Interview on the Future of the Academic Library
Responses by

Dr. Carol Tenopir

Professor, School of Information Sciences and Interim Director, Center for Information Studies, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

November, 2003 

If you have any comments about this interview, you may contact Dr. Carol Tenopir at:ctenopir@utk.edu.

1.Question from Mary Ellen Pozzebon, Reference and Instruction Librarian at Jackson State Community College:

1. "Electronic publishing has been shaping access to scholarly information for some time. Now electronic learning is further changing the way scholarly information is being used in higher education. Can you comment on this situation and the role that libraries have in online learning?"

One of the important challenges that academic libraries face with electronic learning is to integrate collections and services into the virtual classroom. Digital collections, including e-journals, reference materials, indexes, and e-books should not stand alone on the library’s web site waiting for a student to find them. E-learning provides a new opportunity to integrate library collections into the classroom.

Librarians, working with teaching faculty, can incorporate links to relevant information resources into classes via courseware. E-reserves is one part of this picture, but by no means the only part. E-collections that are important to course content should be integrated and links provided at strategic places to e-reference services.

Research I have conducted for the NSF-National Science Digital Library validates what instructional librarians have observed—the best learning of information sources and concepts comes when it is closely tied to a specific subject and course requirements. A faculty member’s recommendation is the strongest motivating factor for undergraduate students to use a specific library resource. Information instruction is a continuous process that must be integrated into every course. E-learning is making teachers rethink their course content and teaching methods, so it is a great time for librarians to get more involved.

In some colleges the libraries are taking a leading role in helping faculty develop online learning modules through web-CT, Blackboard, or other e-learning software. At other institutions (like UT) there is a separate unit that assists and manages the course software. At still others, faculty are on their own for developing e-courses. In any of these cases, the library has a great role to play to be involved with the faculty to integrate the library into class modules.

The Public Library of Science (PLoS) is one of several efforts to try out new cost and payment models for scholarly journals. PLoS journals use an “author pays” or pay up-front model, similar to the old page charges. Authors or the author’s institution pays to have an article published (subject to peer review). PLoS journals are not the only “author pays” model. BioMedCentral is another publisher of journals using this model instead of the traditional subscription payment model. Access is then free (or “open”) to everyone. Fees per article under this model typically range from $500 to $2000. It is not clear yet if those fees will be sufficient to sustain the journals.

Other open access models include self-archiving, where authors puts their work on their own or their institutions’ server for free and open access, while the authors also pursue publishing their best work in journals. E-print archives are subject-based open access collections of scholarly work submitted by authors (and subsidized by institutions such as Cornell and Los Alamos National Laboratory.)

We are at a time in scholarly publishing where the traditional subscription model is breaking down. Experiments on other models is healthy, but there is no one magic bullet or payment model that is best in all circumstances. It costs to create scholarly literature and someone has to bear those costs—whether it is the author, the university, the library, or volunteers. We all benefit from carefully considering all possible options.

 

3. In the same vein, is this question from Barbara Dewey, Dean of Libraries at UT-Knoxville

"How are scientists using e-scholarship differently now than in the past?"

I suspect Dean Dewey knows that this topic is near and dear to me! For a long time I’ve been studying how scientists and social scientists use information in their roles as teachers, researchers, clinicians, etc. I have been fortunate to work with Donald W. King, who, with a grant from NSF, began gathering information about journal reading patterns of scientists in 1977. He and I bring this information up-to-date so, by now, we can compare changes over time. Our 2000 book (Towards Electronic Journals, SLA) brought much of the data up-to-date and we have continued to survey faculty, students, and other scientists and social scientists since then. Some of our current research can be found on my web site (http://web.utk.edu/~tenopir)

We find peer reviewed journal articles are still important to scholars, but that varies by work field. Engineers rely less on journal articles than scientists, physicians and chemists more. Physicists who are engaged in “big science” projects, such as high energy physicists, get information directly from their relatively small community of colleagues before it is published. In the past they passed preprints among each other, now they widely use e-print servers (www.arXiv.org).

E-journal systems that are designed to match the way subject experts do their work and that are convenient are readily adopted by scientists. The percentage of reading from electronic journals ranges now from 80% for astronomers to only about one-third for most social scientists. (The astronomy e-journal system is especially well designed for their users with links to large data sets, multi-media, and forward and backwards citation linking.) Under 20% of electronic scholarly article readings are from e-print servers or from author web sites, with the majority being from library-provided e-journals or e-article collections in aggregator services such as ProQuest. Subject experts now read from a greater variety of sources than ever before—a direct result of e-journal collections provided by libraries. In 1977 they read, on average articles from 13 different journals each year. By 2002 that had increased to articles from an average of 23 different journals.

Personal journal subscriptions have steadily decreased in this time period. From an average of over 6 personal subscriptions per scientist in the 1970s, each scientist now subscribes to just about 2 journals on average. (Medical faculty with clinical responsibilities subscribe to many more—about 6 on average even today.) At the same time, the number of articles read has steadily increased. They now read more than ever, but rely more on library-subsidized journals for those readings. The percent of readings from library-provided journals has increased. Readings in electronic journals are almost all in library-provided e-journals, print remains the format of choice for personal subscriptions. Readings from free, open access sources remains a small percent of total readings.

You can tell I can go on and on about this. In the last few years we have surveyed members of the American Astronomical Society, faculties at UT Knoxville, UT Medical (Memphis and Knoxville), University of Pittsburgh, and Drexel University, and are getting ready to survey members of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Our new book, Communication Patterns of Engineers (IEEE/Wiley), comes out in January 2004. Of relevance to libraries is the fact that subject experts prefer convenience and prefer the library to pay for their access. They read more than ever before, thanks in large part to electronic journals provided by their libraries. Most value peer-review.

 

4. Question from Don Craig, Dean of Libraries at Middle Tennessee State University:

"Considering the possible reduction in the importance of the academic library to the campus community (i.e., "everything I need is on the Internet"), should we be seeking ways to expand our role by: 1. Installing more general type computers to serve like a computer lab?

2. Developing a campus information portal to manage access to non-library information resources in digital format?

3. Developing for-credit classes in information research?"

At the ACRL meeting this April I was struck by talks by several small liberal arts college librarians who described how they are aggressively renewing the role of the library as place and gathering place. They are doing this by adding better computer labs, but also by adding more group study space, more power outlets, coffee shops, more comfortable seating, etc.—anything to get students into the library building.

At the same time, they recognize that a large part of the “visits” to the library collections and services, in particular by faculty, are virtual visits. The same role applies to

increasing virtual visits—add the services that users need and want. This means information portals to a variety of information types, offering “mylibrary” personalized interfaces, and offering as many e-services and sources as possible. Combine increased virtual visits (don’t forget to count these!) with increased physical library visits and the library is a busy hub of activity.

The issue of for-credit classes is more difficult. As I mentioned in an earlier question, most students seem to learn information skills better if they are integrated into their courses on a continuous basis. Many have difficulty transferring skills they learn in a general library course or beginning English 101 course to other topics or their major. This is not true of all students—certain highly motivated or interested students will certainly benefit from a for –credit course. For the majority, however, I think library instruction and resources are better integrated with the course content (as many courses as possible.)

5. Question from Mary Evelyn Lynn, Library Director at Cleveland State Community College:

"George Kuh's article in the next to last issue of College and Research Libraries dealt with the Academic library's lack of documentable relationship to the impact on "student engagement" and the documentation of application of "benchmarked Best practices" on campus. Could you comment on that?"

It has always been difficult to tie library use to student outcomes, hence the recent efforts by ARL and ACRL to create better measures for libraries. One of the reasons is that information literacy is a cumulative process that influences a student’s work and life in many indirect ways. Indirect ways are difficult to translate to direct outcomes.

One problem is that we tend to gather information on a macro level—how valuable is the library to you, how often do you use the library, etc—that rely on memory and are not tied to specific events or specific outcomes. A solution is to gather information on a more micro level. The research I do, for example, tends to focus on the last article read and we get output measures and value of that specific article reading. Extrapolations from this micro level can be made to a higher level of the value of reading articles. (Older articles and articles provided by library collections tend to be reported of higher value, by the way.)

In a library, for example, you could measure the impact of integrating library instruction on a single course outcome. If you can demonstrate the value of the library and librarian at the single course level you can better extrapolate to the value of college-wide instruction. Jacqueline Kracker (formerly librarian at UT) did this in her thesis at SIS. (Jacqueline Kracker and Peiling Wang (2002). Research anxiety and students’ perceptions of research. An Experiment. Part II. Content analysis of their writings on two experiences. JASIST. 53(4): 295-307.) Macro studies of perceived value, like the ongoing ARL sponsored LibQual, allow libraries to compare the importance of the library to their users with their users’ perceived value or level of service, plus allows libraries to compare their results with those from other libraries. They don’t tell us much about specific outcomes, but comparison across peer institutions can be a kind of best practices

Biography of Dr. Carol Tenopir

"Carol Tenopir is a professor at the School of Information Sciences at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her areas of teaching and research include: information access and retrieval, electronic publishing, the information industry, online resources, and the impact of technology on reference librarians.

She is the author of five books, including, Towards Electronic Journals: Realities for Scientists, Librarians and Publishers (Washington DC: Special Libraries Association, 2000), with Donald W. King.

Dr. Tenopir has published over 200 journal articles, is a frequent speaker at professional conferences, and since 1983 has written the "Online Databases" column for Library Journal. She is the recipient of the 1993 Outstanding Information Science Teacher Award from the American Society for Information Science/Institute for Scientific Information and the 2000 ALISE Award for Teaching Excellence.

She also received the 2002 American Society for Information Science & Technology, Research Award (for lifetime achievement in research).Dr. Tenopir holds a PhD degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois." (http://web.utk.edu/~tenopir/bio/index.html)