june07b.indd


David Free 

Stepping through the open door 
A forum on new modes of information delivery in higher education 

In early March 2007, ACRL, in conjunction with EDUCAUSE and the National Associa­
tion of College Stores (NACS), sponsored a 
forum in Denver to explore new areas of 
collaboration between libraries, information 
technology, and college stores in the new 
information environment. Approximately 40 
invited participants gathered at the Grand 
Hyatt Denver for an intensive two days of 
discussion and brainstorming on the ways 
in which the associations and their member­
ship can “help ensure the continued success 
of the nation’s colleges and universities by 
addressing opportunities presented by the 
emergence of new modes of information 
delivery.” Stated objectives of the forum 
included identifying areas of both common 
and unique knowledge among the stakehold­
ers and recommending courses of action to 
improve communication and relationships 
across campus constituencies. 

Introductory session 
The introductory session convened to discuss 
the goals of the forum and examine some of 
the major issues facing colleges and univer­
sities in the new information environment. 
Participants viewed and discussed a provoca­
tive video presentation on the future of higher 
education in 2020, which served as the basis 
for discussion in break out sessions over 
the next two days. General issues raised for 
discussion included creation, reservation, and 
distribution of materials on campuses along 
with strategies to improve the ways in which 
students acquire information both in and out 
of the classroom. Questions of storage and 
accessibility of materials created by faculty 
and others in the academy over the long 

term also proved to be a major discussion 
point. Librarians, IT professionals, and college 
store personnel all have vested interest in the 
process of scholarly communication and will 
need to work together outside of their nor­
mal roles to ensure continued access to and 
preservation of digital content. Participants 
identified several additional issues, including 
globalization and economic concerns, where 
increased collaboration will be essential to 
the success of the academy. 

The remainder of the day was devoted 
to a series of small group exercises during 
which members from each stakeholding 
group were divided into teams to examine 
in more detail the vision of the future pre­
sented in the opening sessions and identify 
major issues facing higher education over 
a timeline. A majority of members of each 
working group were from one area of exper­
tise, with a smaller number of members of 
other groups included. This cross­pollination 
of roles provided for interesting discussion 
and introduction of new ideas as each group 
was to identify both positive and negative 
developments for the future of information 
delivery in the academy. 

Issues raised 
The majority of library groups identifi ed is­
sues of open access, print on demand, librar­
ians as equal members of research teams, and 
simplification of copyright issues as positive 
future developments, while the continued 

David Free is public ser vices librarian at Georgia 
Perimeter College-Decatur Campus Library, e-mail: 
dfree@gpc.edu 
© 2007 David Free 

356C&RL News June 2007

mailto:dfree@gpc.edu


information divide, standardization of class 
content, and the increasing commercializa­
tion of higher education were negatives. 
The information technology work groups 
focused on issues of network security and 
hosting, the increasingly multidimensional 
content environment, user expectations, and 
increased integration and interconnectedness 
between IT and libraries. Increased student 
adoption of digital content with related 
revenue issues, aggregation of content, and 
the future of bookstores in general, with an 
increasing move away from paper formats, 
were among the major points of discussion 
in the college stores groups. At the end of 
the session, each group presented its vision 
of higher education over the next 20 years 
in the form of a timeline. This process forced 
participants to think about the major issues 
impacting their primary area of responsibil­
ity and opened lines of communication and 
increased understanding. 

Collaboration opportunities 
The functional area working groups recon­
vened the following day with some member­
ship changes to introduce new voices and 
increase input from other areas. Working 
from the previous days’ timelines, each 
group identified two or three major poten­
tial opportunities for collaboration. Issues of 
repositories and open access were strong 
in the library groups. Increasing access to 
materials in the new electronic environment 
will require cross­institutional collaboration 
in repositories to conceptualize, manage, 
and develop new means of access to digital 
content. The current system of publisher­ or 
institution­based digital storage makes suc­
cessful search and retrieval difficult, a fact 
that could be improved with increased col­
laboration between functional groups and 
across institutional boundaries. Learning 
objects will have to potentially incorporate 
aspects of tagging, social bookmaking, and 
other Web 2.0 tools in order to facilitate this 
model of increased access. 

Libraries need to become a more integral 
part of scholarly discussions by continuing 

to reach out to classroom faculty. Increased 
understanding of scholarly processes and 
discussions by librarians will help foster this 
collaboration, along with physical space for 
stakeholders from various groups to meet and 
discuss scholarly issues. 

Top opportunities identified by the infor­
mation technology groups included refocus­
ing the IT unit on teaching and learning, 
creating content access portals to make all 
content readily available, and aggregating 
digital resources. The pace of adopting new 
technologies must increase in order to meet 
these goals. 

Facilitation of communication and discus­
sion between all three groups represented 
in Denver, along with classroom faculty and 
students, is increasingly important in his new 
environment. Interestingly, these issues were 
very closely aligned with the library ideas on 
open access and content delivery across in­
stitutional lines. Mass digitization of learning 
materials will require input and shifted roles 
from all groups to create and provide access 
to new forms of content. 

The bookstore­dominated groups focused 
on issues related to physical space and re­
source centers. In the future, college stores 
must partner with an increasing number of 
campus areas to become part of multidisci­
plinary resource centers to better serve all 
constituency groups. Moving bookstores from 
a purely retail model toward becoming a cam­
pus service solution through the distribution 
of digital content, collaboration on licensing 
content campus wide, and taking advantage 
of customer relationships will serve to improve 
communication and ensure the place of col­
lege stores on the campus of the future. 

Bookstores can create a type of “trip 
advisory” resource for instructional content 
modeled on online travel sites by collabo­
rating with libraries in using social software 
and other new technologies to provide in­
creasingly integrated access to customized, 
personalized learning materials. Bookstores 
and libraries also have opportunities to jointly 
provide faculty concierge services to assist in 
the selection and creation of materials. 

June 2007  357 C&RL News 



Team work 
The final exercise of the forum merged partic­
ipants into three groups—college stores and 
libraries, libraries and IT, and IT and college 
stores—to further distill the ideas discussed 
in previous session and identify top areas for 
potential real world collaboration. The col­
lege stores and libraries team identifi ed ideas 
for collaborative physical and virtual space 
as the top­rated opportunity. Combining the 
expertise of both groups has the potential to 
create both online and on­campus spaces, 
where the entire academic community can 
gather, discuss issues, and learn. Working 
outside of existing silos to remove perceived 
barriers will greatly assist in this process. The 
strengths of each group in networking, ma­
terials acquisition, and fi nancial transactions 
can be harnessed in a collaborative environ­
ment to more efficiently facilitate the delivery 
of information to students and faculty. For 
example, libraries can potentially turn over 
financial transactions related to materials ac­
quisitions and database licensing to college 
stores. This type of collaboration plays to the 
strengths of each group and frees each to 
focus on its particular areas of expertise. 

Issues of space also played a major role 
in the discussion between libraries and IT. 
Working together to create academic infor­
mation spaces to facilitate the discovery of 
digital objects and information through more 
effective aggregation will benefit the academy 
as a whole. This academic information space 
can centralize copyright clearance and rights 
management expertise to facilitate more ef­
fective creation of course packets and digital 
materials for use in courseware. As copyright 
and rights management issues become in­
creasingly complex due to the proliferation 
of digital formats, this type of collaborative 
environment is increasingly important in 
the delivery of learning content. Aggregat­
ing information delivery and creation can 
potentially produce a streamlined and more 
efficient environment for disseminating infor­
mation to both faculty and students. 

The IT and college stores group focused 
on several related issues and ideas, includ­

ing providing the academic “trip advisor” 
services developed during the previous ses­
sions. Using and supporting Web 2.0 tools 
as a means to developing advisory structure 
for the creation of instructional content will 
allow for the development of a consultative 
relationship between all represented groups 
and classroom faculty to integrate new forms 
of content into the curriculum. Libraries 
and bookstores can become increasingly 
embedded into the instructional process by 
taking advantage of the skills inherent in the 
information technology environment in the 
creation of digital materials and spaces. The 
increasing move towards a business model 
of academia may potentially provide new op­
portunities to monetize bookstore and library 
expertise for the benefit of both groups. By 
working together and building on existing 
relationships, all groups can more effectively 
advocate for change and improve instruction 
and access to information across the board. 

Closing 
After a grueling and intense two days of 
learning, sharing, and collaborating, the fo­
rum ended with a reflective session on the 
experiences and lessons learned. As ACRL 
Executive Director Mary Ellen Davis noted 
in her closing remarks, a major end result of 
the forum was the increased realization and 
recognition of potential areas of collaboration 
between the three represented groups. Many 
participants shared this sentiment, especially 
in relation to the bookstore/library relation­
ship. Representatives from both communities 
observed that they now saw each other as 
potential colleagues and partners in their 
institutions. 

While libraries and college stores both 
have interaction with information technol­
ogy professionals on some level, they had 
not thought of each other as collaborators or 
partners prior to coming together in Denver. 
While this was the major realization in terms 
of new partnerships, all participants devel­
oped new respect and ideas for working 

(continues on page 363) 

358C&RL News June 2007



multaneously trying to add a bit of the new, 
they are allied with neither the past nor the 
future; they are rarely seen as strong and 
sustainable advocates of the future of the 
institution. In this time of resource limits and 
challenge from virtually every stakeholder, 
courageous choices are necessary. If librar­
ians are to play an active and constructive 
role in creating the future of their institutions, 
including their own future in supporting 
education and scholarship, then they must 
start with open­eyed examinations of their 
strengths and weaknesses, not an evaluation 
based on past or current habits, but on the 
competencies and weaknesses that underlie 
current practice. 

I am reminded of an earlier era of com­
puting, the mainframe days, when to use a 
computer one needed to go to the impressive 
campus computer center for access. Coffee 
and snacks were available. Various support 
offices were located there and open for long 
hours. There were large areas with tables to 
facilitate group work, because we needed to 
be taught by each other as we learned. These 
centers were made anachronisms by personal 
computers, and became empty, even as the 
effectiveness of the tools provided by com­
puters increased. 

Personal computers didn’t make the 
physical library anachronistic, but the rapid 
growth of vast quantities of Internet­based 
anywhere/anytime information is a real chal­
lenge to libraries and librarians. Over the 

long term these challenges will not likely 
be addressed by increasing the noninquiry 
reasons for coming to libraries (e.g., cof­
fee shops and group­study spaces), but by 
thinking in new ways about how libraries 
and librarians can serve the inquiring mind. 
These new ways should not be based on the 
current practices of libraries as places, but on 
the underlying competencies and strengths 
of the profession. 

My great oak table, once designed for 
the reading room of a library and capable of 
holding tall stacks of books and periodicals, 
is no longer in that setting nor is it used for 
that purpose. It is now in my home offi ce, 
where my most creative inquiry happens, and 
instead of holding up books and periodicals 
(though I will admit that it does hold up 
some of them), it is the base for my Internet­
connected computers. While cracked and a 
bit warped, it serves today’s new needs as 
effectively as it did yesterday’s needs—and 
indeed, supports a much more effective and 
efficient process of inquiry today than it ever 
did in the past. 

Where is the value in libraries and librar­
ians? There are many and they are strong, and 
as previous C&RL News columns have indi­
cated, there are many ways to communicate 
them. But if the future of the library is to be 
strong, then librarians must demonstrate that 
they are moving beyond the past and making 
choices today that directly serve the needs 
of tomorrow’s inquiring mind. 

(“Stepping through...” cont. from page 358) 

together for the benefit of the educational 
process. 

While there are potential barriers to 
effectively enacting many of the ideas 
brought forward at the forum, all of the 
sponsoring associations expressed a need 
to continue to work together and discuss 
collaborative issues on a national level. 
Presenting joint panel discussions at the 
major conferences of each organization 
and cross­organizational work through 
committees were major ideas expressed 

to potentially continue and expand the 
conversations started in Denver. Adding 
stakeholders, such as university presses 
and classroom faculty, to the mix can serve 
to broaden the discussions. Continuing the 
conversations begun in Denver through ad­
ditional forums and online or face­to­face 
presentations and repositories of successful 
real world collaborative projects can ensure 
that all stakeholders step through the door 
opened by technological innovation for the 
benefit of their individual institutions and 
the improvement of higher education. 

June 2007  363 C&RL News