6 ms·

I don't think it's fair to say they've disinvested from libraries. Most of the information is digitized, which has better reach. Books that cannot be digitized

I don't think it's fair to say they've disinvested from libraries. Most of the information is digitized, which has better reach. Books that cannot be digitized yet due to copyright are held in storage until they enter public domain, and you can request chapter scans in the meantime or even check out the physical book. Separate special collections are kept for items whose physical existence is significant. Libraries are being repurposed as study spaces, which campuses otherwise tend to lack. Reference librarians are available online with extended hours. The overall trend seems positive. Similar arguments about presses. Mixed media is the future. Some schools invest in various learning platforms and knowledge hubs, sometimes collaboratively. A building doesn't facilitate such variety very well.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ahi 3y ago
University expenditures on libraries have been stagnant at best for decades. This includes those "various learning platforms and knowledge hubs." The digitization of collections and repurposing of facilities is driven by cost cutting as well as hampered by it. Archival storage is not cheap (the conditions for special collections drive many librarians to drink) and renovating century old stacks into usable people space requires capital expenditures few libraries can scrape together. At the same time, Elsevier et al take larger and larger bites out of the budget for those digitized collections. The failure to invest in University presses will only exacerbate this in the long term. Attempts to provide an alternative to the for-profit parasites, e.g. open access platforms, wallow in grant funded misery with budgets considered laughable in the private sector.
- sheepshear 3y ago
  Let's take nanohub.org as an example. It's funded by an NSF grant and everyone can access it for free. A university doesn't need to make any expenditures for their students to benefit from it. Researchers choose to publish in Elsevier's journals, not for lack of a university press.
tw4l 3y ago
Former academic librarian and archivist here. It's true that university libraries are changing their shape, as you say. More study space, fewer physical collections and book purchases (and, in some areas, universities moving toward sharing their physical collections in remote offsite storage and only calling back materials when requested), and much more investment in electronic resources like journal and database access. It's a complicated issue, but in general library budgets have been consistently shrinking for years/decades, even as the subscription costs for journal access from big for-profit like Elsevier skyrockets. It's even gotten to the point where universities with endowments larger than many nations' GDPs are struggling to afford publisher prices (see https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/apr/24/harvard-university-journal-publishers-prices https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/apr/24/harvard-univ...). Decreasing library budgets plays into this, but at its heart I think that there's a crisis of purpose as well. By not investing in open access publishing infrastructure themselves and not modifying the incentives for faculty review and tenure, universities have put themselves at the mercy of these for-profit publishers and are suffering for it. It's hard to blame faculty who are vying for one of the ever-diminishing tenured spots for publishing their articles in the best journals they can, regardless of whether they'll be behind a paywall, especially when the bar for tenure keeps getting higher and higher. So we find ourselves in a situation where universities and public funding agencies are paying academics to conduct research and do peer review, then faculty are giving the results to a for-profit publisher, who then sells access to the work right back to them at an astronomical fee. I'm hopeful if not optimistic that at some point, universities might choose to break out of the cat-and-mouse game they're in by investing in open access publishing and incentivizing their faculty to use it rather than continuing to feed for-profit publishers' wild profits. I've seen some (too limited) action on the first part of that but pretty much none on incentivization part. Certain funding agencies are starting to require open access publication as a condition of some grants, but the change has been slow.
- sheepshear 3y ago
  I think the challenge is that a university press is not interchangeable with a journal.
- wolverine876 3y ago
atrettel 3y ago
I have spent a lot of time in university libraries and the disinvestment is often difficult to see unless you are doing deep research or in the weeds. I should note that I am writing this response as somebody who is a professional researcher and scientist, not as an undergraduate student who needs to find a few references for a term paper. My needs are quite different than others and the library needs to cater to a wide range of people at all levels of research. Many universities are in fact repurposing libraries as "study spaces" or as "learning centers". This often means dedicating more space to meeting rooms and desks, etc. To get that space, libraries either put the books in storage or quite frankly sell the books, especially books that are not checked out that often. Many of the technical books that I own are former library books. Moreover, even well-resourced government labs (like DOE national laboratories) are selling their books. I know because I have bought some (albeit through a third party). Putting books in storage is the better option, because at least the books are available, but it removes the ability to browse the shelf for adjacent books (a highly underrated research method) and often requires preparation to request books and then wait for them to arrive in a reading room. That said, it is far better to put the books in storage. The availability of reference librarians is often greatly overstated. A library like the Library of Congress still has excellent reference librarians who often can perform apparent miracles to find difficult to locate information, but at university libraries, if I ask for a reference librarian, I often end up with an undergraduate assistant who does not really know much and cannot help you if you have a specific question to ask about locating something in a particular collection or how to use certain equipment like microfilm readers. Perhaps the undergrad can help other undergrads out, but when I was in grad school I never found this practice helpful when I needed specific information that I was already having difficulty finding. To summarize, this trend may benefit some people, but it comes at the expense of in-depth researchers and their needs. I will end by quibbling with that notion that "most of the information is digitized". The problem is that the Internet is so large that you can easily spend your whole life without ever realizing how shallow it really is in a single subject. Only once you go deep in that subject do you realize how much is not yet digitized in the first place. Yes, much information is digitized, but based on my experience, it is not "most". Some day that may change, but for the time being, physical libraries still play an important role here.
- 3y ago
pfdietz 3y ago
> Most of the information is digitized, which has better reach. Previously, when university libraries had books and paper journals, anyone could read them. Now, members of the general public are not licensed to read electronic content there. So digitization has reduced the reach of the content, not increased it.
- sheepshear 3y ago
  Many libraries have computers for accessing the catalog, which now includes all the digital media. You make a good argument for why they should if they don't already.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

ahi 3y ago

University expenditures on libraries have been stagnant at best for decades. This includes those "various learning platforms and knowledge hubs." The digitization of collections and repurposing of facilities is driven by cost cutting as well as hampered by it. Archival storage is not cheap (the conditions for special collections drive many librarians to drink) and renovating century old stacks into usable people space requires capital expenditures few libraries can scrape together. At the same time, Elsevier et al take larger and larger bites out of the budget for those digitized collections. The failure to invest in University presses will only exacerbate this in the long term. Attempts to provide an alternative to the for-profit parasites, e.g. open access platforms, wallow in grant funded misery with budgets considered laughable in the private sector.

sheepshear 3y ago
Let's take nanohub.org as an example. It's funded by an NSF grant and everyone can access it for free. A university doesn't need to make any expenditures for their students to benefit from it. Researchers choose to publish in Elsevier's journals, not for lack of a university press.

tw4l 3y ago

Former academic librarian and archivist here. It's true that university libraries are changing their shape, as you say. More study space, fewer physical collections and book purchases (and, in some areas, universities moving toward sharing their physical collections in remote offsite storage and only calling back materials when requested), and much more investment in electronic resources like journal and database access. It's a complicated issue, but in general library budgets have been consistently shrinking for years/decades, even as the subscription costs for journal access from big for-profit like Elsevier skyrockets. It's even gotten to the point where universities with endowments larger than many nations' GDPs are struggling to afford publisher prices (see https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/apr/24/harvard-university-journal-publishers-prices https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/apr/24/harvard-univ...). Decreasing library budgets plays into this, but at its heart I think that there's a crisis of purpose as well. By not investing in open access publishing infrastructure themselves and not modifying the incentives for faculty review and tenure, universities have put themselves at the mercy of these for-profit publishers and are suffering for it. It's hard to blame faculty who are vying for one of the ever-diminishing tenured spots for publishing their articles in the best journals they can, regardless of whether they'll be behind a paywall, especially when the bar for tenure keeps getting higher and higher. So we find ourselves in a situation where universities and public funding agencies are paying academics to conduct research and do peer review, then faculty are giving the results to a for-profit publisher, who then sells access to the work right back to them at an astronomical fee. I'm hopeful if not optimistic that at some point, universities might choose to break out of the cat-and-mouse game they're in by investing in open access publishing and incentivizing their faculty to use it rather than continuing to feed for-profit publishers' wild profits. I've seen some (too limited) action on the first part of that but pretty much none on incentivization part. Certain funding agencies are starting to require open access publication as a condition of some grants, but the change has been slow.

sheepshear 3y ago
I think the challenge is that a university press is not interchangeable with a journal.
wolverine876 3y ago

atrettel 3y ago

I have spent a lot of time in university libraries and the disinvestment is often difficult to see unless you are doing deep research or in the weeds. I should note that I am writing this response as somebody who is a professional researcher and scientist, not as an undergraduate student who needs to find a few references for a term paper. My needs are quite different than others and the library needs to cater to a wide range of people at all levels of research. Many universities are in fact repurposing libraries as "study spaces" or as "learning centers". This often means dedicating more space to meeting rooms and desks, etc. To get that space, libraries either put the books in storage or quite frankly sell the books, especially books that are not checked out that often. Many of the technical books that I own are former library books. Moreover, even well-resourced government labs (like DOE national laboratories) are selling their books. I know because I have bought some (albeit through a third party). Putting books in storage is the better option, because at least the books are available, but it removes the ability to browse the shelf for adjacent books (a highly underrated research method) and often requires preparation to request books and then wait for them to arrive in a reading room. That said, it is far better to put the books in storage. The availability of reference librarians is often greatly overstated. A library like the Library of Congress still has excellent reference librarians who often can perform apparent miracles to find difficult to locate information, but at university libraries, if I ask for a reference librarian, I often end up with an undergraduate assistant who does not really know much and cannot help you if you have a specific question to ask about locating something in a particular collection or how to use certain equipment like microfilm readers. Perhaps the undergrad can help other undergrads out, but when I was in grad school I never found this practice helpful when I needed specific information that I was already having difficulty finding. To summarize, this trend may benefit some people, but it comes at the expense of in-depth researchers and their needs. I will end by quibbling with that notion that "most of the information is digitized". The problem is that the Internet is so large that you can easily spend your whole life without ever realizing how shallow it really is in a single subject. Only once you go deep in that subject do you realize how much is not yet digitized in the first place. Yes, much information is digitized, but based on my experience, it is not "most". Some day that may change, but for the time being, physical libraries still play an important role here.

3y ago

pfdietz 3y ago

> Most of the information is digitized, which has better reach. Previously, when university libraries had books and paper journals, anyone could read them. Now, members of the general public are not licensed to read electronic content there. So digitization has reduced the reach of the content, not increased it.

sheepshear 3y ago
Many libraries have computers for accessing the catalog, which now includes all the digital media. You make a good argument for why they should if they don't already.