ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


5 44/C&RL News

Conference 

Circuit

U LS a s k s  sc h o la rs: Do y o u  
n e e d  u s?

B y A n n e G arrison , P aula W alker, a n d  Linda TerHaar

A n n u a l Conference highlights from 
the University Libraries Section

M
ore than 300 people attended the ULS 
program at San Francisco, seeking the
answer to this question put to scholars

Caldwell, professor of soil and water science, 
and special assistant to the dean, College of
Agriculture, University o f Arizona; Michael
Goodchild, professor of geography at the Uni­
versity of California, Santa Barbara, as well as
director of the National Center for Geographic
Information and Analysis, and associate direc­
tor for Project Alexandria; and Paul Jones, a
humanities scholar and faculty member at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in
the School o f Journalism and Mass Communi­
cation and the School of Information and Li­
brary Science, and the director of the UNC
MetaLab project. Shelley Phipps, assistant dean
for team facilitation, University of Arizona, mod­
erator, began by stating that the traditional pur­
pose of academic libraries is to support the
research and teaching on our campuses. How­
ever, scholars are changing their methods, and
w e need to change as well.

Caldwell said that the answer to the ques­
tion is “It depends.” The world, scholars, and
libraries are all changing, and all three are inter­
acting in different ways. Huge changes are about
to happen in the world, but it is difficult to pre­
dict the future by looking at the past as a guide.
Accurate predictions of the future may seem so
wild to us right now that no one would believe
them. Yet, we need to look 20 years out, not 5
years. If we only look 5 years ahead, then we
only deal with the immediate. We should in­

 
 R

 
 

 
 

 
 
 

 
 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 

stead start by imagining 20 years ahead and 
work back to the present in order to provide a 
setting for w hat might happen in the future.

Caldwell reviewed the evolution of work 
from the agrarian age through the industrial to 
the service age and then the information age, 
w here w e are now. The digital world is com­
oginge, r and it will change the way scholars work. 
In the library of the future, it is how the scholar 
gets to the information that will count, not where 
the information is housed. The Internet offers 
contact between people and information inde­
pendent of where either is located. Hypertext 
concepts have changed how scholars search for 
information. Caldwell sees librarians moving from 
being keepers of collections to being finders and 
organizers of information. Scholars as consum­
ers know  w hat they w ant, an d  the service 
should come from their perspective.

Approaches to scholarship and learning roles 
are changing —how do we even recognize who 
is a scholar? We cannot use a 1950s mindset at 
the end of the 20th century to look at the defini­
tion of a scholar or of a scholarly publication.

The lines betw een what librarians do and 
w hat scholars do are blurring. Librarians are 
taking on more of a teaching role, and faculty 
are doing more of their own information search­
ing. That is not to say that each becomes the 
other, but that each takes on some of the role 
of the other. Both must ask w hat they provide 
as value added. This is a time of great uncer­
tainty but at the same time great opportunity. 
Caldwell ended by saying that he sees the role 
for librarians as being information management.

Goodchild said that geography stands at the 
intersection of physical and social science. It 
has always been an information-rich discipline, 
but geography is changing. One new  trend is

In lieu o f  a section newsletter a team o f  ULS members provides C&RL News with se m ia n n u a l reports 
o f  its activities. A n n e  Garrison is reference librarian a t Georgia Institute o f  Technology; e-mail: 
anne.Garrison@ibld.library.gatech.edu; Paula Walker is assistant director o f  libraries a t the University o f 
Washington; e-mail: pwalker@u.w ashington.edu; Linda TerHaar is h ead o f  the Shapiro Undergraduate 
Library a t the University o f  Michigan; e-mail: terhaar@umich.edu

mailto:anne.Garrison@ibld.library.gatech.edu
mailto:pwalker@u.washington.edu
mailto:terhaar@umich.edu


September 1 9 9 7 / 5 4 5

The lines between w h a t librar­
ians do and w h a t scholars do 
are blurring. Librarians are ta k ­
ing on more of a teaching role, 
and faculty are doing more of 
their own information searching.

the study of neighborhoods and the very local 
area. Various Web sites have provided very 
detailed information on the Northridge earth­
quake, for example. Geographical data now 
available digitally include large num bers of 
images, visual simulations, ever larger data sets, 
and the many resources related to geographic 
information systems. While the data are com ­
ing from sources such as the government and 
not from libraries, Goodchild said that the role 
of librarians is to index, abstract, and evaluate 
the information for the geographer. The prin­
ciples of collection management that librarians 
have followed in the past must be applied to 
digital images and maps and other geographi­
cal data. Libraries must also provide a space 
for scholars to work collaboratively with these 
data. In the broader social sciences, Goodchild 
perceives the same needs, w here many per­
sonal and cultural databases are being created 
rapidly, and the librarian’s role should be to 
organize the material and provide collabora­
tive user space.

Jones gave his perspective o f the world of 
mass communication and the decline in the num­
ber of independent publishers, with a resulting 
decline in book titles. Media oligarchies, he said, 
are limiting our choices. However, new  partner­
ships betw een faculty and university presses 
may provide some hope for a shift in this trend.

After the presentations, the attendees were 
asked to discuss points of interest for the next 
ten minutes at their individual tables and to 
raise questions for the speakers that could be 
shared with the w hole group.

Among the questions asked was one con­
cerning publishing on the Web: As publishing 
of journals moves to the Web, why must librar­
ies still spend so many of their limited dollars 
on print journals? The point had b een  m ade by 
the speakers that some scholars never send their 
students to use the printed journals in academic 
libraries and never use these materials them­
selves. If this is the case, then, is the only pur­

pose for print journals to provide a 
refereed source for faculty publishing 
to gain tenure? Libraries have very lim­
ited resources, so w hy should they 
continue to purchase these journals? 
The response included a discussion of 
w hy the ten u re process n ee d ed  to 
change and how it is changing already 
at some institutions.

During the questions and discus­
sion, all three speakers said that librar­

ians should feel empowered to work with scholars 
to preserve knowledge and to preserve access. In­
formation literacy for future generations is a joint 
responsibility of scholars and librarians.

An audiotape of this com plete conference 
program is available through ALA (for complete 
details see page 000). The University Libraries 
Section hom epage includes more information 
on the speakers as well as a bibliography for 
f u r th e r  r e a d in g  o n  th is  to p ic : h t t p : / /  
w w w . s c . e d u /lib r a r y /a la /in d e x . htm l— P aula 
Walker, University o f  Washington

Librarians take on diverse notes
The ULS Librarians in Higher Education and 
Campus Administration Discussion Group met 
to consider the diversity of new  roles librarians 
are playing in the university setting. This, the 
first of a two-part discussion, will be followed 
at Midwinter in New Orleans with a discussion 
about librarians no longer affiliated with the 
library but w ho continue to work at the uni­
versity in other capacities.

Nancy Baker, director o f libraries at Wash­
ington State University, m oderated the session, 
noting that in the past multiple roles may have 
meant cataloging and doing reference. Today, 
however, librarians must often balance mani­
fold responsibilities as library directors, cam­
pus administrators, com puter center supervi­
sors, and distance education facilitators.

Leslie Wykoff, the first o f tw o speakers, 
began the discussion by sharing her experi­
ences as campus librarian and director o f infor­
mation Services at Washington State Univer­
sity, Vancouver campus. Because the campus 
is new, Wykoff seized the opportunity to build 
bridges betw een departm ents that shared no 
com mon history (either o f cooperation or an­
tagonism). Working with the campus adminis­
tration, Wykoff has successfully blurred the dis­
tinction betw een the com puting center and the 
library. Her multiple roles include merging li­



5 4 6 /C&RL News

brary and com puter services, developing the 
campus Web site, integrating computer train­
ing and library instruction, facilitating the cam­
pus distance education program, and organiz­
ing classes on electronic com m unities and 
culture. Wykoff notes that such diverse respon­
sibilities can make o n e’s role on campus am­
biguous. “People do n ’t know if I'm administra­
tion or faculty.”

The second speaker, Shirley Baker, dean of 
libraries and vice chancellor for information 
technologies at Washington University in St. 
Louis, also dissolves the distinction between 
administration and faculty as she adopts mul­
tiple campus roles. Baker became involved in 
universitywide activities because of her com­
puting background and her reputation for man­
aging change. Her opportunity to coordinate 
both library and computer services presented 
itself w hen the new  chancellor asked her to 
become vice chancellor of information tech­
nologies. Baker believes that these kinds of o p ­
portunities are increasing for librarians due to 
o ur service orientation, technical expertise, 
broad vision for the university, and reputation 
for managing change. In order to prepare for 
these positions, Baker observed that we need 
first to understand what we do well and mar­
ket those skills to the campus administration. 
Examples of such skills include: experience with 
systems migration, the development of an active 
vendor community, our historic ability to work 
collectively (as dem onstrated by OCLC and 
RLN), and our skill at managing technologists.

In closing, the group concluded that the 
phenom enon of the librarian w ho functions as 
administrator, librarian, faculty, and computer 
guru will increase as the universities become 
aware of our skills as flexible and superior in­
formation managers.

N ew  ideas for ILL and reference
Moderator Barbara Dewey led the ULS Public 
Services Heads of Large Research Libraries Dis­
cussion Group. Mary Jackson, ARL, reported to 
the group that the two-year ILL/DD Perfor­
mance Measures Study is finally nearing comple­
tion. A final report due out at the end of the 
summer will offer comparisons of borrowing 
and lending processes as demonstrated by vari­
ous libraries. Jackson also reviewed the progress 
being made on ISO ILL Protocol Compliance 
guidelines. ARL hopes to offer workshops an d / 
or conferences to educate librarians about these 
guidelines. The group then debated methods

of assessment activities as related to informa­
tion literacy skills. All agreed that closer part­
nerships with faculty are necessary to get a 
handle on assessment outcomes. Dewey que­
ried the group about ideas for new  and inno­
vative models of on-site reference and infor­
mation services. Many libraries are reevaluating 
the usefulness of physically imposing refer­
ence desks. In response, some are trying a 
“roving” approach to reference work while oth­
ers have separate reference staff for phone, 
fax, and e-mail reference.—A n n e  Garrison, 
Georgia Institute o f Technology

Getting student feedback
Getting student feedback was the topic for the 
ACRL U ndergraduate Librarians Discussion 
Group, in a well-attended, lively session. The 
topic was introduced by presentations from 
Donna Senzig, undergraduate librarian, Univer­
sity of Wisconsin, and Judith Pask, undergradu­
ate librarian, Purdue University. Senzig d e­
scribed the development and use of surveys at 
the University of Wisconsin designed to pro­
vide management information for evaluating 
services. Survey results and their analysis led 
to adjustments whose effectiveness was mea­
sured by a second survey two years later. Pask 
reported on some uses of focus groups at the 
Purdue libraries and how their results were used 
to shape services. Her presentation included a 
general overview of the characteristics of in­
formation gathered from focus groups and how 
they are best used. The ensuing discussion in­
cluded methods of attracting student participa­
tion and of choosing appropriate evaluation 
tools for specific management goals.— Linda 
TerHaar, University o f Michigan ■

ULS 1997-98 Executive Committee

The new officers for ULS, effective July 1997, 
are:

Chair: Lori Goetsch, University of Ten­
nessee, Knoxville

Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect: Maureen Pastine, 
Southern Methodist University

Secretary: K a th le e n  G u n n in g , 
Susquehanna University

Member-at-Large: Eloise McQuown, San 
Francisco State University

Member-at-Large: Leslie Wykoff, Wash­
ington State University at Vancouver



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