Library Fall 2013
Notes from the Dean
University librarian and dean of libraries James Hilton began his academic career at the University of Michigan and returned to Ann Arbor after serving as vice president and chief information officer at the University of Virginia for seven years.
At great universities, libraries occupy hallowed ground. They are the place where students, faculty, and scholars of all sorts probe the boundaries of what is known and what is not yet known. As it has been, so it must be. The University of Michigan Library, whose longstanding commitment to excellence in collections, service, and innovation consistently position it in the upper ranks of the world’s great research libraries, has in recent years led the redefining of the research library for the 21st century. This leadership is vital, because academic libraries are at an inflection point: Will they remain at the center of the university, deeply connected to the scholarly enterprise? Or will they become quaint relics, offering decent coffee and excellent meeting space, but disconnected from the core activities of the academy? Needless to say, I believe deeply in the essential relevance of libraries. Fortunately, I also believe that this library is positioned to lead the rest through the momentous transition from an analog to a digital world. In the pre-networked analogue world, great academic libraries became great because their collections enabled their communities to excel in scholarship–expertise in a any given subject area required deep library holdings in that area. The resulting knowledge, discoveries, and creative output were as a matter of course collected and preserved by the library, ensuring that it would be accessible now and forever. The processes and workflows that have sustained this enduring scholarly conversation evolved over centuries, and are deeply ingrained in library practice. The transition to digital methods and outputs upends this sustaining cycle. Simple access has become ubiquitous (if expensive). But durable access to the entirety of the scholarly record has become elusive. Scholarship and research today encompass rapidly changing objects, massive data sets, and a host of third parties providing for-profit services that impede the library’s mission to collect and preserve. Michigan has led many far-reaching initiatives to navigate this transition. The scanning partnership with Google, HathiTrust, and the library-based publishing enterprise Michigan Publishing all provide a foundation for the reinvention of workflows that ensure the curated preservation of, and enduring access to, the fruits of scholarship in all its forms. Libraries, of course, are much more than mechanisms for the collection, preservation, and dissemination of scholarship. They are hubs of engagement. Walk into any library at Michigan and you will be amazed by the hustle and bustle. Why is this so in the age of
Google, when laptops and smart phones offer access to a wealth of information–including much of the library’s offerings? It is so because libraries offer a unique combination of location, resources, and services; and because, in the fractured and often competitive environment of the modern university, libraries are both neutral and highly engaged. They are centers of inquiry and service that facilitate collaboration, identify and meet common needs, and provide solutions that advance the research and teaching mission of all of the university’s schools and colleges. They are the resource used by the community, especially by students, to better understand the difference between information, which is now readily available, and knowledge, which is as difficult to come by as ever. Education in this century will flourish when students, staff, and faculty collaboratively engage in knowledge discovery. The library is and must remain at the center of this process, empowering the community with new tools and facilities alongside the traditional modes of discovery and analysis that are firmly rooted in the collections. To remain at the center of this process, regardless of shifts in means and methods, the library must engage in a bit of celestial navigation–that ancient method used by sailors to traverse unpredictable seas–and set its sights on a few fixed points, among them: Durable access. Only universities have the perspective and the mission to preserve forever. As the underpinnings of scholarship change, we must find ways to permanently preserve the scholarly record. Collaboration and scale. Global challenges like the preservation of the scholarly and cultural record require multi-institutional cooperation and shared infrastructure, along with the leadership that this library has shown in mustering such efforts. People and places. Scholarship in every discipline is becoming a team sport. The library must be at the center of these teams, and we have the assets to do it: central, neutral territory to facilitate conversation, vast collections, and excellent and dynamic services to foster exploration and discovery in an increasingly complex knowledge and information landscape. But our North Star, that most fixed point in our celestial navigation, will remain audacity. Libraries have long been audacious (free public access, for example, was a bold move) but this library has been extraordinarily so. It has been at the forefront of many initiatives that have changed academia and the world. It will be at the forefront of many more. I hope you’ll join us on what promises to be a thrilling voyage.
University of Michigan Library