HEIRAlliance Executive Strategies Report #2

WHAT PRESIDENTS NEED TO KNOW
... about the Future of University Libraries:
Technology and Scholarly Communication

June 1993

from the Higher Education Information Resources Alliance of ARL, CAUSE, and Educom

Documents related to this report are available and described at the end of this report.

About four years ago, executives at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation decided that the Foundation should undertake a study of the operations and economics of research libraries as vehicles for scholarly communication, with special attention to the impact of new information technologies. Aware of the great importance of research libraries, they were also convinced that their traditional functions and, in certain respects, their existence were being threatened by several points of pressure: rapidly rising costs of both library materials and space; the proliferation of journals and other library materials; and the unpredictable effects of the rapidly developing electronic technologies, which have the potential to mitigate effects of the first two even as they trigger a revolution in ways of storing and sharing knowledge.

The results of the consequent study are described in University Libraries and Scholarly Communication, published in November 1992.[1] This study is distinctive in taking a long view of the library landscape--the evolution to its current position, and many of the choices for the future. While not definitive, the study does provide a basis for evaluating new directions in a thoughtful way. Much of the material is already familiar to librarians, but it is also of interest to publishers and scholars, and to those college and university administrators who are responsible for setting priorities for their institutions and supporting technologies. The synopsis below reiterates key findings of the study for campus leaders who may not yet have seen the original document, with particular emphasis on the roles of technology in the library scenarios of the future.

The broad patterns of development revealed in this study are, unsurprisingly, congruent with the recent history of higher education in the U.S. From 1912 to 1991, the overall size of the major libraries studied continued to grow, with close correspondence between trends in doctorates conferred and library volumes added. Annual growth rates peaked in the mid to late 1960s and then fell slowly throughout the 1970s. The patterns of growth, contraction, and a modest recovery since the mid-1980s are nationwide and do not reflect specific stages in growth or maturity of institutions. By whatever measure used, increases in library expenditures over the past three decades are substantial but, after the anomaly boom years of the 1960s, more modest than many have assumed.

FINANCIAL PRESSURE POINTS

Sensitive financial pressure points identified by the Mellon study are these:

Contrary to conventional wisdom, library budgets have tended to increase less rapidly than other university expenditures. Measured against U.S. Department of Education figures for university E&Gs, budgets of the libraries studied have declined through the 1980s to the point that they have lost almost all the ground gained in the preceding 20 years.
The rate of increase in books acquired by university research libraries virtually halted in the 1970s and 1980s, while the number of titles published domestically and internationally has increased at a rate of at least 2 percent per year.
Price increases have driven a "serials crisis" which is a major contributor to library difficulties today. Serials expenditures have increased steadily for 30 years, at an average rate of 11.3 percent per year from 1963 to 1990, compared to 7.2 percent per year for book prices.
Salaries as a percentage of total library expenditures have declined from around 62 percent in 1963 to 52 percent in 1991, while other operating expenditures (apparently reflecting computerization of internal operations) have risen from 6 percent to 14 percent.

BROADER USE OF ELECTRONIC TECHNOLOGIES

These conditions will need to be addressed in many ways, but the possibilities of a significant increase in the role of electronic text distribution, maintenance, and use have the potential for being the most dramatic. There is a growing realization that no research institution can sustain a self-sufficient collection into the indefinite future. Even before the "crisis" libraries were actively collaborating and sharing resources. New electronic technologies allow revolutionary possibilities of uncoupling ownership from access, material object from its intellectual content. Libraries are beginning to use technology much more broadly than for automating existing internal functions of circulation, cataloging, and acquisitions:

New technologies are capable of providing secondary bibliographic resources--information about information, access to other institutions' holdings, etc. Large-scale projects that provide computerized bibliographical information are under way, most notably through the OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) and the RLG (Research Libraries Group). Both of these national organizations are experimenting with ways to make their large databases, reporting the holdings of member libraries, more accessible and useful. Of particular interest are widespread efforts to improve the quality and availability of bibliographic information on non-traditional materials--everything from musical compositions to unpublished archival sources.
The next step beyond obtaining information about information is to share the texts themselves. Document delivery services recently developed include the UnCover service of the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries (CARL), which supplies abundant bibliographic data on articles, and UnCover2, which provides rapid delivery service for full text via mail or fax, with Internet delivery planned. RLG's Ariel system allows any printed material to be scanned directly as a page image, then stored, transmitted over the Internet, and received for printing at the target site. The "virtual library," with all the world's published riches at one's fingertips, is a potent, if distant, vision. Only fuller experience will enable institutions to analyze cost implications balancing collection development with resource sharing.
When the primary artifact is itself electronic the real revolution will begin. Electronic texts can remove the limitations of print on paper. They can be dynamic and mutable, and are potentially eminently interactive. Experiments are already under way creating textbooks on demand out of available online materials.

ISSUES FOR THE TRANSITION

But the transition to alternative types of scholarly communication will be not be easy. Electronic methods of disseminating information are at least as different in kind from print as print is from manual copying, and any particular technology is joined to a set of economic and legal arrangements appropriate to it. The library, the publisher, the printed book, the monograph, the learned journal, the process of peer review, copyright practices--all the familiar elements of the current system are at least somewhat at risk in the face of the new technologies. Difficult issues will have to be faced in a number of areas.

The ACADEMIC REWARD SYSTEM depends on traditional publication. Any new system will have to convince scholarly and institutional leaders that it is adequately peer reviewed and reliable.

Possible MECHANISMS FOR DISTRIBUTION OF ELECTRONIC TEXTS are numerous and are likely to become increasingly affordable. Individual institutions might choose to maintain local repositories of frequently used titles; some publishers might insist on retaining their texts themselves, distributing them on a fee-for-use basis; collaborative arrangements might emerge between consortia of libraries. Who will pay and how much are still unanswerable questions.

CAMPUS COMPUTING TELECOMMUNICATIONS INFRASTRUCTURES need to be upgraded to make widespread use of the new technologies possible. Some of the upgrades are necessary in any event, but they carry real costs. Proponents of the new National Research and Education Network (NREN) estimate that for every dollar appropriated for this system by the federal government, five to ten dollars will have to come from state and local governments and private institutions. The three-tier structure (a national backbone, then regional networks, then campus or local networks) puts heavy responsibility on individual institutions to maintain a significant share of the national network.

The MANAGEMENT AND PRIORITIES OF THE SUPPORTING NATIONAL NETWORK need to be defined. Many are concerned that its purposes are confused: Some hope that network services will eventually be extended to households as ubiquitously as telephones and electronic power. Others envision a much more limited set of objectives, a network designed to connect large institutional repositories of information resources-- research laboratories, libraries, etc. Network management issues include access, financial support, and responsibility and mechanisms for security and privacy.

Substantial TECHNICAL PROBLEMS involve heterogeneity of access, retrieval protocols, and digital representation of information. The National Information Standards Organization (NISO), the organization that created the International Standard Book Number (ISBN), has sought, first, to recast bibliographic records so that their elements are appropriate to the distinctive features of electronic products. Standardization must extend eventually to the primary information itself, which is currently formatted in a bewildering variety of ways related to user interfaces, software packages, and system conventions.

Traditional ROLES IN THE PUBLISHING PROCESS will undergo transformation. There may be some blurring in the distinctions among the historical roles of publishers as producers, vendors as intermediaries, and librarians as archivists. As Patricia Battin has observed, "The advent of electronic capabilities provides the university with the potential for becoming the primary publisher in the scholarly communication process. At the present time, we are in the untenable position of generating knowledge, giving it away to the commercial publisher, and then buying it back for our scholars at increasingly prohibitive prices. The electronic revolution provides the potential for developing university controlled publishing enterprises through scholarly networks supported either by individual institutions or consortia." [2]
Adaptation of COPYRIGHT PRACTICES to the new electronic environments pose numerous difficulties. The need to control will compete with the demand for wide, easy access to material. Implications will involve information accuracy and integrity and, perhaps more critical, ownership of rights with the concomitant problems of fee structures, payment mechanisms, and licensing agreements.

ACCEPTING TRANSFORMATION

It is extremely unlikely, the authors of this study conclude, that any alternative model for scholarly communication will completely supplant the existing one in the foreseeable future. It is equally inconceivable that there will not eventually be a transformation: the new technologies are too powerful and their advantages too clear for current practices to continue indefinitely. "However one might regard present technological developments, no amount of nostalgic longing for traditional practices, in our view, will serve to forestall the application of the new technologies to scholarly communication ... ." (Mellon report, p. 165).

We are not far enough along in the transition to a fully electronic environment to know what new forms and institutions may ultimately emerge. But it is obvious that the issues and choices identified in this study have the potential to affect the publication process, the mechanisms for sharing ideas, graduate and undergraduate education, and even the organization, administration, and finances of higher education. These are concerns that will have an impact on the educational community as a whole, not simply the research libraries on which this study was conducted.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Anthony M. Cummings, Marcia L. Witte, William G. Bowen, Laura O. Lazarus, and Richard H. Ekman, "University Libraries and Scholarly Communication: A Study prepared for The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation" (Washington, D.C.: The Association of Research Libraries, 1992). This HEIRAlliance report is drawn from the Mellon study and its synopsis prepared by Ann Okerson.
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[2] Patricia Battin, "The Library: Center of the Restructured University," College and Research Libraries 45 (May 1984) p. 175, as quoted in the Mellon report, pp. 133-4.
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"University Libraries and Scholarly Communication," the study which is the foundation of this Executive Strategies Report, was prepared for The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation by Anthony M. Cummings, Marcia L. Witte, William G. Bowen, Laura O. Lazarus, and Richard H. Ekman. This HEIRAlliance summary was prepared by CAUSE Associate Editor Karen McBride, and draws largely on a synopsis of the full report by Ann Okerson, Director of the ARL's Office of Scholarly and Academic Publishing.

This HEIRAlliance summary is printed with permission of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The full Mellon report contains comprehensive information on historical trends in library collections and expenditures and scholarly publications, and on information needs and the new technologies, as well as an extensive bibliography.

The main source of information on historical trends was the experience of 24 major U.S. research libraries, chosen for their range of size and mission and for the availability of high-quality information over a substantial period of time. Information in the second section, covering information needs and new technologies, came from review and assessment of data from a number of government and professional sources.

Institutions that participated in the Mellon study were:
Boston University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Georgetown University, Iowa State University, Michigan State University, New York University, Northwestern University, Princeton University, Rutgers University, Stanford University, University of California at Berkeley, University of Chicago, University of Florida, University of Iowa, University of Maryland, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Southern California, University of Virginia, University of Wisconsin at Madison, Washington State University, Washington University in St. Louis, Yale University. Information provided by these institutions was supplemented by the Association of Research Libraries' database of library statistics.

The Executive Strategies reports are published by the Higher Education Information Resources Alliance (HEIRAlliance), a vehicle for cooperative projects between the Association of Research Libraries, CAUSE, and Educom. Reports in this series inform campus leaders about critical and timely issues related to information technologies. Focus issues are identified by the executive officers of the three sponsoring associations: Duane Webster, Executive Director, Association of Research Libraries; Jane N. Ryland, President, CAUSE; Robert C. Heterick, Jr., President, Educom.

Additional printed copies of this HEIRAlliance report are available from EDUCAUSE at $5.00 each. Inquire at 303-449-4430, fax 303-440-0461, e-mail orders@educause.edu.

Copyright 1993 by HEIRA. Material from this report may be reproduced for noncommercial purposes with appropriate credit to the HEIRAlliance and to The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Questions concerning this report may be sent to Executive Editor Karen McBride at CAUSE, 4840 Pearl East Circle, Suite 302E, Boulder, CO 80301; phone 303-449-4430, fax 303-440-0461, e-mail kmcbride@educause.edu.

ARL, the Association of Research Libraries, is an organization of 120 major research libraries in the U.S. and Canada whose mission is to identify and influence forces affecting the future of research libraries in the process of scholarly communication. 202-296-21296

CAUSE, the association for the management of information resources in higher education, is a nonprofit association whose mission is to promote effective planning, management, development, and evaluation of computing and information technologies in higher education. 303-449-4430

Educom is a non-profit consortium of colleges and universities headquartered in Washington, D.C., which is concerned with computing and communications issues. Its programs focus primarily on networking and integrating computing into the curriculum. 202-872-4200