The Academic Library Landscape: Two Reports

Two recent reports provide some insight into the academic library landscape:

In October 2014 the Taylor & Francis Group published a white paper on the Use of Social Media by the Library: Current Practices and Future Opportunities. Their research consisted of several approaches, including focus groups in the UK, US, and India; ten telephone interviews with library thought-leaders; a "Twitter party;" an online survey; and desk research. Unsurprisingly, they found that more than 70 percent of libraries use social media tools, with facebook and twitter being the most popular. Their use was primarily for purposes of promotion: marketing library events, collections, and services, although there was also some use for collection management, outreach, teaching, and learning. A large majority (88 percent) believed that social media would become more important in the future, although it is difficult to demonstrate the effectiveness of libraries' efforts in this realm. These are just a few of their findings; the whole report is well worth reading for more insights.

In The Changing Landscape of Library and Information Services: What Presidents, Provosts, and Finance Officers Need to Know, authors Richard Holmgren and Gene Spencer describe how college and university IT environments are changing and how library and information technology services can evolve to address future challenges. This report was sponsored by the Council on Library and Information Resources Chief Information Officers (CIOs) group, and based on a workshop that took place in December 2013. This group includes the CIOs of small, private, residential colleges" (p. 1) in which the IT and Library functions have been consolidated under one CIO. The report discusses the major changes of the past 10 years, challenges within higher education, the concept of library and information technology services as a utility, the opportunity to leverage investments, the library as place, and new roles for information services organizations. In their discussion of LITS as a utility, they define utility as "any unit within a college that delivers infrastructure required to support the core mission of fostering student learning" (p. 4). Overall, an interesting read, especially in light of the 2014 Survey of Chief Information Officers that I reviewed on December 31, 2014.