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Librarians are central to the teaching, learning, and research happening across campus — if we secure a healthy future for librarians, all of higher education (and beyond) benefits. In this series, librarian thought leaders will share personal insights into the challenges and opportunities their profession faces by responding to one of these prompts:
What should we — any member of the higher ed community — do now to ensure a healthy future for academic librarianship?
What persistent challenge do your patrons face in their teaching, learning, and researching, that you most wish — if you had a magic wand — you could erase for them? What do you think it might take to get there without that wand?
What current trend do you wish would become part of the higher ed canon? Why?
For me, the answer to this question is very simple — focus our services and our support where it will have the greatest impact on our institution’s mission. To some extent this is self-evident, which is why I say the answer is simple. However, that doesn’t mean that all institutions will have the same answer.
Being an academic librarian is intellectually and technically challenging work. It can be emotionally taxing as well and not just for those who work directly with patrons. While MLIS coursework prepares learners for those technical and intellectual challenges, less common are courses that foster skills needed to stand up to emotional challenges.
Our ability to build relationships allows us to continually improve the profession and the user experience. There is no one way to do this, but we must be open and willing to take an active role in this work. In fact, we need to see this as the work. If there is one thing I’ve learned thus far in my career, it is that I am never not a librarian to others.
Librarians have unique insights into the differing viewpoints of our patrons. By working with faculty and students around research assignments, librarians can not only advocate for the valuable work they do, but also help faculty and students overcome the disconnect they might feeling with research assignments but also differing views on the purpose and value of college itself
It’s too early to fully determine how this technology will be deployed into teaching, learning and research effectively, but it’s not too early to ask how will librarians use it (and its inevitable follow-up technologies), and if they should use it at all?
The question arises of what should we – any member of the higher ed community – do now to ensure a healthy future for academic librarianship? There’s a range of answers. Hopefully, we learned some things during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Talk about the future of libraries is cyclical. Through the years of feast or famine, one continuous thread in this conversation has been what the future library looks like. In light of recent discourse around library budgets and announcements regarding moving away from a physical library with books, what is the library's future?
It is this move beyond service provision to partners in our university’s strategic endeavors that will ensure a healthy future for academic libraries. The new UKRI OA policy on long-form publications which goes into effect in 2024 is a good place to start.
Related resources
Library press releases
Artificial intelligence – AI – is transforming the landscape, bringing with it new challenges, contexts, questions, concepts, and new paths for librarians. It is essential for us to develop the necessary skills to perform these new roles and adapt ourselves to the future.