Ithaka S+R is a “not-for-profit service that helps the academic community navigate economic and technological change.” They published the results of an extensive survey of academic library directors on the strategy and directions for the libraries. This is a triennial survey and is part of a collection of related surveys of faculty and students. This is a very informative survey and I strongly encourage you to read through it carefully. The authors point out that there are significant differences in many areas of the survey by the institution type. But, there are several topics in which there are commonalities. It is notable that the response rate for Baccalaureate institutions is only 43% whereas for Doctoral institutions is 68%.

Here are the key findings:

• Library directors anticipate increased resource allocation towards services and predict the most growth for positions related to teaching and research support.
• Library directors are deeply committed to supporting student success, yet many find it difficult to articulate these contributions.
• Collections have been digitally transformed, and directors are interested in expanding their collecting to include more non-textual materials.
• Library directors are increasingly recognizing that discovery does not and should not always happen in the library.
• Library directors are pursuing strategic directions with a decreasing sense of support from their institutions.

I am happy to say that the conversations that are taking place both at Wellesley College as well as other organizations of small liberal arts colleges that we belong to generally mirror what you see in the survey results for the Baccalaureate institutions. Of course, there are also differences.

One thing I would like to say is that I disagree with the last bullet. I feel that LTS is well supported by the faculty and administration at Wellesley and I do not see a decline. The Advisory Committee on Library and Technology Policy (ACLTP), consisting of six faculty members, five staff and two students, as well as the senior leadership is keenly aware of our strategic directions and offer great support and feedback.

Based on our own strategic direction and the use of our services, we agree that the teaching and research support is something we do the best and the community loves it. Whether it is the instruction sessions offered by our research and instruction librarians or the use of special collections and book arts lab for instructions, we score high marks. In addition, every year, a few LTS staff teach or co-teach for-credit courses at the College.

We agree with the survey result that we are constantly rethinking how best to use the library as collaborative space for students and faculty. Unfortunately, achieving this involves significant financial resources and is not in the hands of LTS alone.

Whereas the responses to where one would invest the available funds in terms of staffing is useful window into what other institutions are thinking, it is very dependent on the institution and where one is. For example, at Wellesley, we have already redistributed funds and positions and built a very strong group to support research and instruction and therefore our answer to where we would invest additional funding will be very different. Of course, this is a theoretical question because I do not foresee any additional funding for positions 🙂

At Wellesley, a subcommittee of ACLTP is helping us draft a collection management policy, so the results of the survey related to collections is very timely for us.

One of the major issues that many academic libraries are facing is the decline in acquisition budget and how best to deal with this. The competing priorities and how to deal with them can be seen in the apparently contradictory answers to the survey questions in this area. For example, we see that the answer to the question regarding the priority of “purchasing print books to build research collections” saw substantial increase across the board compared to 2013. However, the libraries are spending fewer resources on this. They also responded that they need to expand the collection of non-textual materials.

Looking more closely at the answers, here are the factors that I see: budgets are flat or on the decline; journal and database subscriptions consume a very large portion of the budget; expanding the collection of non-textual material is important and requires significant resources and therefore, though purchasing print books to build collections is a priority, there is not much resources left!

The fact that the discovery does not and should not always happen in the library is a tricky one in that because of the highly distributed nature of information today, we no longer control this. The role we can play is in assisting our faculty and students in best practices for discovery and not expect that it happen in the library.

This is an incredibly useful survey, but it only provides one window into a complex set of issues. To me one of the most important missing piece is that rationale. Take the first key finding of the library directors anticipate increased resource allocation for services. Why do they say this and what are the driving forces that made them come to this conclusion?

As questionable and controversial this statement is, we know that in many academic libraries the use of the print collections are on the decline based on some common metrics such as circulation and reshelfing statistics, yet there seems to be a desire to increase resources for print collections. What is the rationale?

We all hate filling out surveys because they tend to be long and time consuming. But when we see the analysis of the results, we begin to see the value…. Ok, Now time to go fill out a survey from another organization.