Presentation by Mauren Wade.

1. The changing face of
libraries: an academic
perspective
Maureen Wade
Director of Library Services LSE
5 August 2009

2. Changing face of academic
libraries
• Changing HE environment
• Shift from print to electronic information
• Changing expectations and behaviour of
library users
• Pressure on budgets and space

3. Changing HE environment
• Government agenda on expansion of
universities
• The student as customer – improving
the student experience
• Government pressure to produce and
disseminate research – linked to
funding

4. Shift from print to electronic
information
• E-journals well-established; e-books
slower to take-off
• Libraries still managing print as well as
e-resources
• More complex resource discovery and
access issues
• Expectation of information in digital
format

5. Use of e-journals
• RIN report: E-journals: their use, value and
impact, April 2009
• UK universities spent nearly £80 million on
e-journals in 2006/07
• Estimate of 102 million articles downloaded
in one year
• Back-runs as well as current journals
increasingly available
• On-campus and remote access

6. E-books
• Availability of large collections of e-
books eg Oxford Scholarship Online
• Title-by-title acquisition of e-books for
course reading
• Availability of e-book readers: Sony,
Kindle
• Awaiting tipping point in usage of e-
books

7. Resource discovery
• Library catalogues primarily designed
for access to print books
• Library users want access to e-journals
at article level
• Libraries need to integrate access to
information in different formats
• Students and researchers expect
Google-type search options

8. Access issues
• Universities moving to streamline
access to e-resources – single sign-on
• Reciprocal access between libraries
for print collections – for e-resources
hampered by licensing conditions
• Moves by JISC, SCONUL and M25
Consortium to address this issue

9. Changing user expectations
• Most information should be available
electronically
• Google-type search functionality and
integration
• Variety of types of study space to suit
different styles of working
• Libraries will collect and manage
universities’ research outputs

10. Pressure on library budgets
and space
• Hybrid libraries – collecting print and
electronic no longer affordable
• Extra costs of VAT on e-resources and
higher-than-RPI inflation
• Pressure on space of continuing
growth of print collections
• Pressure on space and budgets of
expanding student numbers

11. How are academic libraries
meeting these challenges?
• Shift from print to electronic
information
• The Library as a place
• Financial pressures
• Managing universities’ research
outputs

12. Print to electronic – resource
discovery
• Purchase of journal records to provide
article-level searching
• Cataloguing of e-books alongside print
• Use of web 2.0 tools to highlight collections
– blogs, Delicious tags, Facebook presence
• Add-on interfaces to library catalogues – to
give Google-type searching and Amazon
functionality

14. Digitisation of print
• Collaboration with commercial
providers eg Google / Oxford
• JISC £22m digitisation programme
2004-09
• 19th century pamphlets online
• First World War poetry digital archive
• British Cartoon Archive
• Individual university fundraising

15. The Library as a place
• Services to academic staff are increasingly
delivered to the desktop
• Collaboration to reduce duplication in print
collections – UK Research Reserve project
• Focus on high-quality storage of archives
and special collections
• Design of range of study spaces to suit
diverse needs

16. Changing study space needs
• Group study – large areas and
bookable rooms
• Learning cafes – food and drink, soft
seating
• Silent areas for individual study
• Fixed PCs still required
• Wireless everywhere plus power for
laptops

21. Coping with financial
pressures
• Use of self-service
• RFID for self-service loans
• Virtual reference desk software
• Information skills via VLE
• Focussing collection policies in liaison with
academic staff
• Providing course materials online to cut
down on multiple copies

22. Library’s role to promote
research output
• Huge rise in institutional repositories of
research papers
• Universities bringing in ‘mandates’ to ensure
deposit of research papers
• Theses increasingly being made available in
institutional repositories
• Work underway on formats and metadata
standards

23. What does this all this change
mean for library staff?
• Basic values and skills remain
essential
• Leadership and strategic vision
• Effective management of people and
resources
• Subject knowledge & information
management skills
• Customer service ethos

24. New roles /skills for
library staff
• More technical knowledge of information
systems and software
• Knowledge of metadata formats and
standards – building on cataloguing
/classification
• Specialist roles emerging eg digitisation
manager, data librarian, information skills
trainer
• Marketing skills – targeting services to
specific user groups

25. Questions?