Introduction
The University of Maryland Libraries are grappling with a series of challenges that are integrally related to a deep transformation of scholarly communication faced by all academic libraries. How the staff and faculty of the Libraries meet these basic challenges is critically important to the future of the University. It is amply clear that the academic library as a place will be sustained. At the same time, it will become ubiquitous because of the use of advanced networking and computing to support innovation in how the Libraries work with and for the students and faculty. This assessment of changes that will occur and how the Libraries will look by 2008 has offered an opportunity to take stock of the strategic plan and do some interim planning. The transformation defined herein tracks closely to what was described in the Libraries’ strategic planning process two years ago (see, http://www.lib.umd.edu/PUB/STRATEGICPLAN.HTML). The Appendix maps the planning in this report to the Libraries Strategic Plan Revision of 2001.
Throughout this report, an assessment is made of the opportunities for internal reallocation occasioned by new initiatives as well as significant shifts in emphasis with established programs. In some instances the report attaches explicit dollar values to these changes. However, the reallocation of human resources—the single largest item in the Libraries’ budget—will take significant workforce planning over the next five years (see section below) to establish the final measures for these changes. In any case, minimum and maximum ranges are provided for reallocations in the conclusions.
This concurrence gives us confidence in how well the strategic plan relates to the environmental scan that accompanied it. The use of the term “ubiquitous” is meant to convey that the Libraries will be available to the campus community in a pervasive fashion, basically at their fingertips. Of course, this does not mean that every print volume will be online—a dream of “Memex” that may never happen. The “ubiquitous library” will have a number of characteristics that relate to the way we will deliver information and the way library faculty and staff will be engaged in the teaching and research mission. Some of the characteristics are:
- An increasing preponderance of scholarly information will be accessible online in full text. Although the shift to networked electronic access is accelerating for journals, books will persist in print for a substantial time until peripherals can mimic their high usability.
- Library IT applications like the new ‘Research Port’ will present diverse resources which we license and those available for free on the Internet, so that the user will experience them as highly integrated, creating order out of the chaotic nature of the Internet. Users will be able to control the presentation of these resources through the ‘my library&3146; capability of MetaLib/SFX. TM
- Subject expert librarians will be reachable through networked reference service—and increasingly on a 24X7 basis.
- The role of librarians will continue to change dramatically as they become more directly engaged in classroom teaching and research in collaboration with faculty, particularly with respect to information literacy.
- The notion of ‘libraries as place’ has demonstrated a resilience characterized by continued high demand as reflected in foot traffic—1.5 million last year. Better access provided by the “ubiquitous library” creates a strong demand on facilities for use of libraries in person. This will mean too that remote access to print materials housed elsewhere must be expedited by speedy delivery and digital access. Older facilities will need significant attention to keep them up-to-date with new demands. Some facilities may need to be replaced.
- Large retrospective print collections will still be required by research universities, but libraries will enter into shared-use facilities and will create consortia which eliminate duplication of some low use materials while maintaining ‘last copy’ access through regional and national print repository agreements.
- The digital library program, currently in its infancy, will become a vital offering that makes unique special collections available to a wide audience on campus and will have the added benefit of high impact on the broader K-12 educational community that will serve to strengthen the service role of the Libraries and the University.
- The Libraries have carved out a strong role nationally in organizational development and will become and exemplar of a ‘learning organization’, which will enable them to respond quickly and effectively to the changing landscape of scholarly information.
- The Libraries will investigate both cost recovery and entrepreneurial programs that generate income, in particular some digital library programs will offer opportunities to do so. On the other hand, some efforts at digitization will be aimed at protecting content currently in the public domain from being exploited for commercial profit.
- The Libraries will take up institutional leadership in advancing access to the scholarly output of UM faculty through projects like Digital Repository at the University of Maryland.
- The Libraries will play a leadership role through the Association of Research Libraries and AAU in the long-term struggle to preserve the fair use principle for education and research purposes.
The reallocation of resources and effort described in this report is aimed at assuring that all of this happens. Thus, successes in employing advances in technology, additions to our rich special collections, growth in the print and electronic general collections, diversified services that meet new needs—all these are indicative of a nimble response that this University deserves of its Libraries and which is already evident in what we do. To achieve these goals, the University of Maryland Libraries must become a ‘learning organization’ that provides staff with resources for training and a focus on organization that emphasizes the full engagement of staff in continuous change. This is the heart of what the UM Libraries are becoming.
