Role Of Libraries In The Future

[Eri Pfaff]

Thankyou for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Academic libraries have a rich history and heritage and have always played an important role in academic research, teaching and scholarly communication (Fjllbrant, 1997). Academic libraries have evolved and developed alongside the higher education institutions that they are part of and are characterized as being resilient institutions that have demonstrated the capacity to adapt to changing social, political and technical forces (Gilmour and Sapp, 2002; Weiner, 2005). There are many different models of academic library from vast world renowned collections such as those to be found at institutions like Yale, Harvard, Cambridge and elsewhere to distributed, federal campuses in more recently established institutions such as the University of the West Indies. It is interesting to note at a time when much discussion is focussed around the reduction of physical stock in libraries that the earliest university libraries did not have large collections and tended to rely on donations of manuscripts and other artefacts with famous collections, such as the Bodleian at the University of Oxford having a core of bequeathed materials at its heart.

Technical developments are not the only factor that has impacted on academic library service delivery. The evolving shape of pedagogy in higher education has been one of the key reasons for the change in shape of academic libraries. Students now study in many different ways and the role which the library plays in this is evident with a shift away from places which were traditionally silent study areas to become flexible and dynamic spaces suited to social and group learning. Blended learning, drawing on both the physical and virtual spaces have compelled the reconfiguring of academic libraries in much the same way as technological developments have changed the role of the academic librarian. The Philological Library at the Freie Universitt in Berlin, the Sir Duncan Rice Library at the University of Aberdeen or the Hive at the University of Worcester are all recent examples of revolutionary approaches to the design of the academic library which reflect the changing nature of their use.

These new policies and guidelines have had significant implications for research communication, publishers and academics and, of particular relevance for this paper, for libraries. Responsibility for the development and management of institutional repositories has largely been allocated to university libraries as an extension of their traditional function for the storage and dissemination of academic work (Swan, 2011). The development of repositories can be viewed as being jointly enabled by the funding mandates and also by technical developments, including open source repository solutions that has made the initiatives possible. Many institutions already had repositories in place before the mandate with a large number being developed with support and funding from the JISC in a series of development programmes (Jacobs et al., 2008).

Libraries are some of the most active users of social media, making services more participatory, embracing openness and reaching a wider audience, allowing them to communicate and engage with its community in dialogue, which informs and helps develop its products and services, and how it operates. Social media tools can be used within this context for a number of different purposes. For example, services can create a strong presence and a modern image that could appeal to less frequent users of the physical buildings such as teenagers. Libraries can develop services online (for example, book discussion groups using blogs and wikis) and provide services and product updates on social media tools such as Twitter. Web 2.0 can also offer cost-effective solutions for the production of promotional and marketing material about services and materials available using services such as YouTube. Web 2.0 helps raise awareness of services overcoming barriers associated with traditional methods of publishing (for example, by overcoming delays associated with posting information on the website of the wider organization, a process that is often controlled by the IT department). Social media can also be used as a means of networking, communication and sharing of ideas with other professional organizations and colleagues, who work in different contexts, allowing the wide spread of ideas and creating expanding international networks (Chu and Du, 2013).

Social media can also be utilized independently by users as tools for information searching and discovery. Although search engine use is one of the most popular search approaches to Web information seeking, an alternative way is to use online social media by posing questions to key individuals and groups online, and browsing across online social networks. When online social media are used for finding information, this has been broadly referred to as social search. This technique may involve online social media directly or via the initial use of search engines that index social media webpages (for example, public Twitter posts, social tagging tools such as Delicious). Social search may involve browsing or active requests for help from the searcher to other people. In a study of social search behaviour comparing the experience of searchers who asked a questions to a group of people they knew personally (by means of a social network status message update) and the experience of searching for the same information with a Web search engine, Morris et al. (2010) surveyed Facebook and Twitter users about situations in which they used a status message to ask questions of their social networks. Benefits of asking a social network included opinion-type answers, and that their social network knew additional context about them. Social networks seem particularly useful for subjective questions. People considered the results from their social network highly trustworthy and favoured the delivery of personalized answers. Asking via a social network was also found to provide valuable confirmation of results found via a search engine.

Online social media can therefore serve as excellent information searching and browsing platforms that enable the sharing and communication of ideas, linking to professional groups of interest and creating online communities of practice. The increased popularity of online social communication/networking websites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, has thus introduced a new dimension of finding information on the Internet, which may involve regular monitoring, browsing (for example, online topic discussions and community tags and ranked information) and/or actively seeking answers to specific information needs (via posing particular questions to online social networks of interest).

Finally, searching on online social media can also lead to serendipitous information discovery. A large part of everyday information seeking is based on different social networks of everyday life (we may call these interpersonal sources), and social media play a role in helping people to manage and extend these networks that become valuable and effective information channels. Searching and finding information is therefore made easier if someone within the online network has the knowledge that is being sought.

As well as using IT Utilities to transform and enhance existing services, some libraries are also embracing technologies to facilitate new forms of knowledge creation leading to the development of makerspaces. According to Roslund and Rodgers (2014), a makerspace can be defined as:

Makerspace is a general term for a place where people get together to make things. Markerspaces might focus on electronics, robotics, woodworking, sewing, laser cutting, programming or some combination of these skills. (Roslund and Rodgers, 2014)

This article has presented an overview of some of the key areas where IT Utilities are influencing the academic library sector. In particular, academic libraries have demonstrated tremendous adaptability for serving the needs of a larger and more diverse student body (including developments in distance and blended learning) and services are now much more user-driven and tailored in response to the demands of 24-7 access to resources across a wide variety of platforms. Furthermore, academic libraries have also played a key role in the implementation and governance of open access mandates and enabled researchers to widen the reach of their research by the management of institutional repositories and data management. Future demands from users for personalized services and requirements from external funding bodies to demonstrate impact and value for money from academic research will likely lead to further challenges and opportunities for libraries.

Within the fast changing environment of academia, there are not only new emerging roles for academic library staff (for example, research and data management), but also traditional roles (for example, information literacy instruction) that have evolved with greater demands placed on technological, interpersonal, IT and transferable skills. The development of subject domain expertise within multidisciplinary research fields, and the world of academic information has become increasingly more complex with open access, big data, and new models of online learning, teaching and research (for example, blended learning, online research) will likely lead to further challenges and opportunities in future. As shown throughout the article, academic libraries have consistently demonstrated the capacity to adapt and change to meet the needs of users, which is reflected in the new user-centred approach to service delivery.

3a8082e126