College and Research Libraries


Continuing Education 

A national Delphi Study conducted this winter by Western Inter-
state Commission for Higher Education predicted these major changes 
for postsecondary education in the next five to fifteen years: 

Social problems will get more attention; 
A greater proportion of students will enter vocational programs; 
Postsecondary education will be more accessible to all kinds of people; 
Faculty collective bargaining will be widely adopted; 
More and more students will continue education throughout their lifetime; 
More TV s, more computers, more of the other new technologies will be 

used in postsecondary education. 

How will academic libraries cope with these changes? Will they 
respond? Passively or actively? Will they maintain their typical re-
sponse as mere guardians of man's recorded ideas (more often than 
not, books)? Or, will they lead and modify change in postsecondary 
education? 

If academic libraries are to cope with changes in postsecondary 
education, or, better, anticipate and be prepared to contribute to that 
change with library resources and services, then those making the 
decisions will have to change too. 

How? 
Through education: preservice, formal, and continuing education. 

Perhaps most importantly, through staff development programs which 
include all staff, at all levels, and which are designed by staff and ad-
ministration to help their library more effectively assess client (and 
potential client) needs, adjust and change objectives of the library 
accordingly, and meet these objectives. 

Several years ago Margaret Mead suggested that for most occupa-
tions it was necessary to retool ev·ery five years (she used to say seven 
years), simply to keep up-to-date on the job. It has been claimed that 
the changes facing postsecondary education today are the most sig-
nificant since the Middle Ages. If such a claim has even an element 
of truth, well-designed and focused staff development programs are 
essential. 

A recent Association of Research Libraries' survey of fifty-two mem-
ber libraries identified very few research libraries which are providing 
centralized organizational support for staff development. The report 
notes that " ... the uncoordinated efforts at individual self-develop-
ment do not produce the staff capabilities necessary for the library to 
n1aintain its performance or, for that matter, meet the challenge of 
the future." In this issue, the late Arthur McAnally emphasizes that 
ufailure to plan for the future has been one of the major weaknesses 
of university libraries in general, a condition which many authorities 
agree must be corrected in the Seventies." 



102 I College & Research Libraries • March 1973 

Each academic library must consider its level of response to the 
predicted changes in postsecondary education. Staff together must 
identify client needs, thrash out their library's objectives, and create 
or adapt solid, focused staff development programs to enable the li-
brary to meet these ebjectives, several of which will be new. 

An alternative future for many academic libraries is all too clearly 
implied by the last major change predicted by WICHE's survey: 

People with money-state legislatures, federal government, private granting 
agencies, even well-heeled alums-will scrutinize ever more closely how 
higher education uses its resources. 

PETER HIATT 

1