The Library is, Dead, L'ong Live the Library! ThePractice of, Academic Librarianship and theDigital evolutionby Lyman Ross and Pongracz Sennyey

Available online 12 February 2008

As a direct consequence of the digital revolution,academic libraries today face competition as

information providers. Using Richard N. Foster'stechnology S curves as the analytical model, this

article shows that academic libraries are in themidst of discontinuous change by questioning anumber of assumptions that support the currentpractice of academic librarianship. The authors

challenge these assumptions, and analyze themanner in which digital communications affect

academic libraries.

Lyman Ross is a Systems Librarian, University of VermontLibraries, Bailey/Howe Library, University of Vermont,

Burlington, VT 05405-0036, USA<lyman.ross@uvm.edu>;

Pongracz Sennyey is a Associate Director of Libraries,Furman University 3300 Poinsett Highway,

Greenville, SC 29613-3004, USA<pongracz.sennyey@furman.edu>.

The Journal of Academic Librarianship, Volume 34, Number 2, pages 145-152

INTRODUCTION

It has become clich6 to say that the digital revolution haschanged the nature of information, but the fact remains that ithas. The prevalent format, the speed of information creation,delivery and dissemination, and user needs and expectationshave all changed. It has transformed scholarly communicationas scholars adapt their teaching and research strategies to thenew information environment. It is facilitating an increase inscholarly output in fields that were already expanding fasterthan libraries' ability to collect. Furthermore, it is enablingresearchers to share vast quantifies of raw research data.Researchers are turning away from traditional publishingvenues and are opting to disseminate their findings and datain community vetted forums. As a consequence, libraries nowface competition as information providers. The academicaudience is no longer captive. Students and scholars canincreasingly bypass the library to satisfy their informationneeds. These changes are disruptive, as they challenge thetraditional role, purpose, and operations of the library, whichtogether amounts to a paradigm shift.

Richard N. Foster, postulates the thesis, known as technol-ogy S curves, to explain how technological advances succeedeach other in the marketplace (Fig. 1)1. Foster presents acompelling model with which to interpret the changinginformation landscape. According to this theory, new technol-ogies perform poorly in their early days when compared withthe dominant technology. However, after a period of slowimprovement, the performance of the emerging technologyimproves exponentially and quickly outperforms the old.Substantive yields in improvement are observed for a perioduntil the performance of the new technology tapers off in turn,and diminishing returns set in. It is at the take-off point of thecurve that new technologies tend to replace old ones in adiscontinuous fashion. This is also the point when incumbentsare most vulnerable, because they are penalized for switchingtoo early, but risk falling behind when the new technologytakes off in an exponential fashion2 . Looking at librarianship inthis paradigm, the profession has reached a point of diminish-ing returns as it continues to tinker with its traditional protocolsand services, while emerging technologies are improving at anexponential rate.

March 2008 145

Figure 1Technology S Curve

2._

0 5 10 15Effort

Libraries initially underestimated the importance of Websearching technologies, such as Altavista and Google, andcontinue to underestimate the significant collections being builtonline. While Libraries were quick to leverage the Internet tooutsource and to enhance access to online databases, catalogs,and serials, our patrons' information habits shifted as newoptions were made available through the Intemet3 . Theirinformation seeking habits are formed well before they arriveon campus and exploit a host of new sources, many with solidscholarly credentials, courtesy of the open access movement.Whether or not one accepts the hype behind Web 2.0; it isimpossible to ignore the range of communities, individuals, andcorporations that are sharing information on the Internet. Whilecritics are quick to point out the egregious errors and outrightdistortions found online, the collective wisdom of the Web isoften correct 4; ignoring the value of Web as a research tool isboth hypocritical and a losing strategy. These new'technologiesand the behaviors they engender are transforming the Wayscholarly journals, music, news, film, and television aredistributed.

Yet in the face of these changes, much of the professionremains tethered to a set of assumptions that are no longer valid.Misled by the large number of patrons- passing through thebuilding and comforted by past successes, the profession istempted to project from them an assured position within theworld of scholarly communications. Gate counts provide a falsesense of relevance. Closer analysis indicates that most patrons

5entering the library are not using library resources or servicesThey are buying coffee in our cafes, reading e-mail on ourterminals, socializing with friends, or using group studies. Norcan we derive a sense of security based on historical longevity.While the history of libraries harkens back for millennia,academic research libraries are a product of the 19th century,and the large collections we see today were built in the 1960sand 1970s

DISCUSSION

Libraries began as a way of distributing a scarce and expensiveresource. The image of a medieval library with its tomes in

chains is the very symbol of what the popular imaginationregards as a strange and ignorant time, whereas in reality, the"chains are indicative of a scarce- and' expensive commodity,written information. As we all know, the invention of printinggreatly reduced the cost of reproducing information but it alsoincreased its volume and so libraries continued to grow andprosper as a way to share what remained a costly commodity.Faced with ever growing collections, librarians devisedcl!assification,and cataloging systems that,would make senseof the world's knowledge. This was the. age of positivism wheneach advance in science and literature wVas seen as new andimportant. In this environment, libraries were regarded aslaboratories of the mind, or the hearts, of universities andpreserving information seemed a very important task. Thusacademic libraries purchased and preserved materials, even if ithad little current interest, for a later day, creating what is nowknown as a "long tail."

The Intermet has made a significant shift in the environmentin which libraries find themselves and is making ourprofessional assumptions seem as foreign as a medievalmanuscript in chains. The Internet has lowered the -cost ofpropagating information to negligibl6 'levels 7 . This factdiminishes the value of local collections and services. Librariesare- no longer islands of information,, but one among manynodes through which information flows to the users. Thus thereplicative effort invested by each library in 'collecting,organizing, and providing information"is becoming a thing ofthe0past. A single player could:provide these services regardlessof the, patrons' geographic location. There are no technicalobstacles for jobbers to provide the journal content, manage theaccess, design the user interface, and federate searching tolibrary journal collections. This is the sarmfe dilemma that manyplayers in the information marketplace are struggling withalready, as the examples of the effect of Netflix on Block-buster's fortunes, or the Internet's effect on the news industry,illustrate. Libraries, however, still operate under the assumptionthat their physical location is critical, when in reality their"placement on campus is progressively less important. The shiftfrom print to electronic serials begun in the early 1990s is aharbinger of things to come as soon as the scholarly monographshifts f•rmats as well.

"The internet has made a significant shift in the.environment in which libraries find themselves

and is making our professional assumptionsseem as foreign as a medieval manuscript in

chains."

But the competitive market environment is the mostsignificant change libraries face today. This is altogetherunprecedented in the history -of librarianship. Until the adventof the Intemet, academic libraries had.no competition and theirpatrons were a captive audience. Students and faculty eitherlearned the protocols and organizational principles of thelibrary, no matter how esoteric or complex, or did without. Intoday's environment simplicity, efficiency and transparency,combined with savvy marketing, have become critical factors inpatrons' decisions in selecting information resources. Ease of

146 The Journal of Academic Librarianship

access is often considered more important than quality. Thususers eschew authoritative print reference sources for Internetones of lower quality. The new market also means thatcompetition is not a one-time phenomenon, but rather a presentand future reality. Librarians must now confront- disruptiveinnovation as a matter of routine.

As Jerry Campbell points out, the scholarly monographremains the anchor of the academic librarys: Looking at currentevidence, one may conclude that the print scholarly monographis secure for the foreseeable future-the number of titles andeditions grew substantially from 2002 through 2004 and thetrend is expected to continue 9, while e-books have failed toacquire more than a toehold in the market10 . Nevertheless, theprint scholarly monograph hinges on an unsustainable financialmodel' 1 ; a growing number of libraries are' purchasingelectronic monographs; and many scholarly works are con-sulted more often than read cover to cover, including referenceworks, many science books and textbooks 12. Although currenttechnologies, such as PDF and e-book readers, have failed tosupplant the print codex, interest in the future of the e-bookremains high on the part of business, funding agencies,technologists, and the public at large' 3 . Furthermore, disserta-tions which are a source of many scholarly monographs areavailable online in increasing numbers. Considering the widespectrum of disruptive change that electronic scholarly mono-graphs would force upon the library, it may be wiser to assumethat it will change, rather than bet on its immutability.

Thus, the shift to a digital environment brings the veryidentity of the librarian under question. Librarianship was builtupon an ethos of service, but service, can no longer be deliveredeffectively without the application of technology. Libraries mustcreate a more compelling Web presence that attracts users. Acombination of computing expertise has to be harnessed in theinterests of delivering effective service that will provide acompetitive advantage. In fact, a misplaced service ethos tetherslibrarians to services no longer desired by the majority of libraryusers. The decline in reference questions is a telling sign that'library efforts are misdirected 4 . The nature of the questionsbeing asked indicates that they are driven more by structuralbarriers that libraries themselves impose between the patron andinformation, e.g., poorly designed and inconsistent computerinterfaces, confusing buildings, and professional jargon-manyof which were meant to add value to the information in. thelibrary. Moreover, information literacy classes are attended onlywhen mandatory and open workshops are ignored15 . Thousandsof students successfully complete their degrees without thebenefit of a single information literacy session. The value addedby extensive cataloging records is also questionable. Librariansesteem a thorough catalog entry, but patrons are more oftenconfused than informed by library conventions1 6. At the sametime, the Web portal is maintained by 'overstretched systemsunits, even though it is the principal resource for the majority ofacademic patrons' 7 .

Although competing for the same patrons, there aresignificant differences between the commercial players andthe library. The profit motive is an obvious difference, after alllibrarians' paychecks are not tied to the information market-place. Success will not yield raises, though abject failure mayconceivably result in job losses. Perhaps less obvious, butarguably more important, is that in the commercial sphere themarket players know that any misstep can yield rapid changes inthe business venture. Altavista lost its preeminence very rapidly

once Google arrived on the market, and there is little to preventGoogle's sudden demise if any of its competitors were to peddlea better search algorithmn18. There is also a difference in thescale of resources. For instance, in 2005, total book sales areestimated at $25 billion19 and academic publishers wereresponsible for about 12 percent of total sales ($3 billion). Bycomparison, Google's estimated revenue for 2006 is $9.6billion.

As stated above, the shift fromr"a predominantly analoginformation environment to a predominantly digital environ-'ment has a direct effect on library services. In a digitalenvironment, the obstacles, or friction 20 , to the transmission ofinformation are significantly lower than in an analog environ-ment. This observation has two implications to library services:services that lowered friction in an analog environment do notnecessarily have the same effect in a digital environment; andthe Internet, by definition, is a distributed and universallyaccessible medium; and therefore efforts to centralize informa-tion miss the point21 . For example, the intervention of thereference librarian lowered friction on the path to accessingcomplex print indexes, but they now increase friction on thepath to accessing digital databases. A better solution in thedigital world would be designing effective, standardizedinterfaces. In a similar vein, library collections came intoexistence because they offered patrons a relatively convenient,cost effective, and necessarily centralized access to information.In the emerging digital environment, the costs of information(both in financial terms and in terms of obstacles to access) aredecreasing and its availability is only a "click away."

The shift to a new information environment will require harddecisions from library administrators 22 . Considerable realloca-tion of human resources is in order. Like medieval scriptoriaafter Guttenberg, entire services should disappear in the face ofobsolescence. Libraries should also consider opening itsprofessional, ranks to nonlibrarians, unless library schoolsrapidly revan3p the curriculum to reflect the new competitiveenvironment2 . High-level skills in marketing, systems, and anew competitive attitude, so uncharacteristic of the traditionallibrarian, are now needed. The library profession needs a morecompelling raison d'etre than overseeing glorified study halls orcomputer labs as a vision of its future. Library buildings, intowhich so many universities have invested untold millions, standvulnerable to repurposing once its last anchor - the printacademic monograph - is digitized24 .

The authors also recognize that there are factors in theanalysis of the profession's, underlying assumptions thatdampen the urgency for change. Universities are known fortheir institutional inertia, and; at most institutions, adminis-trators are distracted by more urgent needs than changesaffecting libraries. The cultural value attributed to libraries givespause to administrators with a propensity to impose changes,after all who wants to be known as the destroyer of a culturalicon 25 ? Moreo'ver, copyright law provides a perverse lever forpublishers to slow the adoption of new scholarly paradigms thatchallenge their preeminence in the marketplace. Publishers ofboth scholarly monographs and serials have a vested financialinterest in making sure that they maximize their investments -which is only natural in a capitalist market - and will resistchanges, such as open access, for as long as those are perceivedto damage their commercial prospects. Libraries play animportant role in the accreditation piece where collection size,staffing, etc. provide concrete measures of performance.

March 2008 147

Accrediting bodies have reassured the library community bypicking up the theme of information literacy, thus assuring thislargely library based enterprise a future for at least the near term.Nevertheless, these factors may not be enough to sustain thestatus quo in an environment which can change with breath-taking speed.

ANALYSIS

Three areas central to the traditional identity of academiclibraries are most immediately affected by the transition from ananalog to a digital environment: services, the collection, and thelibrary as a place. It is on these fronts that the library's role andvalue were maximized in the analog environment,, when the-print journal and the bound monograph reigned supreme. Thetransition to a digital environment. fundamentally affects allthree by virtue of the fact that in a digital environment the locusof value shifts elsewhere. A closer analysis of how this- shiftaffects libraries is warranted for future decisions and has to bedriven by a thorough and franc understanding of the signifi-cance and implications of this shift.

"Three areas central to the traditional identity.ofacademic libraries are most immediately-

affected by the transition from an analog to adigital environment: services, the collection and

the library as a place."

SERVICES

The catalog is perhaps the most heavily used and expensiveservice any library provides. It is costly both in terms oftechnology and in terms of human resources. Not surprisingly,libraries have devoted a great deal of time, energy, and moneytoward reducing the expense of creating and maintaining thecatalog. Already in the late nineteenth century, librarians wereimagining ways to dilute cataloging costs by sharing catalogingrecords 26. These schemes remained impractical- until theestablishment of the first bibliographic utility in 1971 and thewidespread adoption of automated library systems in the 1980s.Although shelf-ready plans permit considerable cost savings byoutsourcing and streamlining much of the work, there remainsmuch dissatisfaction with the catalog 27 .

The successful transition from card catalogs to. onlinecatalogs obscures the very conservative nature of the catalogingrules and the MARC record that are the foundations of thelibrary catalog. Cataloging practices developed in the nine-teenth century were carried over into the OPAC largelyunchanged. As libraries automated, records in catalog drawersbecame MARC records with more emphasis on display thansearching or data normalization 28. Books continued to betreated as revered physical objects and so were identified notonly by title but by size, pagination, and publisher. Theemphasis on inventory control resulted in precise known itemsearching, but they worked against users who approached theOPAC as a resource discovery tool29 . For the first generation ofOPAC users, familiar with library card catalogs, and noexperience searching computer databases, the OPAC seemed apowerful tool.

Yet for a variety of reasons, the OPAC has failed to evolve,and for today's users, weaned on Yahoo and Google, the OPACseems oddly out-of place. It is difficult to search, its conventionsare arcane and its technology dated., They have a Web veneer,but in contrast with current Web search tools, they retain theunderlying structures of the original 1970s product. Basic fea-tures such as spell checking, context sensitive help and search"suggestions, long desired,; remain largely absent3 °.

",..for a variety of reasons the OPAC has failed

to evolve, and'for today's users, weaned onYahoo and Google,'the,OPAC seems oddly out of

place."'

-Ultimately, the OPAC works reasonably well as an inventorytool. It-is far more precise than Google for many types of knownitem searches. However, if we expect it to work as a resourcediscovery.tool, then it fails.-Its contents are limited in general tothe holdings of the institution. For undergraduate students, thismay be enough, but graduate students and faculty need access tomore resources than most institutions can afford to purchase.Furthermore, all patrons now have access to databases that arefar richer. Some,. like WorldCat, suffer -from many of theproblems associated with the OPAC, but others such as Amazonand Google offer a rich discovery environment. As with mostInternet search -services, -they are geared toward discoverybecause'their business depends upon it.

To date, attempts to enrich the catalog have been,limited-tobook covers, tables of -contents and occasional attempts tocatalog ephemera, articles, and other nontraditional materials.Such information, is useful but fails to improve the underlyingnature of research where each discovery opens paths to newmaterials. This is the basic concept behind Google and ISI'sScience Citation Index, which use the relationships betweeninformation objects- to enhance discovery. Following thismodel, ýan enriched OPAC would include -bibliographies thatwould link outward to additional resources, such as scholarlyreviews, -but also be mined to, create more effective rankings.Although social bookmarking is a method being investigated 3 l,unless it becomes a standard research method, it risks becominga volunteer effort-that will Wither from neglect.

Considering current limitations in the OPAC, it should be asurprise that libraries continue to promote their catalogs asdiscovery tools. To get a glimpse of a richer future, we shouldconsider Googleý Scholar.; For all its faults and limitations, itdoes something that no library system can match. It allows us toseamlessly search a wide variety, of information from PubMedand Open Worldcat to Science Direct and Blackwell and links tothe underlying articles. A user with the right IP address canretrieve commercial and open access scholarly information andyet remain blissfully unaware of the Library's role in licensingthem. Libraries can upload their holdings and OpenURL serveraddresses to Google to enhance access but increasingly this willbe irrelevant as more publishers open their sites to Google'sindexing agents. It also provides book records from WorldCat,which in tum, finds the nearest library that owns it. GoogleScholar provides an eye-opening example of the issues raisedby the obsolescence of the OPAC and traditional indexing

148 The Journal of Academic Librarianship

services. And in contrast with the OPAC, Google and itscompetitors provide ample evidence that they understand thedire consequences of not developing their products. Chances arewe have only seen the tip of its potential. To a great'extent, theOPAC, in its current manifestation, can continue to exist-for aslong as the scholarly monograph remains its analog format. Theeventuality of the scholarly monograph crossing the digitalfrontier implies a high risk that the library catalog will becomeirrelevant.

Another critical library service shaken by the transition to adigital environment is reference. In the 1990s when the effects ofthe Internet were first being experienced, there was a widely heldview that reference services would be outsourced or managedthrough cooperative networks so that users might have 24/7assistance32 . Instead something unexpected happened, referenceservices dropped precipitously 33.- This decrease was caused inpart by a demographic dip, yet as the current undergraduatepopulation rebounds, the use of reference services has notrecovered to 1990 levels. There appear to, be several reasons' forthese changes. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the term paper isassigned less often, replaced by exams and group'projectsrequiring less research3 4. When students are required to performresearch, they are able to bypass the library as the Web now offersýmany competing sources of information. While much maligned,-Wikipedia affords easy access to useful information; itsbibliographies and external links can lead users to authoritativesources of information. Although not as easy to search as Internetsearch engines, the wide availability of full text and bibliographicdatabases has made research easier to perform. Electronicjournals are easier to use than their print and microfilmcounterparts, and the universe of open access content is growingat a rapid clip. Library Web sites have lowered the barriers foraccess to information, decreasing the need for reference services.

Librarians have attempted to redress this trend by offering e-mail and chat reference services, but even the, successfulprograms do not begin to make up for the accumulated decreasein traffic at reference desks3 '. Increased efficiencies, -animproving Web presence, and the'increasing reliance on Webforms have also made patrons more self-sufficient. Ascollections and services go online and libraries' Web presencecontinues to adapt to the new medium, traditional service pointsshould fade into oblivion.

To counter the decrease in demand, alternative roles had tobe found to justify existing, staffing levels at public services.One such alternative is the information literacy movement. Butif reference requests are falling, and research is becoming easierto perform, why should there be an increased need forinstruction? To date, libraries have been remarkably successfulat selling this initiative and, as it is now enshrined inaccreditation standards, its future for the short-term seemsguaranteed, despite the fact that continual refinement of thelibrary's Web presence should obviate the need for this service.

In each case, these services are becoming vestiges of ananalog environment, propped up by pillars made of clay. Whilecataloging and reference indeed provided tangible and muchvalued services, in the digital environment they are a source offriction, supported by anachronistic practices, rationalesanchored in an analog paradigm, and face, obsolescence.

COLLECTIONS

In the analog environment, the mission of the ,library was, tocollect monographs, serials, and other information artifacts. The

larger the collection, the better the chances of it meeting thefleeting needs of patrons. In the case of serials, the caliber of thecollection was not only determined,by the number of titles butalso by the length of the runs. Libraries assumed that much ofthe material they purchased, had lasting value and would beeither unavailable or more costly in the future. This notion wasstrengihened by anecdotal accounts of seemingly worthlesscollections used for unintended purposes, such as Holocaustsurvivors and their families using the New York PublicLibrary's European telephone directory collection to trackrelatives and survivors36 .In effect, librarians were building longtails of information and the length of the tail became thedistinguishing feature of libraries; the pride of librarians.

Although no library has ever enjoyed infinite acquisitionsbudgets, the size of many budgets, especially in the 1970s, waslarge enough to make it a real challenge to spend them withinthe boundaries of a fiscal year. Blanket orders and subjectprofiles were created to outsource cumbersome selectionprocesses,which hindered the speedy expenditure of allocatedresources, notwithstanding their wasteful nature. The "GreatLibraries" of the nation had the largest collections and longesttails, small libraries had but shadow collections, and theirpatrons were left wanting..

The shift from analog to digital information alters many ofthese factors, granted, the scholarly monograph's predominantformat remains the print codex and a substantive number ofserials have'yet to make the switch to the digital medium. Butenough has already changed for us to garner a good sense ofthe implications of digital collections: Government Documentsand a large number of serials have already made the switchand a substantive,;number of new resources have been borndigital. Foremost among the implications of this shift is thefact that most patrons favor digital formats over print for manyof their information needs3 7. For patrons, the main concern isaccess to the information, which they want now. Fleetingneeds result in a disregard to the long debate engaged bylibrarians over access versus ownership: to the patron there isno such dichotomy.

Digital collections-are insensitive to geographic boundaries.Location, organization, and management are irrelevant in thenew medium. Libraries no longer need to balance theefficiencies: of a central, all encompassing collection with theconvenience of departmental libraries. All patrons now enjoythe same level of access to the collection that was once reservedfor the few. Similarly, government documents collections andthe federal depository system 'make less and less sense in anenvironment in which a centralized electronic collection canserve dispersed networked users more effectively. Thus thelibrary' traditional mission of warehousing collections, aroundwhich so many of the library's services and Operations revolve,is challenged as the physical, collection is subsumed by thedigital one.

"...the library' traditional mission ofwarehousing collections, around which so manyof the library's services and operations revolve,

is challenged as the physical collection issubsumed by-the digital one."

March 2008 149

Since digital collections are seldom bought, but rather rented,the concept of building collections becomes anachronistic. Adigital library assembles a series of rental contracts that meetcurrent patron needs, renewed or cancelled according tonegotiable terms. The majority of these contracts provide accessto collections, rather than individual -titles. Consequently,collections can be assembled and cancelled with little effort, inno time, and without physical constraints. As a result,, todayeven small libraries can provide access to collections so vast thatthe number of titles no longer distinguishes the great from thelesser libraries 38. In a digital environment, the distinguishingcharacteristic of great libraries is that they will create virtualenvironments that are compelling and efficient to use, and aresensitive to the patron's productivity.

SThese same forces are also being felt in the scholarlypublishing world and their resolution will have a profoundimpact upon academic libraries 39 . Twenty years ago, futuristHarlan Cleveland wrote an article on what he called theinformation society 4°. In it he argued that as the cost ofreproducing information dropped, information producers wouldfind that sharing information was more profitable than selling it.There are many examples of this currently on the Web, butperhaps nowhere does his logic make more sense ,than in therealm of scholarly information and open access publishing. If theopen access model's current momentum carries, and it succeeds,its impact upon libraries will be profound. It may solve thedecades old serial inflation crisis, and it will make scholarlycommunications significantly more efficient, but it will makelibrary journal collections a thing of the past. The patron thenwill have unhindered and free access to scholarly content,leaving the library out of the scholarly communications foodchain.

LIBRARY AS SPACE

The importance attributed to the "library as a place" is oftenrecited as an incantation whenever the impact of digitalcollections on libraries is discussed. Its truth is accepted asself-evident and its power to preserve the status quo leftunchallenged. There is little doubt that the library has a culturalsignificance that resonates in our society. Yet the argumentssupporting the importance of the library as place ignore theprimary function of any library building to house and provideaccess to its collections. In traditional library buildings, most ofthe space is dedicated to storage while public spaces, such asreading rooms, occupy only a small percentage of a library'ssquare footage. Although for years academic libraries havesprinkled study carrels and computer workstations among theircollections, the physical requirements of housing thousands, ormillions, of books have often resulted in large drab utilitarianspaces. The question of how to repurpose these spaces as thecollections migrate to a predominantly digital format loomslarge for those institutions unable or unwilling to construct newfacilities. The process of repurposing this space will forceacademic libraries to confront the veracity of the argumentsconcerning the intrinsic value of the place. Library directorswould be well advised to start articulating rigorous arguments assoon as possible.

SLibraries have not yet reached the stage at which their space isirrelevant, as they continue to support large circulatingcollections, and evidence suggests that this will continue for aslong as the preferred format of the academic monograph is thecodex. But print journals, reference, media, and government

documents collections are -already shrinking in size and maycease to exist altogether. Some science libraries, with predomi-nately serial based collections,' are likely to close entirely. Whilemonographic collections are more stable, many libraries areaggressively weeding their collections or sending them tostorage4 1. The effects of this change can'be seen in new libraryconstruction where the percentage of space devoted to ware-housing materials is decreasing while study areas and publicspaces increase.

In the absence of compelling arguments for new roles forlibrary buildings, other entities are bound to step into thevacuum. Some shrewd administrators seem to be taking theinitiative by proposing that the library become a center of studentservices42 .Accordingly the library becomes the "one-stop-shop"from provider of information and study space all the way to beingthe technology support center, the writing center, and even theadvising center. Others have brought in services traditionallyfound in student centers: cafes, dining facilities, meeting rooms,retail, and information spaces. Study spaces are increasing in sizeand are becoming less Spartan. While these multipurposefacilities can reverse the drop in user visits, most of the servicesare not provided by librarians nor are their operations managedby the library's administration. Libraries may become landlordsfor providers of more compelling services.

In an environment where library services are replaced by-study rooms, computer labs, and eateries, the argumentsupporting the view of the library as a place ,rings hollow.When users are drawn to the library primarily for these types ofactivities, the library will have to compete with the student centeras place, the technology center as place, and the food court asplace. If the profession fails to maintain a unique identity, thenthe library will become a legacy asset with depreciating value.

CONCLUSIONS

In postulating the technology S curves as an explanation for thebehavior of commercial enterprises, Richard N. Foster alsoobserves that many if not most companies' success and peakperformance is temporary 43 . Advances in technology yielddiscontinuous progression and inevitable turmoil amongindividual companies, as their fate shifts from success in.exploiting a new technology to stasis, and then loss as new, andbetter, technologies are exploited by the competition. Hisanalysis points out that established companies do not retain theadvantage in the competitive marketplace, precisely because asense of comfort and complacency tends to set in once a giventechnology starts yielding fortunes-which become blinders asemerging companies that exploit newer technologies are under-estimated as viable competitors until it is too late. Might the factthat 'so many of the points made in this article were originallyarticulated in the literature years ago, without changes in thepractice of the profession, not be evidence of complacency?What catalyst will be necessary for the profession to realize that anew paradigm means radical changes?

Telling evidence that,libraries are facing a technology Scurve can be found in OCLC's Perceptions of Libraries and,Information Resources44..When asked which sources ofinformation they' used, the study found that 73 percent ofcollege students used the physical library but only 47 percentused the online library compared to 75 percent for Internetsearch engines 45. Furthermore, 89 percent begin their searchwith a search engine while only 2 percent begin their research ata Library Web site46 .When asked which sources they preferred,

150 The Journal of Academic Librarianship

72 percent answered search engines, 14 percent the physicallibrary, and 10 percent the online library 47. Libraries remain' animportant source of information for college students but one thatlags far behind Internet search engines. Furthermore, their clearpreference for online information does not extend to onlinelibraries. Clearly libraries are not keeping apace 'of userexpectations in this area.

SIn recognition of the new competitive environment in whichlibraries now operate, many libraries are already experimentingwith new service models, workflows, and building redesigns.Among these, it is worth mentioning the plethora of digitalinformation services being implemented in many libraries 49; thewide-spread adoption of new acquisitions and processingmodels, such as shelf-ready books, that have yielded efficien-cies in processing workflows, and the recent construction andrepurposing of many libraries across the nation. But as Fosterpoints out, once established entities recognize the competitivethreat in which they operate, their reflex is to fine-tune the time-proven model - obsolete though it may be - rather thanrecognizing that the marketplace has made a discontinuousswitch to an altogether new model. The question of whetherthese changes are sufficient to reposition the academic libraryon the new "S curve" of the digital information paradigmremains unanswered and the authors are unconvinced of manyof the changes being brandished at this point50 .,

"...once established entities recognize thecompetitive threat in which they operate, theirreflex is to fine-tune the time-proven model -

obsolete though it may be - rather thanrecognizing that the marketplace has made adiscontinuous switch to an altogether new,

model."

The questions and challenges raised in this article' areparticularly compelling because libraries lost the first roundin the new competitive environment: libraries offer, bettercontent for the task at hand, yet patrons flock elsewhere.Monetary costs are obviously not the, issue, for patrons, afterall Google and Lexis-Nexis are equally free from theirpoint of view. Academic librarianship needs to fundamen-tally revise its practices to become competitive in a digitalenvironment.

Acknowledgments: The authors wish to thank Paul Philbin,William Strait, John Abbott, Wilson Stahl, and Jane Love fortheir patient and insightful comments as the manuscript for thisarticle evolved into its current form.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. Richard N. Foster, Innovation: The Attacker's Advantage, SummitBooks, New York, 1986.

2. Eric D. Beinhocker, The Origin of Wealth, Harvard Business SchoolPress, Boston, 2006, pp. 254-258.

3. John Schuler argues that the digital "...revolution results in a newdialectic between those who produce and distribute information andthose who seek to use it." His argument is about GovernmentDocument repositories, but it is a most relevant argument. See "The

Politicaland Economic Future of Federal Repository Libraries" TheJournal ofAcademic Librarianship 31, 4 (2005) 377-82.

4.,Daniel J. Cohen & Roy Rosenzweig, "Web of Lies? Historical-Knowledge on the Intemet,"'First Monday 10 (December 2005):

12.5. An unpublished study by. the authors of Web use on public access

computers at the University of Vermont's Bailey/Howe Libraryfound- that the most heavily visited domain was the University atlarge, excluding the library, followed by Facebook, with theLibrary's domain in third place. This was true despite the fact thatthe library's Web site was the homepage for all browsers and loadedwhenever a user logged on to a computer. In addition, theBurlington Free Press's Web site got slightly more use than Lexis/Nexis both of which were outdistanced by the Onion.

6. Arthur T. Hamlin, "University Library in the United! States,"University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadephia, 1981 For amore recent view see Lowry, Charles B. "When's thisParadigm' Shift Ending?" portal: Libraries and the Academy

S2, 3 (2002) vii-xii. , ,7. Floridi, Luciano. "A Look Into the Future of ICT" Information

Society, Jan/Feb2007, Vol. 23 Issue 1, pp. 59-64.8. Jerry Campbell, Changing a Cultural Icon: The Academic Library

as a Virtual Destination, Educause 41 (January/February 2006): '1.9.Bowker Annual, (Medford,. Information Today, Inc., NJ, 2006),

p. 516.,10. There are also important legal and social issues, in addition to the

technological hurdles, to the success of e-books. See Clifford Lynch,,"The Battle to Define the Future of the Book in the Digital World"First Monday, (June 2001) 6, 6.

11. Jason Epstein "Books@Google"' in The New York Review of Books53, 16.

11.In one instance, the textbooks'are actually free to students as thepublisher generates their profits from advertising. Owuor, Elizabeth"Online College Texts are Free,, but Not Free From Ads" inChristian Science Monitor (Oct 12 2006) http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1012/p05sOl-legn.html.

13. Clifford Lynch "Battle to Define the Future of the Book in theDigital World" First Monday (June:2001), 6, 6) and Jason Epstein"tFuture of Books" MIT Technology Review January (2005) (onlinehttp://www.technolog•,review.com/read-article.aspx?id='14064&ch=infotech). , ,

14. ARL statistics report a 40 percent decline in the median number ofreference questions.reported by members between 1997 and 2003.See Steve Coffinan and Linda Arret "To Chat or Not to Chat-Taking Another-Look at Virtual Reference" Searcher. 12, 7 (July/August 2004) 38-46.

15. One indication of why this is true maybe the discrepancy betweenlibrarians evaluation of their patrons search skills and patrons' ownassessment. Nora Paul and Kathleen A. Hansen "Reclaiming NewsLibraries" Library Journal vol. 107, no. 6 (2002) pp. 44-46.

16. Holly Yu & Margo'Young, The Impact of Web Search Engines onSubject :Searching in OPAC, Information Technology andLibraries December 23 (4) (2004): 164-180.

17. Charles Martell "The- Ubiquitous User:. A Reexamination ofCarlson's Deserted Library" Portal: Libraries and the Academy,vol. 5,,no. 4 (200), pp. 441-453.

18. Wade Roush, Search Beyond Google, Technology Review (March2004): http://www.technologyreview.com/read-article.aspx?id=13505.

19.Bowker.Annual (Medford, NH: Information Today, Inc, 2006).522.

20.Floridi, Luciano. "A Look Into the Future of ICT" InformationSociety, Jan/Feb2007, Vol. 23 Issue 1, pp. 59-64.

21. Wendy Pradt Lougee, Diffuse Libraries: Emergent Roles for theResarch Library in the Digital Age Council on Library andInformation Resources Reports (August 2002) accessed at http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub108/publ 08.pdf.

22. Brinkley Franklin & Terry Plum, '"Library Usage Patterns in the

March 2008 151

Electronic Information Environment," Informationresearch 9 (4)(July 2004).

23. Lawrence Heilprin advocated for such changes more than twentyyears ago. See "The Library Community at'a Technological andPhilosophical Crossroads: Necessary and Sufficient Conditions forSurvival" originally published in 1980 and republished in-Journalof the American Society,for Information Science 42, :8 (1991)566-573. For a more recent clamor for change see Changing rolesof Academic and Research Libraries as part of ACRL's Future ofAcademic Libraries and Higher Education in http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlissues/futureofacademiclibrariesandhighereducation/changingroles.htm).

24. Jerry Campbell, "Changing a Cultural Icon: The Academic Libraryas a Virtual Destination" Educause 41 (1) (January/February 2006).

25. Though that alone should not be a reason for solace, as Campbellaptly warns, after all there is precedent to academic libraries beingsubjected to draconian cuts. See Jerry Campbell "Changing aCultural Icon."

26. "Cataloging-In-Source" Encyclopedia of Library and InformationScience, vol. 4, (Marcel Dekker, NY, 1970), pp. 224-231.

27. Roy Tennant, Demise of the Local Catlog Library Journal (7/15/2007). 71

28. Roy Tennant "MARC Must Die" Library Journal (10/15/2002) and"MARC Exit Strategies" in Library Journal (11/15/2002).

29. Karen Coyle & Diane Hillman, Resource Description and Access(RDA). Cataloging Rules for the 20th Century D-Lib Magazine(January/February 2007).

30. Kristin Antelman, Emily Lynema, & Andrew K. Pace, Towarda Twenty-First Century Library Catalog Information Technologyand Libraries (September 2006): 128-139 and University ofWindsor "ILS Assessment: A Background Document" (June 1,2007) (found at http://www.accessola2.com/olita/insideolita/wordpress/?p=60).

31. Melissa L. Rethlefsen "Tags Help Make Libraries Del.icio.us"Library Journal (September 2007) http://www.libraryjoumal.com/article/CA6476403.htm1 and Xan Arch "Creating the AcademicLibrary Folksonomy: Put Social Tagging to Work at -YourInstitution" ACRL News (vol. 68, 2) February 2007 http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs/crlnews/backissues2007/february07/libraryfolksonomy.cfm.

32. One of the first efforts at creating a cooperative virtual referencenetwork was the Library of Congress's CDRS service see"Reference 24/7: Libraries Test Collaborative Digital ReferenceService", Library of Congress Information Bulletin (October 2000)http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0010/ref.html.,In 2002, this became ajoint venture with OCLC which markets the service under the nameQuestion Point see http://www.questionpoint.org/ and Jeffrey T.Penka "The Technological Challenges of Digital Reference" D-Lib(vol. 9, 2) 2003 http://www.dlib.org/dlib/february03/penka/02penka.html. There have been a number of successful imple-mentations of this service most notably among public librarieswhich still believe it will be a long-term success story, see PeterWebster "Interconnected and Innovative Libraries:- Factors TyingLibraries More Closely Together" Library Trends (vol 54, 3) 2006pp. 382-393.

33. ARL Statistics 2003-04 (Washington, DC: Association of Collegeand Research Libraries, 2005) http://www.arl.org/bm-doc/arl-stat04.pdf and Sandra L. De Groote, Kirstin Hitchcock and RichardMcGowan "Trends in Reference Usage Statistics in an AcademicHealth Sciences Library" Journal of the Medical Library Associa-

tion .(95,1) 2007 pp. 23-30. According to the Digital LibraryFoundation study Dimensions and use of the scholarly informationenvironment"(2002) http://www.diglib.org/pubs/scholinfo/ only 0.6percent of respondents wanted their institution to provide 24/7electronic reference service (question 16).

34. This is based upon the author's experience providing referenceservice over an 18 year period as well as conversations with facultymembers.

35. Steve Coffman and Linda Arret "To Chat or Not to Chat-TakingAnother -Look at Virtual Reference" Searcher. 12, 7 (July/August2004) 3 8-46 and Sandra L. De Groote, 'Kirstin Hitchcock andRichard McGowan "Trends in Reference Usage Statistics in anAcademic Health Sciences Library" Journal of the MedicalLibrary-Association (95,1),2007 pp. 23-30.

36. "Pre War Directories" Lodz ShtetLinks url http://www.shtetlinks..jewishgen.org/lodz/phonedir.htm. Cymbler, Jeff. "Nineteenth- andTwentieth-Century Polish Directories as Resources for Genealogi-cal Information.": Avotaynu, Spring 1997 and more generally"Bezeq's new Web site Stymies Genealogical Searches" JerusalemPost (April 25, 2007).

37. Carol Tenopir- Use and Users of Electronic Library Resources: AnOverview andAnalysis of Recent Research Studies" (Washington,DC' Council on Library and Information Resources, 2003) http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/publ20/publ2O.pdf surveys a largenumber of studies and concludes that undergraduate and graduatestudents have a strong preference for online resources.

38. Small colleges, members of large consortia, such as OhioLINK,may-have-access to larger collections than many ARL libraries.

39. Laura Brown et'al., Ithaka Report "University Publishing in aDigital Age".

40. Harland Cleveland, "Information as', Resource" The Futurist(December 1982): 34-39.

41. Paul Gherman, "The North Atlantic Storage Trust: MaximizingSpace, Preserving Collections" Portal 7 (3) (2007).

42. Miriam A. Drake, "Libraries are Alive and Thriving" Searcher 15(1) (January 2007): It is worth noting that in this interview about thefuture of libraries and their roles, there is no mention ofbibliographic instruction at all!.

43. Richard N. Foster, Innovation: The Attacker's Advantage (SummitBooks, New York, -1986) Clayton Christiansen The Innovator'sDilemma is even more sanguine about the odds of legacyorganizations remaining competitive over the long-term.

44. Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources (2005),http://www.oclc.org/reports/2005perceptions.htm".

45. Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources (2005) http:/www.oclc.org/reports/2005perceptions.htm A-05.

46. Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources (2005) http://www.oclc.org/reports/2005perceptions.htm A-14.

47. Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources (2005) http://www.oclc.org/reports/2005perceptions.htm A-20.

48. Lynne Brindley, "Re-defining the Librar" Library High Tech 24(4) (2006).

49. Donatella Castelli, "Digital Libraries of the Future - and the Role ofLibraries" Library High Tech 24 (4) (2006).

50. In this competitive environment, libraries are challenged to providepatrons with something better than whatlother players, like Google,make available in the information marketplace. This challenge isunprecedented in the history of librarianship. See John MacColl"Google -Challenges for Academic Libraries" Ariadne 46 (January2006).

152 The Journal of Academic Librarianship

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