Update on Cushing Academy - The private school library that "dumped its books"

The Boston Globe ran another story updating its readers on Cushing Academy. In September, 2009, the Globe reported (and we blogged) about this story (here is a follow-up story from that time, when a big part of the story seemed to focus on the expensive coffee machine that was going into the library space). The headmaster (or principal), James Tracy, decided to get rid of nearly all of the books, and spend more money on databases. The space that had been taken up with shelving became more open space, for group seating, for computer use and for a coffee bar. The databases are linked with a federated search engine. E-books are included. The students are instructed in searches and introduced to the databases they will need for a class, but then left to explore on their own.

The library is now more heavily used than ever. The school has hired another librarian since the re-organization. I like this, and think most librarians will not be surprised. The focus we have is increasingly on service, and less on the materials. People need more help sorting and choosing from the huge amounts of information that is too easily found now. Before, it was the other extreme, where gathering the data was the difficulty, and the skill and value of the library and librarians was in sorting, choosing and housing the best information for the patrons.

And yet, if you follow the link to the newer Globe article, you will find that the Cushing Academy has not quite abandoned books, and even the students still like books, and speak a bit wistfully about them. You also will read that none of the other private prep schools in the area have followed Cushing's lead in re-furbishing their libraries. Phillips Academy and Phillips Exeter are keeping their library books, thank you. Headmaster Tracy has had interested inquiries from Harvard Law School, University of Virginia libraries, Syracuse, a rural public school in West Virginia, and UNESCO. There is not much explanation about what those inquiries are leading to. It is interesting that the furor has died down, and the students are very happy with the library. But it is also interesting that the model is not really catching fire at this point and spreading much, either. As the article quotes Harvard's librarian Robert Darnton, “Libraries must advance on two fronts — digital and analogue. To concentrate on one at the expense of the other would be a mistake. The idea that printed books are in decline and will go away is just plain wrong.’’ We are still at that hybrid point, if we will ever reach a point where reading will become completely digital, we have not gotten there yet. The print format still has many points to recommend it, and many situations in which it is still superior, or perhaps the only way to proceed. I was recently at a dinner where a different Harvard librarian was invited to speak and she did a wonderful job of articulately, yet succinctly, explaining to a non-librarian crowd why libraries (at least non-science and non-medical) libraries will continue to need large buildings for at least the next 20 years or more. That is to say, why we will still be dealing with books for that long. There are just so many things that have not yet been digitized yet, and will cost so much to get digitized, that it will take a long time to get them all into the computers, and do it well. In some fields, there are things that may never be digitized -- maybe nobody will ever fund it, or get around to doing it, or find it.

But there is also the dimension of the users' space in libraries. The students' space (or patrons' space). Libraries have a very important role as social hubs and as leverages for people. Many children of immigrants, many autodidacts have written movingly about the role of school and public libraries in their lives. The libraries leverage the information, the literacy in the books multiple times for the readers. They leverage literacy and culture, and civilization throughout the community. In the same way, libraries leverage the space and facilities they offer: photocopiers, scanners, computers, databases, information, multiple times throughout the community to build the economy and allow people to build their careers and start businesses. In a tough economy, libraries are essential boosters to their communities. I think this is true for school libraries, where students and recent grads (or even older alumni) come in to work on their resumes, and job searches. I know my law school has set aside two alumni meeting rooms for offices and our library consciously collects for alumni use. Many state law schools have that as part of their mission as well, and often also collect to support public use in addition. Libraries should maybe try to figure how much they contribute to the economy or at least manage in cost savings for different patron bases or community groups.

The decoration for this blog post is a photo of the library at the Cushing Academy, from the Boston Globe article. I can't help but notice that there are 2 people with laptops and 1 person with a book.

ARL's Future Visions for Libraries

The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that the Association of Research Libraries previewed at their annual meeting and now has released their scenarios for different futures that research libraries may face. The publication, "Envisioning Research Library Futures: A Scenarios Thinking Project," includes a User's Guide, and is entirely open and free on the web. The four scenarios imagine different futures for researchers, and do not explicitly mention libraries at all. The ARL imagines this may open the way for other types of organizations to use the scenarios as planning or visioning tools, as well. While the scenarios and membership are based on large research libraries, the thinking and futures may be worth considering for all types of libraries.

The ARL website includes:
* the User's Guide,
* a PDF of the Scenarios,
* a link to register for a free webcast scheduled for November 4, 2010, from 1-2:30 PM, Eastern Daylight time, on how to use the scenarios;
* a link to subscribe to an e-mail listserv discussion group on the scenarios

New Directions at Harvard

It's been a tough year for library budgets. I don't know of any library whose acquisitions budget has kept pace with the inflation in the cost of materials, both print and digital. The budgetary situation has led to my announcing a new policy--we add no new Thomson Reuters titles in print because of what I consider to be the outrageous costs of supplementation, barring exceptional circumstances. Actually, my library is relatively lucky--we have had no layoffs--and are able to replace staff members who leave. The glass really is half full.

This is why I was interested to read an today's Boston Globe an article about Harvard University Library's recent actions to deal with "an unprecedented budget crunch." I always thought of the Harvard libraries as having nearly unlimited resources; this was probably never the case, but it certainly isn't true today. "...[T]he days of accumulating every important title and artifact under the scholarly sun are over for Harvard's labyrinthine system of 73 libraries." How is Harvard dealing with its budget problems? By emphasizing access to information over ownership, as many libraries with fewer resources have already chosen to do. Harvard has cancelled over 1,000 journals in favor of their online equivalents, and it is working actively to "collaborate and share acquisitions" with other university library systems. Harvard has already forged an arrangement with MIT which allows students access to both schools' collections, and it may join a library consortium for the first time. I was struck by Harvard's high-quality service to students, who can "sit in their dorms and order books directly from their computers to be delivered within 24 hours to the library of their choice from the Harvard Depository, a high-density storage facility ..." Sometimes the materials that are needed can be downloaded by students "or the library will scan relevant book chapters and e-mail them." Harvard is also working actively to digitize its collections.

Change is also afoot at the Law Library under the leadership of its new director, John Palfrey. "Harvard Law School is in discussions with other law schools about having each school collect in specialized areas." Other changes would be even more profound:

'Libraries have to think of themselves as innovation centers, and not just repeat what we have done in the past,’ said Harvard Law professor John Palfrey, who is a leading a project to shape the future of the school’s libraries.

Palfrey has added engineers, statisticians, and graphic designers to the law school library staff. His team is working on a Web application that browses a virtual bookshelf with works stacked against one another to re-create the experience of wandering through musty stacks and serendipitously stumbling upon titles.

The library is also planning to build a virtual reference desk, where students who rarely seek the help of librarians can solicit research advice without having to set foot in a library. Librarians would assist students through e-mail, instant messaging, text messaging, and Skype.

The idea of the library as "innovation center" is one that appeals to me, and is a model that will help to ensure the library's continuing relevance in the era of electronic information.

The Future of Libraries

This trenchant article, "Toward a New Alexandria," published in The New Republic is a call to arms. The author, Lisbet Rausing, a historian of science, envisions a

[N]ew Library of Alexandria ... an archive that contains all the natural and social sciences of the West--our source-critical, referenced, peer-reviewed data--as well as the cultural and literary heritage of the world's civilizations, and many of the world's most significant archives and specialist collections. Imagine that this library is electronic and in the public domain: sustainable, stable, linked, and searchable through universal semantic catalogue standards. Imagine that it has open source-ware, allowing legacy digital resources and new digital knowledge to be integrated in real time. Imagine that its Second Web capabilities allowed universal researches of the bibliome.

Such an archive is technologically possible, and Rausing points to Google Books and the Internet Archive as examples of "remarkable electronic libraries" that are already under way. However, the scope of even these worthy projects is necessarily limited compared to what Rausig envisions for the new Library of Alexandria.

What besides technology is necessary to create a new Library of Alexandria? It must "be built for the long term, with an unwavering commitment to archival preservation and the public good." It should be "largely governmentally funded." It also "needs to be hosted by one organisation that is reputable, long-standing, nonprofit, and exists in a stable jurisdiction," such as the Library of Congress.

Who or what is standing in the way of such an initiative? Gatekeepers, such as scholars and librarians, who have "traditionally gated and protected knowledge, yet also shared and distributed it in libraries, schools, and universities," are obvious culprits. University libraries do not exist to serve the public, even their own alumni; they exist to serve their faculty and students. They do not make available to the public their "'core' research materials" or other "closed academic databases." Publishers are also obvious culprits standing in the way of a new Library of Alexandria, relying as they do on copyright to lock up valuable materials from the public and charging exorbitant rates to universities to buy back research produced by their own faculty members.

Rausing points to signs of hope, such as the growing number of open-access journals and the increasingly robust repositories of faculty scholarship mounted by many universities. She also challenges libraries to do more, to be "more imaginative." Perhaps we could give alumni lifetime memberships, "develop pay-per-view portals into scholarly resources that are invoiced monthly and electronically? And in doing so could we ... lower prices?" Could libraries "digitize out-of-copyright books on demand and for a small fee ... ? Could university catalogues be turned into blogs ... [by] add[ing] commentaries and hyperlinks? ... Catalogues need to provide reliable URLs, backed by long-term maintenance policies and institutional guarantees. The alternative is to rely on Google's search-engine algorithms, which is to say, on ephemeral beauty contents."

Rausing concludes by pointing to the future:

[Our] children--always on, multi-tasking, mobile--will not engage with a body of scholarship their elders have incomprehensibly surrounded by barbed wire. But they will remain engaged in learning. The question is not whether there will be future scholars. It is how these future scholars will remember and integrate previous scholarship. And in pondering that, which means pondering our own scholarly legacy, it is worth remembering that 'the generational war is the one war whose outcome is certain.'"

Future of Academic Libraries?

Librarians reacted "coolly" to a presentation by Daniel Greenstein, Vice Provost for Academic Planning and Programs at the University of California. The presentation was part of a meeting on sustainable scholarship sponsored by the Ithaka group. Greenstein's presentation was the subject of an article in Inside Higher Ed. According to Greenstein, the "university library of the future will be sparsely staffed, highly decentralized, and have a physical plant consisting of little more than special collections and study areas." He believes that outsourcing some library functions is the answer to universities whose budgets have been hit hard by the economic downturn. Cataloging, for instance, could be shared among universities or "contracted out to providers such as Google." Collections could shrink as libraries share repositories of print and digital materials, which will save space and money. Ultimately, as "individual libraries' archives and services shrink ... so will their staffs."

I can understand why the audience's reaction was cool. Greenstein's presentation completely missed what libraries are actually about these days. He seems to think librarians are presiding over book museums, when in fact a majority of our time is spent teaching students how to use resources in all formats, proactively supporting faculty scholarship, creating user guides, getting involved with and supporting educational technology, and generally anticipating and meeting the needs of our communities. Outsourcing cataloging really bothers me, in particular the notion of outsourcing cataloging to Google given their track record with metadata. Furthermore, I have worked with cataloging provided by vendors, and rarely is it up to the standards that we have set for our library. Outsourcing sounds like a great idea to administrators until they realize how much control over the process they have lost. It can also be more expensive than anticipated. I think that Greenstein does not understand that libraries today should be judged by the quality of the services they offer, and that is dependent to a great degree on the quality of the staff.

Bookless Library

Cushing Academy, a prep school in Ashburnham, Massachusetts, has decided to dismantle its 20,000-volume library and replace it with a $500,000 learning center, the Boston Globe reports today. According to a statement on the library's website, the Academy

is in the process of transforming our library into one that is virtually bookless by 2010. ...[The] current collection ... will soon be replaced by millions of volumes in far less space and with much richer and more powerful means of access. Terminals we call 'Portals of Civilization' will give ready access to everything humans have achieved ... Space that previously housed bound books will become community-building areas where students and teachers are encouraged to interact, with a coffee shop, faculty lounge, shared teacher and students learning learning environments, and areas for study.

The headmaster, James Tracy, believes that books are an obsolete technology. The library stacks are being demolished and replaced with "flat-screen TVs to project data from the Internet" and "laptop-friendly study carrels," according to the Globe. The reference desk is being replaced with a "$50,000 coffee shop that will include a $12,000 cappuccino machine." Cushing has also "spent $10,000 to buy 18 electronic readers made by Amazon.com and Sony." These readers will be stocked with digital materials and distributed to students. Students who don't get the readers will be expected to do their assigned readings and research on their computers. The headmaster believes that Cushing is creating a "'model for the 21st-century school.'" Some on campus don't share this vision, worrying that students reading on computers will be distracted by email and text messages and will not be able to focus on longer works. The chairman of the history department wonders "'how this changes the dignity of the library, and why we can't move to increase digital resources while keeping the books.'"

It will be interesting to see if this model catches on at other schools. The article doesn't discuss whether students will receive bibliographic instruction or any other introduction to information literacy. Nor does it discuss the role of the library staff in a bookless library, which I think is key to success. Will the staff spend its time instructing the students? Negotiating with vendors for content? Cataloging the electronic resources it purchases or subscribes to? I worry because some of these students may be entering our law schools in five or six years. Every year it gets harder to teach research skills to students who think research equals entering keywords into Google and seeing what comes up, and have no idea what an index is or does. I believe that a bookless library can be made to work, although I wouldn't much enjoy spending time in it. But I don't think it can be successful without a strong, committed staff who work closely with the students and teach them the research skills they will need in college and throughout their lives. For a related article on the future of libraries from cnn.com, click here. Thanks to Jack McNeill for forwarding this article to me.