EDUCAUSE | EDUCAUSE CONNECT - Changing a Cultural Icon: The Academic Library as a Virtual Destination - Comments

MOBIUS reference in Campbell’s Changing a Cultural Icon: The...

Shirley K. Baker (Washington University in St. Louis) — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 11:13:31 -0600

January 25, 2006

I write as a founding and current member of the MOBIUS consortium to challenge (in an otherwise excellent article) my colleague Jerry Campbell’s interpretation of the change in MOBIUS state funding. For starters, Campbell misquotes the article he cites, describing the MOBIUS state funding as “multi-million dollar subsidy” when the actual funding was $649,530 (out of a state budget reduction of $239.2M).

Secondly, Missouri governor Blunt was well aware of the dramatic importance of the MOBIUS consortium to the state’s higher education institutions compared to the modest institutional investment. The governor judged rightly that the increase in cost to the sixty individual institutions was dwarfed by the incredible advantages of MOBIUS participation. This is very different from Campbell’s conclusion that the governor’s action represented a perception of the irrelevance of libraries. And, most outside Missouri are unaware that the MOBIUS consortium receives active support through other state agencies.

Incidentally, the damage to libraries caused by the state budget cuts was minimal compared to that in the social services that made up the bulk of the $239.2M reduction.

Shirley K. Baker
Dean of University Libraries & Vice Chancellor for Information Technology
Washington University in St. Louis
shirley.baker@wustl.edu

Not ready to relinquish our roles, yet

Teresa Fishel (Macalester College) — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 09:42:49 -0600

As a librarian who has been actively involved in Educause for a number of years, it is most welcome to see the variety of articles that have started to appear that focus on the library. This article is correct in the first sentence, "Academic libraries today are complex institutions with multiple roles..." However, there is a slight misrepresentation in making an assumption that _all_ or even many academic libraries have suffered from an "inertia" in responding to the ongoing changes brought about by the transformation to digital collections and what it means for our future. Rather than "relinquishing our role", the value that librarians provide in selecting, acquiring, and providing access to digital content is just as essential as providing and preserving the record of knowledge in both print and now electronic forms. I will agree with the author that one of the key issues academic librarians face is how to more clearly communicate with the campus community the essential role the library plays, including more clearly articulating the complexity of managing electronic content including the licensing, but also addressing the need for better discovery tools and means of connecting users across disparate systems--greatly improved by open URL systems, such as SFX, but still requiring extensive "behind the scenes" work that is much more complex than cataloging. The author states, "Librarians must widen the discussion and raise the questions concerning the future of academic libraries" and I think all academic librarians would welcome a discussion on every campus with faculty and senior administrators that would help shape a better understanding of the role of the library in collection management, scholarly publishing, institutional repositories, and the key components for instructing students on navigating the digital information universe. By having such conversations, I believe it would become clear how bright the future for academic libraries truly is.

See/Join The Discussion About this Article at ACRLog

Steven J. Bell (Temple University) — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 08:44:40 -0600

The ACRLog bloggers have posted about this article at:

http://acrlblog.org/2006/01/14/educause-review-features-academic-librari...

We encourage those who've read this article (not just librarians) to visit the post and consider adding your comments there.

Steven Bell
Philadelphia University

Changing a Cultural Icon: The Academic Library as a Virtual Destination

drupal — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 11:21:40 -0600

Deep into the digital age, academic libraries have relinquished much of their fundamental and sustaining role. For most people, including academicians, the library—in its most basic function as a source of information—has become overwhelmingly a virtual destination.