Research Libraries in a Global Context: An Exploratory Paper

This paper was originally prepared by ARL Staff for the ARL Board of Directors and the ARL Committee on Collection Development

Prepared December 1989
Revised October 1992

Research libraries are the hub of a nation's intellectual enterprise. Over the last decade, North American research libraries have faced many pressures: expanding scholarly disciplines and the growth of interdisciplinary studies; the demands of scholars for new and expanded services; the increase in the number of formats collected; the need to preserve the collections from the ravages of decay; the move to online catalogs; and budget constraints that affect all library efforts. These challenges will continue. At the same time, new external factors are exerting increasing pressure on libraries and their parent institutions as they seek to serve scholars' needs. These include:

• Transformations in Eastern Europe and around the world. In Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union the political upheavals have resulted in extraordinary changes. The changes - political, social and economic - are linked and will impact the entire world. Substantial changes are also occurring along the Pacific Rim and in Latin America.

• Impact of the global marketplace. The North American business community has found its marketplace as well as its competition to be global. The need for personnel well-trained in the cultures and languages of the world is increasing. A editorial in The Washington Post states, "Just about every country [the U.S. competes] with has met the challenge of imparting second- and third-language fluency to a substantial proportion of its citizens. [1] The fear that the United States and Canada will no longer be competitive in the world marketplace is real.

• Expanding boundaries of scientific and technical research. Scientific and technological efforts are increasingly collaborative on an international basis. Developments occur in laboratories around the world and scientists in the U.S. and Canada depend on awareness of these developments for progress in their own research. In addition, the results of research are increasingly being published outside North America.

Research libraries - faced with fulfilling the information needs of a world undergoing dramatic change, a business community participating in a global marketplace, and a research community working across international boundaries - have responded by turning to their collections and their supporting services. However, this may no longer be adequate. The 1980s and 1990s brought many changes: increased book production worldwide; the addition of expensive electronic materials to traditional print and microform resources; increases in prices - especially for foreign serials; and inflation and weakened U.S. and Canadian dollars. All of these factors contributed to a dramatic decline in the acquisitions of foreign materials. As foreign materials have become increasingly important, libraries' ability to acquire them has eroded.

Reductions in the acquisition of foreign language materials and foreign imprints began in the 1970s. Major contributing factors have included the demise of government and cooperative projects for foreign acquisitions, the impact of inflation and devaluation of Canadian and U.S. dollars, the difficulty of finding staff trained in foreign languages, and an undercurrent of an English-only attitude among library users. The recent escalation of serials prices and the resulting cancellation of foreign journals are only the latest manifestation of the problem.

Faced with the growing need for foreign materials, research libraries have also had to respond to costly demands for automation, preservation, and new services at a time when available resources are increasingly unable to support the full range of needs. Choices have been necessary and the acquisition of foreign material has suffered.

Each year research libraries in the aggregate are able to purchase a smaller portion of published foreign resources than the year before. This decline results in serious gaps in collections that pose a long-term threat to research and scholarship. The following findings highlight the fiscal problems and their impact:

• The costs of books and serials have risen more rapidly than other major categories of library expenditures during the last decade, and materials budgets have not kept pace. Data from the ARL Statistics, illustrated by the graph on page 40, compare the median cost of monographs and serials with expenditures and number of volumes or titles purchased for the past five years. [2]

• Analysis of statistics collected by ARL shows that ARL libraries in 1990-91 were able to buy only 85% of the new books bought in 1986. Serial expenditures have taken an increasing slice of the library budget, accounting in 1991 for more than three of every five dollars spent on on-campus materials. "If these trends persist by 1993 serials unit costs and expenditures will be double what they were in 1986." [3]

• The recent report on The Acquisition of Latin American Materials showed that 28 American research libraries with the largest Latin American holdings saw an increase in average expenditures from 1986 to 1990 of 17.7%, whereas the average cost of monographs reflected an increase of 43%. [4]

• The Report on ARL Serials Prices Project documents that the portion of the serials universe held by ARL libraries is decreasing markedly. [5]

• Subscription costs for foreign serials have increased dramatically over the past seven years, with the greatest increases occurring for serials published in Austria, Japan, The Netherlands, Switzerland, and West Germany. According to a recent study, 1993 subscription prices for non-U.S. titles will increase 9-10%, paralleling an actual 1992 increase of 9.3%. [6]

For both the United States and Canada, the crisis facing research libraries reflects an information crisis. Coverage of the global publishing output by North American research libraries, once thought to be comprehensive, is diminishing at a time when research is becoming increasingly international. Four perspectives help in understanding this issue:

• changes in global research and publishing patterns;
  
• shifts in information needs;
  
• collecting patterns of U.S. research libraries; and
  
• cooperative collection development programs.

Changes in Global Research and Publishing Patterns

Statistics compiled by UNESCO document the growth in the number of titles published worldwide, from 715,500 titles in 1980 to 842,000 titles in 1989. The UNESCO statistics further document the diffusion of book production and the continued growth in production in Third World countries. While the number of titles published in developed countries increased barely between 1980 and 1989 - from 570,000 to 579,000 titles - book production in Third World countries grew from 145,000 to 263,000 titles in the same period. The statistics also bring into sharp focus significant shifts in publishing among the top ten publishing countries in the world. [7] The comparison of world book production between 1980 and 1989 shows that the U.S. share of world-wide publishing declined slightly. However, the 1980s saw the emergence of Japan, China, and Korea as important publishing centers. The Asian share of world book production increased from 18.8% in 1980 to 24.8% in 1989.

(The figures on page 41 capture the present status of world book production and the contributions of publishing outside of North America. It should be noted that the figures do not distinguish between research and non-research materials and include not only academic books, but all published titles.)

Analysis of the science and technology literature offers an additional perspective. Science & Engineering Indicators-1991 allows a more detailed look at the distribution of publications in these fields. The share of research articles in core journals written by U.S. scientists and engineers has fallen from 38% in 1973 to 35% in 1987. [8]

Available information provides illustrations of the growth of non-U.S. science and technology publications. For example, in the BIOSIS database, U.S. authors published 25.91% of the source materials indexed in 1988, while Western European and Japanese authors published almost 40% of the papers. Another example is the steady growth of Japanese shares of publications. A study in Science notes, "in the 1973 through 1984 time frame, the number of Japanese-authored papers increased by 53%. In contrast, the number of U.S.-authored papers remained almost unchanged." [9]

Shifts in Information Needs

One major trend of the 1980s was the internationalization of information and research. Significant shifts include those occurring in foreign language studies and in the collaborative efforts of researchers. After the decline of foreign language studies in the 1970s, statistics from the National Center for Education Statistics show an upturn in the number of foreign languages doctorates and a rise in foreign language study. The availability of high speed computing and improved telecommunications has led to a dramatic increase in collaboration among researchers. Computer-literate scholars will increasingly conduct, advance, and share research through national and international electronic networks and databases in their respective fields.

As science and technology research and development increase in foreign countries, there will be corresponding growth in foreign science and technological publications. European science and Japanese commercial technology are increasingly important to science and engineering in North America. This is vividly illustrated by the fact that between 1980 and 1984, references in articles by U.S authors to articles by non-U.S. authors increased from 25% to 29%. [10] Such increases are expected to continue.

Europe includes five of the ten largest language groups in the world and is responsible for almost 44% of world book production. A look at the growth in book production in the major European countries documents the significant growth. As extraordinary political and economic changes are taking place projections forecast "a further sizable increase in the volume of European publishing, very likely for the next couple of decades and not only in the countries of Germany and Great Britain, where the national book production is already at an all time high. Publishing activities have also been on the increase, and very impressively so, in France, Italy, and Spain." [11]

In recent years, concern has increased over the rapid advances by Japan in science and technology. Federal governments, the private sector, and universities and research libraries have expanded efforts to monitor Japanese science and technology and to acquire the resulting research information. However, few North American scientists and engineers are fluent in Japanese, and research libraries have not maintained strong collections of Japanese scientific and technical journals.

Collecting Patterns of North American Research Libraries

Historically, 40% to 60% of materials in major research collections have been foreign imprints. While estimates of foreign acquisitions vary from library to library or country to country, data from the Library of Congress, Harvard University, and several other research libraries confirm that research libraries are acquiring a declining percentage of the world publishing output. [12] A look at Library of Congress acquisition statistics shows that acquisitions from non-U.S. nations average 20% to 25% of output. The most troublesome aspect of that review is the marked decline in number of titles acquired by purchase from major areas of the world over the recent period. [13] The Library of Congress is not alone in the severity of the reductions. Another example comes from Harrassowitz, the primary vendor for German materials, which reported a 20% reduction in titles exported to the U.S. compared to 1985. [14]

Clearly, Western European materials remain important. And, while these materials are assumed to be widely available in U.S. and Canadian research libraries, the weakening of the U.S and Canadian dollars and higher prices for European materials have made acquisitions reductions inevitable. A study of European receipts conducted by the Library of Congress in 1991 indicated a steady increase in prices as well as a decline in receipts over the past nine years. [15] Libraries are most aware of the weakened value of the dollar when renewing periodical subscriptions, but the loss of purchasing power also affects libraries' acquisitions of foreign monographic imprints. For example, the average price of a European title is about $97.00 (U.S.). [16] This is more than twice the average price of U.S. titles. [17]

The limited efforts by research libraries to increase coverage of Japanese scientific and technical literature contrasts with the intensive U.S. response to meet the expanded demand for Russian language materials following the Soviet launching of Sputnik. Greater recognition is needed of the problem of limited availability of Japanese scientific and technical literature and its impact on research capacity.

An assessment of North American collections of foreign research materials is difficult because data on titles added by country of origin, expenditures for non-U.S. and Canadian imprints, and size of holdings have simply not been available. However, collection assessments offer circumstantial evidence of the problem of foreign acquisitions. One example is the 1985 Research Libraries Group (RLG) sample study of geology collections among member libraries. The study showed "the single most statistically significant factor in the failure to acquire (or the decision not to acquire) to be language. While foreign language materials represent only 22% of the entire sample (85 of 392), they comprise 55% of all items not held (38 of 70). In other words, the geology participants did not hold 45% of all foreign language titles. Russian-language materials fared particularly poorly." [18] Another RLG study carried out by nine member libraries with historically strong German collections indicated that of a random sample of 557 German research titles published in 1982, 27% of the survey titles were not held by any of the participants. [19] While these two studies focus on particular subjects, the collection evaluation data in the RLG Conspectus On-line provides a composite picture of research collections and indicates serious weaknesses in several foreign language areas.

Several other studies point to deteriorating coverage of foreign materials. A 1984 ARL membership survey on foreign acquisitions revealed significant gaps in materials from Middle Eastern and Asian countries. There was also a general conclusion that coverage in North American libraries for foreign scientific and technical literature from non-European countries was particularly weak.

There is, however, an additional important consideration: an apparent trend toward collection homogeneity. As libraries reduce foreign acquisitions, there is an almost inevitable tendency to concentrate on acquiring only core titles. The long-term impact will be more overlap among collections and less coverage of the "universe" of foreign research materials. The danger is that collections will become even more limited and that areas outside the mainstream trade market will simply no longer be covered adequately by any library.

Cooperative Collection Development Programs

Over the years, research libraries have pursued a number of strategies to build comprehensive collections through cooperation in collection development. The establishment of the Farmington Plan after World War II was the most far-reaching effort to ensure that "one copy of every important foreign book" was available in the United States. The Farmington Plan exemplified the large-scale, decentralized system of specializations by voluntary agreements among American research libraries. By 1972, tensions between cooperative collection responsibilities and institutional priorities, the complexities of the subject allocations, the high costs of acquiring and processing materials, and the perceived inclusion of materials marginal to local interests all contributed to the decision to terminate the Farmington Plan. Among decentralized efforts to build cooperative acquisitions programs in area studies were the Latin American Cooperative Acquisitions Program (LACAP) which operated between 1959 and 1972, and the Public Law 480 program begun by the Library of Congress in the 1960s which is being phased out.

Research libraries have begun several ongoing coordinated programs. Among these is the National Program of Acquisitions and Cataloging at the Library of Congress, which supports acquisition and cataloging of research materials published throughout the world. The collecting programs of the Center for Research Libraries have enriched access to specialized foreign materials, especially to foreign newspapers, foreign dissertations, and foreign government publications. The Shared Resources Program of the Research Libraries Group is another important effort. Central to the RLG program is the assignment of primary collecting responsibility for certain categories of materials. Still another example is the Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials (SALALM), which has concentrated on improving support for and access to Latin American research resources. In addition to these highly visible cooperative efforts, many regional, state, and local cooperative arrangements have been carried out over the years.

The decline in foreign acquisitions has sparked concern among foundation officers and public policy-makers. For example, two important initiatives are the recent funding provided by the Henry Luce Foundation for support of eleven major Southeast Asian collections and the special funding by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for a cooperative program for Russian and East European acquisitions at Michigan and Indiana Universities. The U.S. Government has addressed foreign acquisitions to a modest extent, primarily through Titles II-C and VI of the Higher Education Act (HEA) and the Japanese Technical Literature Act. Title II-C, Strengthening Research Library Resources, provides some funding for acquisition of foreign materials, though more II-C funds have gone to support improving bibliographic access to foreign materials. II-C grants in this area have focused primarily on the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, East and Southeast Asia, and Latin America. HEA Title VI was originally part of the National Defense Education Act. The centers for area studies funded by Title VI have provided some support for acquisition of foreign materials, especially periodicals. In 199l first time funding of $500,000 was provided for foreign periodicals by the HEA Title VI, section 607 program. The Japanese Technical Literature Act has provided $1-2 million annually for Japanese technical literature translations and indexing of such translations by the National Technical Information Service (NTIS).

All of these efforts, both past and ongoing, provide valuable experience in coordinated collection development and help to define the limitations. They underscore the fact that libraries have achieved significant progress through collective action, but they also bring into sharp focus the fact that current efforts are quite limited. While some areas of the world receive needed attention, many others are without cooperative programs. Many of the questions that past cooperative efforts tried to address remain, but technology provides a new framework and new opportunities to address the issues.

What is Needed

In a time of flux in international affairs, an inevitable conclusion is that the production of foreign information resources will expand and costs will increase. It is time to focus renewed attention on the problem and to design new strategies. Research libraries are an integral, dynamic part of the changing information environment. They are and must remain gateways to the broadest world of scholarly information, regardless of country of production, language, or format. ARL's interest in foreign acquisitions is long standing and ARL and its Committee on Research Collections continue to pursue a variety of strategies and projects to strengthen research libraries' programs in this area.

The dimension and complexities of the foreign acquisitions problem call for serious consideration of several basic questions:

• What are the priorities for foreign imprint materials acquisitions by U.S. and Canadian research libraries as a group?

• What important gaps exist and what potentially unnecessary duplication could be reduced through a cooperative collection development plan?

• What is the level of both real and perceived need for foreign materials by researchers and scholars in various disciplines?

• What opportunities exist for expanded funding?

• How will changes in the information environment affect collection building efforts?

• What is the role of existing cooperative programs and what new capabilities are needed?

To address effectively the problems of foreign acquisitions and fulfill successfully their role in North America's research enterprise, research libraries must address the following concerns:

1. Expanding North American holdings and access to the world's information output.

Research libraries have an opportunity to build on achievements in existing cooperative collection development programs, past and present, and on the strengths and continuing commitment to major foreign acquisition programs at the local, regional, national, and even international level.

1. Creating new systems of affordable, effective access to foreign materials.

One important avenue for investigation will be to seek ways for capitalizing on the opportunities provided by the emerging National Research and Education Network (NREN). The goal of the proposed network "is to enhance national competitiveness and productivity through a high-speed, high-quality network infrastructure." [20] The implementation of NREN would allow research libraries to provide scholars with access to materials via expanded network services.

1. Rethinking research library roles and relationships in providing access to foreign materials, especially expensive foreign serials.

No individual library can expect to be comprehensive in its coverage of the world's knowledge. ARL libraries must recognize the importance of further cooperative activity and be pragmatic about the roles of research libraries in a global context. Further, ARL libraries must articulate these changing roles and relationships to their parent institutions, to gain both their understanding of the problem and their financial support.

1. Expanding funding sources for acquiring foreign materials.

Financial considerations, including the need to expand funding sources, will play a fundamental role in shaping potential strategies. The Mellon and Luce foundation initiatives highlight the significant contribution of this sector to improving foreign acquisitions in research libraries. Clearly, governments have a vital role to play in addressing the problem of foreign acquisitions and should commit significantly greater resources to this problem.

1. Resolving issues related to the processing and preservation of foreign material.

The processing and preservation of foreign research materials present special challenges. Research libraries need to address these challenges as part of any foreign acquisitions program.

ARL Actions

A multifaceted response to the foreign acquisitions crisis is urgently needed. ARL places paramount priority on the formulation of cooperative strategies for developing and providing access to foreign materials located both in North America and abroad. In 1991 ARL launched a three-year project, Scholarship, Research Libraries, and Foreign Publishing in the 1990s. This ARL project is directed toward developing a clearer understanding of the forces influencing North American research libraries' ability to build collections of foreign materials. The intent is to mobilize major segments of the higher education community, including research libraries, in developing effective strategies and the resources needed to address scholars' foreign information needs. Support for the project is provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Project activities include:

• Developing joint projects with foreign area groups to analyze publishing output and research libraries' acquisition and delivery of foreign imprint collections. Seven projects are underway. The intent is to identify significant gaps in coverage and to establish priorities for foreign materials by broad world areas.

• Conducting pilot test studies that will focus on acquisitions needs for six areas, including Germany, Mexico, Russia, China, Japan, and Western African countries. Project task forces under the aegis of the respective foreign area group are being established. The goal is to test methodologies for establishing specific acquisitions targets.

• Working with the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Midwest Center to bring together scholars and foreign area bibliographers to assist in developing a greater understanding of the needs of scholars in various disciplines and in determining priority needs and strategies for improving access to foreign materials.

• Establishment of an AAU Acquisition and Distribution of Foreign Language and Area Studies Materials Task Force to bring together research library directors, area studies librarians. scholars and university officials to address needs for foreign language materials and to build coalitions for securing needed funding.

These efforts will provide the needed context and framework for understanding the magnitude of the problem, for evaluation of alternative solutions, and for shaping ARL initiatives.

Endnotes

1. "Foreign language distractions." - editorial, The Washington Post, December 15, 1989, p. A24.

2. Stubbs, Kendon, "Introduction," ARL Statistics 1990-91 (Washington, D.C.: ARL, 1992), p. 8. The data included here cover the years 1986-1993. ARL Statistics 1992-93 (Washington, D.C.: ARL, 1994), p. 4.

3. Ibid, p. 8-9.

4. The Acquisition of Latin American Materials, a report to ARL from the Task Force on the ARL Foreign Acquisitions Project [by the] Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials ((SALALM)) [1992] p. 14.

5. Okerson, Ann. "Of making books there is no end.- In Report of the ARL Serials Prices Project (Washington, D.C.: ARL, 1989).

6. Faxon Planning Report 1993 (Boston: Faxon Press, 1992), p. 24-25.

7. Statistical Yearbook, 1991 (Paris: UNESCO 1991)

8. Science & Engineering Indicators-1991, p. 388.

9. Narin, Francis, and J. Davidson Frame. 'The growth of Japanese science and technology," Science 245 (August 1989): 603.

10. Science & Engineering Indicators-1987 (Washington, D.C.: National Science Board, 1987) p. 289.

11. Knut Dorn, "Champagne Taste and a Beer Budget: The Problem of Increasing Scholarly Publishing in Europe and Decreasing Academic Library Budgets in North America," Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Center for Research Libraries, Chicago, Il., 24 April 1992, p 1.

12. Jutta Reed-Scott conversation with William Sittig, Director, Collections Policy Office, Library of Congress, November 16, 1989

13. Library of Congress receipts for 1986 and 1987, Library of Congress Information Bulletin, February 8 1988, pp. 52-58 and Library of Congress monograph receipts for 1987 and 1988, Library of Congress Information Bulletin, January 16, 1989, pp. 19-25.

14. Knut Dorn, "Champagne Taste", p. 4.

15. European Receipts of the Library of Congress (Washington, D.C Library of Congress, September 1991).

16. Academic & Research Book Prices Report, 1990-91 Approval Program Management Report (New York: Baker & Taylor, 1991) p. 22.

17. Grannis, Chandler B., "Book title output and average prices: 1991 preliminary figures," Bowker Annual Library and Book Trade Almanac. 37th ed. (New York: Bowker, 1992) p. 506.

18. Research Libraries Group, Conoco Report April 4, 1987, p. 10. Unpublished document.

19. Ibid p. 7.

20. The National Research and Education on Network: a Policy Paper. (Princeton, N.J.: EDUCOM Networking and Telecommunications Task Force, 1987) p. 1.