Challenges and Priorities for the Next Five Years
I have five major challenges and priorities for the coming years.
Scholarly Communication
The rising cost of library collections has been the major challenge of the research library community for some time and it remains our single largest problem. Our growing dependence on commercial publishers for scholarly publications, a trend toward corporate mergers of commercial publishers (always resulting in higher prices for these publications), and a variety of other problems related to the way research is made publicly available, continue in spite of our many national and local efforts. Admittedly, there have been a few small successes during the last 10 years. During the coming years, I will be devoting even more of my time, both locally and nationally, toward initiatives designed to help researchers take back control of their scholarly publications in hopes of restoring an affordable model of distribution for scholarly publications. These efforts will include continuing to inform faculty groups about trends and developments, exploring ideas with faculty on how to accomplish these goals within their specific disciplines, providing some techniques for faculty to keep control of their own scholarly publications, and working at a national level to design and implement efforts within the international research community to continue to work on this problem collectively. I accepted an appointment on the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) Steering Committee specifically for this latter purpose.
Changing Services
Change is a given for all organizations, but for libraries, it is an imperative. We must be able both to respond to changes in library usage patterns and to provide leadership in creating new and better ways to acquire, provide access to, and preserve scholarly publications. In an organization as large as the UI Libraries, it can be especially challenging to respond quickly to these new demands and ideas. It can be especially difficult for a staff that already feels overworked to be responsive to these changes. But it is essential that we listen to our users, work with them to offer the best services and collections that we can afford, and continue to be adaptable, explore new possibilities, and be willing to try new ideas. It will be my ongoing challenge to foster an environment that embraces change as a given, that reaches out to our users to assess their changing needs and the quality of our services, and to keep our users informed about what we are doing. At the same time, I will need to work with the library staff to provide the resources they need to thrive in such a climate.
Diversity
As indicated in my earlier discussion of diversity, it has been especially challenging to diversify our professional staff at Iowa. One of my highest priorities is to recruit and retain more librarians from historically underrepresented groups. We will continue to explore and pursue more effective ways of accomplishing this goal.
Facilities
By the end of the next five years, I hope that we have moved some items from the collection into a new, high-density storage facility, have retired the Main Library basement as a collection storage space, and continued to make the kind of improvements in our 12 library facilities that make them better suited for the instructional and research needs of the 21st century. Working effectively within the physical limitations of the current Main Library and Hardin Library for the Health Sciences will be a continuing challenge.
Communication
Finding effective ways to communicate with academic departments has always been difficult but it has never been more important. Some people do not always read or pay close attention to e-mail announcements or the printed communication that are sent to them. One on one contact is not realistic, most of the time, and it can be difficult to attend departmental meetings. We need to find a variety of ways to ensure that we are getting the word out to faculty and other library users about the changes that we considering and are making. Similarly, we need to continue to implement various techniques for getting feedback from our users. Communication within the libraries, including staff involvement in the decision-making process at various levels, will also continue to be both a challenge and a high priority for me.