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portal: Libraries and the Academy 3.3 (2001) v-vii



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Measuring Relevance

Gloriana St. Clair
Managing Editor


Speaking at a Born Digital meeting in San Francisco, University of British Columbia professor John Willinsky noted "a sense among academics of the increasing irrelevance of the library to the creation and transmission of knowledge." In response, Willinsky advocates the creation of an exchange economy among research libraries that would sponsor the online, refereed publication of the scholarship (journals, dissertations, databases, archives, etc.) associated with their faculty members. He sees the increasing privatization of public knowledge as a potentially dangerous trend. He challenged librarians who are trained information specialists to become the center of a public knowledge exchange society. 1

Academic perceptions about the relevance of libraries are certainly important to our success, but more important is an understanding of data that either support or refute those perceptions. Libraries currently measure many aspects of their operations. My thesis is that we need to review these measures to assure that, if libraries were asked to demonstrate relevance, a cogent case could be prepared. This editorial covers three main areas--some recent Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) and Digital Library Federation (DLF) initiatives, some Association for Research Libraries projects underway, and portal's own approach to measuring its relevance and success.

CLIR/DLF initiatives: Two days before the Born Digital meeting, Deanna Marcum and Dan Greenstein convened a small group of librarians from different-sized libraries to discuss motivating change in libraries. The group worked from Denise Troll's fine white paper, "How and Why Are Libraries Changing?" (DRAFT, http://www.clir.org/diglib/use/whitepaper.htm), and from a confidential report by Outsell, an information industry marketing research firm. 2 After a review of ongoing statistical initiatives discussed below, the librarians concluded that other groups were handling those measures in a suitable fashion.

Two areas seemed to require further attention. First, anecdotal reports, supported by ambiguous statistical trends, suggest that many students who formerly came to the library to meet their information needs now go directly to the Web. Several articles published in portal contribute to this picture of changing student information-seeking [End Page v] habits. The librarians at this meeting thought that knowing more about current student and faculty learning patterns would help libraries to adjust appropriately. The Council and the DLF are pursuing this initiative.

Second, librarians at the meeting thought that some libraries were making more progress than others in changing to meet new faculty and student expectations. One way to transmit information about successful libraries is through the creation of case studies. The Council's 1999 report, "Innovative Use of Information Technology by Colleges," described several digital projects in a variety of libraries (http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub85/contents.html). Another offering of this type is now being considered.

A like initiative that showcases success in relevance to the local academic community is the Association for College and Research Libraries' Excellence Award. Initiated in 2000 under the presidency of Larry Hardesty, the award focuses on college, community college, and university libraries that respond to the missions of their institutions in a superior manner. The winners to date--College of DuPage, Austin Community College, Earlham College, Wellesley College, University of Arizona, and North Carolina State--do model effective campus relations (http://www.ala.org/acrl/exclnce.html).

Another active force for changing libraries is Don Waters' excellent work as the program officer for Scholarly Communications at the A.W. Mellon Foundation. One of the most significant problems facing libraries is their need to provide a reliable archive for digital information. Mellon has currently funded seven experiments that should lead to best practices and models for academic libraries. A.W. Mellon's work is most beneficial in helping libraries to achieve strategic directions and increase relevance to students and faculty.

Other major initiatives: The Association for Research Libraries and others are also engaged in several initiatives intended to help libraries understand how they are serving their students and faculty.

  • Sherrie Schmidt, Dean of Libraries at Arizona State University, and Rush Miller...

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