing. They see a similar transition from print to electronic journals, just slower. Their study was meant to try to understand the motivations, attitudes and perceptions of users.Why do they use e-books, or not?

They used Q methodology to study human subjectivity, a technique not used much in libraries but in other social science disciplines. They conducted 17 in-person interviews, got 200 statements of opinion, and selected 45 of the 200. Later, 74 faculty and students did a Q sort into a forced distribution grid, and came up with 4 factors or points of view:

1)Booklovers – love books, emotional attachment to the book as physical object, like to collect and own them, don’t feel comfortable reading off the screen (predicted)

2)Technophile – love technology, gadget lovers, like e-books because they like all technology, no problem reading off screen, don’t print (predicted)

3)Research focused – academic monographs, like to search, just use parts of books, print the parts they need, no emotional attachment to the book, very practical (not predicted)

4)Interface issues – they print whatever they look at online but worry about it, resent subscription issues, resent learning new interface, but these things can be addressed (not predicted)

In 3 of the 4 factors, users don’t like to read on the screen. The authors don’t really know how new readers like the Kindle are received, because it was not specifically studied. Neither do they know what percentage of their campus fits into each factor. It was a very interesting study, regardless.

Reaching Public Service Excellence: Developing a Mystery Shopping Program To Measure Service Quality, Elizabeth Kocevar-Weidinger, Longwood University, Candice Benjes-Small, Radford University

The presentation was done in Lincoln-Douglas debate style; don’t know why.

What is mystery shopping? An incognito user of service who rates the experience.

How is it better? Intentionality of the shopper, who is trained to know what to look for.

If your students are your shoppers, are they biased either for (or against)? Students were to know what to look for and how to evaluate, also used a variety of shoppers.

Is it “legal” to mystery shop? Yes, but check with HR and IRB first.

How reliable is it? What if someone has an off day? It seems like spying, trying to catch people in bad acts.

Shopping season ran for 2 weeks each semester, results were shared with staff, supervisors, and administration. There were lots of positive responses, also areas for improvement. Results were given in the aggregate only, they did not track by individual.

RESOLVED: The Master’s Degree in Library Science is Not Relevant to the Future of the Academic Library, moderated by Jim Neal, Columbia University. This was the second debate format in a row.

Affirmative:Arnold Hirshon, NELINET, Library schools are not identifying the right people, they teach them the wrong things (too superficial), therefore libraries shouldn’t require MLS for any position.

Negative: Liz Bishoff, MLS program must emphasize education, not training, as well as critical thinking and team building skills. Research, the release of creative energy, is critical for any profession and is best begun in library school.

Rebuttal (Bishoff): Digital library is our future; it’s a matter of time, not either-or, but MLS still prepares best.

Rebuttal (Hirshorn): Research is something that you can’t teach, but you have to do. Apprenticeship and outreach are important.

Maybe it was the end of a long day, but I found this session very disappointing.

I was invited to dinner by my editor and publisher, Toni Tan of Cambria Press. I was one of the first authors to sign on with this new publisher in 2006 and they have grown exponentially since then.Toni picked my brain for over three hours, asking why libraries buy the books they do, what kind of marketing they prefer, hardcover or paperback, choice of jobbers, difference between acquisitions and collection development, what is the future of e-books, how can they get on approval plans, what do librarians think of series, and on and on! It was fun!