…And Our Crystal Ball Says… Predicting a Changing Future

Veronica Reyes Special Collections Librarian & French & Italian Department Liaison University of Arizona Libraries

Access & Delivery Team Members: Doug Jones, Kris Maloney, Veronica Reyes, Rae Swedenburg

Access & Delivery Team Charge

Identify and recommend to the Library, via a report submitted to Cabinet, the principles, strategies, and priorities that will guide us to effectively provide access to and deliver information and realize our vision for the library in 2013 (and beyond).

The University Of Arizona Library Long Range Strategic Plan 2006-2010 July 15 , 2005 Vision*

In 2010 the University of Arizona Library and the Center for Creative Photography are innovative, entrepreneurial, and integral to the University's exceptional learning and research environment. Our students and faculty recognize the Library as a place of discovery and community, critical to achieving their full potential. *Wording for Vision has changed since our work was completed.

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Factors Beyond Our Control

The University of Arizona will remain a comprehensive state university with a research mission that places it in the top tier of research institutions. Acknowledging the Changing Directions Initiative, the current restructuring of higher education in Arizona, and the upcoming change of university president, it nevertheless appears quite clear that the UA will retain these distinguishing characteristics. Customers want to be self-sufficient and have unmediated, immediate access to information. Customers increasingly expect access to information and communication where the boundaries between work, play and study are blurring. Computers are not viewed as ‘technology’ and multitasking is a way of life. Technology has fundamentally changed the way people work, the way they think about topics, and the way they interact with others. The information economy is changing and established roles can no longer be taken for granted.

In an environment of significant changes and high uncertainty, a successful organization must be agile and flexible enough to respond to change and seize opportunities quickly. Decision making processes should be transparent and informed by available information. No organization can be all things to all people; success is defined as providing a service or product that they are uniquely qualified to provide or that meets customer need(s) better than competitors at the same or lower cost.

Key Factors for Change

The three key factors most influential to change in our environment are: • Decreased availability of funding: Government funding to universities is decreasing and the result is an increase in competition for existing funds and the need to find and develop new sources of revenue. The University of Arizona is using Focused Excellence as a strategy to prioritize funding allocations.

• Changing customer expectations: Customers expect information to be readily accessible where and when they need it. New technologies have allowed users to communicate and access information through new devices (e.g., computers, cell phones, PDAs) and from seemingly limitless venues.

• Changing information marketplace: The abundance of information and new technologies that have changed users’ behavior are also destabilizing the information marketplace. Information is a high-profit commodity and many new, well capitalized competitors have entered the marketplace.

Areas Studied

• Economic & Social Trends • Technology Trends • Scholarly Communication • Higher Education • Higher Education Responses • UA Libraries Responses

Economic and Social Trends

• We are not alone. Technology is fostering a globally interdependent economy. • The United States is increasingly a knowledge-based economy • Demographics will change the face of America. • An increasingly large percentage of the population in the U.S and elsewhere will own ‘intelligent’ electronic devices such as computers, hand-held electronics, and cameras. • Collaboration—or at least cooperation—is a growing trend as a work and learning practice among individuals as well as an organizational strategy among universities, businesses, government agencies, and libraries. • Publishers are repackaging content for different markets. • The internet has changed user perceptions and expectations of the search process.

• They expect information access to be direct and convenient; and expect access from anywhere.

• Libraries are now in direct competition with other information providers in the academic marketplace. • Users are increasingly willing to pay for online content.

Technology Trends

• Hardware performance will continue to increase dramatically. • Costs for processing, storage and communications will continue to go down while capabilities will increase significantly. • Barrier-free and integrated access to information and communication are trends that will likely continue into the future. • Search engine capabilities and performance are improving significantly on all fronts.

Scholarly Communication

• The role of the library in the evolving information environment will likely be changed significantly. • As information technology changes and the volume of information increases, the destabilization of traditional business models based on a more stable print environment is changing the entire information ‘economy.’ • The historical bundling of ownership, access, storage and archiving represented by the printed volume on a library shelf is being un-bundled.

• Content, including high-quality academic content, is being made available through internet search engines such as Google. • Libraries are responding to the rising costs of scholarly products through a variety of strategies • The overall percentage of the total scholarly output being acquired by research libraries is declining.

• Search and retrieval market is also changing, challenging the traditional roles of libraries, aggregators and index providers.

Higher Education

• State funding of public universities represents an increasingly smaller proportion of the universities’ budgets. • Governing boards, accreditation organizations, and funding sources are requiring greater accountability for demonstrated outcomes. • Nationally, there is a growing percentage of adjunct faculty in teaching positions as well as non-tenure eligible scientists and professors in research positions. • There is an increasing recognition of the need for and value of a national technology infrastructure. • Increase in student engagement contributes to student achievement, retention, and graduation rate. • The teaching role of the faculty is being unbundled as more people become involved in facilitating the incorporation of technology into the teaching inside and outside of the classroom. • Demographics play a major role in shaping the future of higher education. • Recent studies suggest changes in the characteristics of new undergraduates.

Higher Education Responses

Responses to changes in higher education have been varied. National, state and local institutions are grappling with the new demographic, social, technological, and economic realities. As yet, there are no clearly defined paths to follow.

Higher Education Responses

• At the national level there are many ongoing efforts to improve both the quality and cost effectiveness of learning at the undergraduate level. • Learning to utilize technology in support of pedagogy will take time and culture change. • There is an increased emphasis on collaboration in learning.

UA Libraries Organizational Responses

• Reallocation of positions reflects a changing emphasis in how the library is adapting to the changing environment. • Support for fundraising has had the most significant increases nearly doubling our previous capacity. • Technology and support for undergraduate students and services have also grown significantly.

• The promise of technology has been used as a driver to reduce staff for direct customer support.

Recommendations for UA Libraries

RESEARCH

Context

Discovery: Processes such as search and browse that act on descriptions of information including index abstracts, catalog information and metadata. Connection: Locating the appropriate copy of an item for or by the customer. A connection moves the customer from the description of the content to the actual content.

Information Resource Acquisition and Management: Processes that provide cost-effective access to information. These include selection, policy setting, description, and purchasing.

Stewardship, Preservation and Developing Collections for

Improved Access: Providing information resource management for new forms of information and making more information readily available for access digitally.

Recommendations for RESEARCH

Discovery

The Library must take an active role in planning and creating a trusted knowledge-rich environment that supports discovery and learning in a way that maximizes user self-sufficiency.

Connection:

We must focus our efforts on providing accurate statements of what we own and on connecting customers with the needed physical or virtual items as effectively and efficiently as possible.

Information Resource Acquisition and Management:

Libraries must continue to work to keep the cost of information low and access broad.

Stewardship, Preservation and Developing Collections for Improved Access:

We must carefully assess how we can best support the stewardship and preservation of data sets, other research products in the areas of Focused Excellence. This may mean that we develop or collaborate to develop specialized collections and access tools that meet users’ identified stewardship needs. We must ensure that there is a sustained need, a community of interest and that we are uniquely positioned to provide stewardship.

Recommendations for EDUCATION

The Library should build on and learn from models that reduce overlap while reaching the greatest number of students at the appropriate point in their education sequence. Librarians must cease using classroom instruction as the primary means of building information competencies in students. Rather, they must become consultants to teaching faculty and graduate students, encouraging and helping them to incorporate research/information literacy skills into the class curriculum.

Recommendations for OUTREACH

The Library will support the University outreach mission not through independent initiatives but rather by working in partnership with already established University programs and by maximizing initiatives designed and developed within the Library to serve the University community to also serve the needs of the wider community.

OVER-ARCHING ISSUES

Context

Strategic Focus: Our Library, like many ARL Libraries, entered the digital age by selecting and experimenting with discrete projects that presented interesting technical challenges. These projects have not always directly served the University’s strategic interests nor met identified customer needs. They have been valuable learning opportunities and have produced some useful products. Strategic Planning: Our current strategic planning process includes many elements of operational planning and the even includes operational components. Constant changing of focus between strategic issues and operational details makes it difficult for our planning process to remain strategic. Annual Planning and the Coordination of Operations: Our method of translating strategic direction into action was time-consuming and inefficient. It frequently lacked continuity and it lacked the agility that the current environment demands. Decision-Making & Accountability: Decisions were made in several places throughout the organization and was not always clear where the responsibility for specific decisions resided, thus accountability was not adequately ensured. The practice relied upon individual self-accountability which created uneven distribution of work and responsibility. Our reporting method did not effectively ensure team accountability. Although the effectiveness of Cabinet as a coordinating body is essential to the organization’s ability to be agile, it was unclear how Cabinet itself was held accountable.

Recommendations for OVER-ARCHING ISSUES

Strategic Focus: We must carefully select projects and opportunities based on customer needs and the strategic priorities of the University within the context of the Library’s mission. Criteria must be developed to identify which projects are undertaken locally, which are done collaboratively and which projects we should not do at all. Strategic Planning: Strategic planning must provide the Library with a clear direction, goals, objectives and strategies. Annual priorities should be clearly identified. Strategic planning must be separate from operation planning and the coordination of operations in the library. The product of strategic planning should be a strategic that guides operational decisions of the library.

Annual Planning and Coordination of Operations: We must create an environment within the organization in which all operational decisions are made from a strategic perspective. There must be library-wide prioritization and coordination of projects so that we are completing the work that is most important for our customers. The strategic plan must guide the prioritization of projects and effective use of the infrastructure.

Decision-making and Accountability: Decision making must be transparent and occur at the appropriate level for the work. Accountability must be in place in every endeavor. Infrastructure: We must invest in our technological and human infrastructure in order to leverage and reuse investment and quickly develop new tools.

In Summary

Though we can’t predict the future we need to pay attention to trends in our environment, beyond the library’s world. These point to changes that we must heed in order to place the library profession in roles from which our customers will benefit in the future.

Complete Documents

Access and Delivery of Information in 2014

http://www.library.arizona.edu/conferenc es/ltf/2006/documents/reyes-att1.doc

Access & Delivery White Paper

http://www.library.arizona.edu/conferenc es/ltf/2006/documents/reyes-att2.doc