Information Research Weblog

Thanks to Peter Suber's Open Access News for drawing attention to Alma Swan's new Weblog. The latest entry draws attention to the role of libraries in universities and comments:

The library is a woeful brand. Look on the website of almost any UK university and the library features under 'services' (or in some cases 'facilities') if it's lucky, or has to be specifically entered into the search box if it's not. And yet it is not so everywhere. In other parts of Europe, it is common for the library to be considered part of the academic fabric of an university, rather than a service department. Senior members of academic staff assume the role of university librarian for a period and then return to their department, while another takes over. In this way, the library is embedded in the academic framework of a university and is valued in a way that seems quite different to how libraries are valued in the UK.

Alma is certainly right about the problem of finding the library on the typical UK university site, and the pattern is repeated for public libraries, which are usually to be found only as a sub-site to the local authority's pages - often with the latter intruding on sidebars to draw attention to local authority pages rather than library pages - they're a mess.

However, I've worked in places in Europe where academics have been the 'librarian', and the experience has not always been good - with the downgrading of professional librarianship, and a lack of any professionalism on the part of the academic means that the library is often way down the budget greasy pole. In any event, finding a 'university library' in some countries can be a problem, since the 'faculty library' prevails, sometimes with a 'coordinator' trying to pull it all together and usually failing. So I'm not sure that the situation is any better.

The professional librarian in UK universities was the result of a long struggle to overcome the limitations of the 'academic in charge' model and, from observation of a number of cases, it seems to me that the problem has been not the lack of professional competency, but the dreaded 'new management' paradigm, where service agreements, budgetary stringency, etc., etc., have ruled in the majority of UK universities. This 'managerial' perspective, begun in the Thatcher years and happily continued by Major and Blair - and no doubt now by Gordon Brown, has been the chief agent of the destruction of genuine academic standards in UK universities. And it is the destruction of the academic ethos that has contributed to the decline of the library in the profile of the university.