No Brief Candle
12 Jan 09
I’ve finally gotten around to looking at No Brief Candle: Reconceiving Research Libraries for the 21st Century (PDF). Published in August 2008 by the Council on Library and Information Resources, it’s not surprisingly a call for change in research libraries still shrugging off the shackles of having been founded in the 19th and reified in the 20th Centuries. Part I of the document is an overview of the discussions that were held at a CLIR organized conference in February last year, and this section ends with nine recommendations. I’m always leery of sweeping recommendations, they have a tendency to be overly simplistic and, if not wrong, pretty much self-evident (case in point from this document: Rec. 6, “Instruction and delivery mechanisms should be designed according to what we know of human learning and discovery.” — thanks for pointing that out).
But here are some interesting bits. I was hoping to cite only those that avoid the passive, but that just isn’t always possible.
1. “ . . . develop a rigorous research agenda. . . .” For me, the emphasis should be on “rigorous”.
2. “The research library should be redefined as a multi-institutional entity.” This is happening quickly in some areas, more slowly in others. We have an agreement in Ontario that effectively functions as a province-wide policy for print serials holdings for the 20 member libraries of OCUL, but we’re nowhere near consideration of the strategies itemized in this document, which if implemented here would effectively lead to a single provincial library.
3. “Greater collaboration among librarians, information technology specialists, and faculty on research project design and execution should be strongly supported.” I cite this recommendation with interest because what they’re talking about in the context of collaboration are the core elements of a new position I have recently taken on: scholarly publishing, institutional repository development, data curation, and digital resource development. The emphasis here is on faculty research.
Finally, 4. “More funds should be allocated for experimental projects and new approaches,” which dovetails nicely with 8. “Institutions should use studio and design experiences as the basis of a new library school curriculum.” I’d like to bend recommendation 8, though, and apply it to the notion of pursuing experimentation embedded in recommendation 4. Libraries are a built environment physically, virtually, and conceptually. The librarian-as-designer gets to experiment with and ultimately decide how to build (and renovate, and tear down, and rebuild). Exciting!
Incidentally, Part II of No Brief Candle consists of eight essays by conference participants.
Posted by pzed on January 12, 2009 at 2.11pm
