Washington, D.C.
October 16-18, 1996
Comments and Discussion with Chief Academic Officers
MR. BENNETT: I would like to thank all of our speakers. Now, as a starting point for these four, I ask the following very open-textured question: You hear good news from the library. Somebody comes in the door and gives you a fresh bit of information, or you read something in the campus newspaper or in a memo, but it is clearly good news. What is it?
MR. INFANTE: The difficulty I have in answering that question is in choosing among the many different things that could apply. Let me tell you, libraries are one component, along with the research enterprise at the research university, that, both at the instructional and the educational level, is adapting to technology rather well. There are many challenges to be met.
My daughter was at the University of Minnesota, and at the end of her junior year she came to my office barefoot and dressed like a gypsy, and she said to me, "You know, Dad, I spent the whole day in the library. I have decided I want to become a scholar." May I say that, after being a gypsy scholar for two and a half years, I'm not too sure what her attitude is, but the sense I got at that particular time, and have gotten repeatedly since then, is that, perhaps even more than a laboratory, the library conveys to the student a sense of what it means to be intellectually involved and engaged.
We have been talking a great deal about technology, but one of my regrets is that I see a technology that is about 500 years old, yet is not appropriately utilized except in the libraries, and, to a certain extent, in the way we are lecturing. It seems to me that the libraries are providing a central function to both students and faculty members.
One of the things that I have been struck by during my five years at the University of Minnesota is the discovery that two rather important components of the university, the faculty and "academics" on one side and student affairs on the other, are at war with each other. However, there has developed, especially at research universities due to the scholarly connection, a relationship between the library and the faculty that absolutely has to be exploited in the redevelopment of the undergraduate and graduate educational process. So, that is the key development I would hope for.
MS. GILLILAND: In thinking about this question, what comes to mind is the need for libraries to collaborate with each other in order to deal with book and journal costs. We need leadership in dealing with the publishing houses, and it is an issue that is closely related to the copyright problem. I don't know where leadership could better reside than with the people in this room, and we have to think about that, instead of worrying about what we might lose. I would really like to see that leadership and the copyright issue in the hands of the libraries.
Finally, I would like there to be partnerships on campus, making faculty librarians true partners with both the technology people and the academic faculty, working together to transform the university. However, that does mean that the faculty librarians will have to change the way they spend their time in a fairly dramatic way.
MR. EMMERT: I think my answer is very similar. I agree with much of what has been said today. I believe that it is unequivocally, inarguably true that the future of the American research institution is critically dependent upon how good we are at undergraduate education. And so I completely agree with Paul [Kobulnicky] that the library is now and plans to remain an integral part in the transformation of the learning process of which Jim [Infante] spoke.
I also agree with Jim that the probability of the library being ready and able at the forefront of this transformation is extremely more likely than the presence of any other part of the institution there. My experience both at the University of Connecticut and elsewhere is that the problem does not lie with recalcitrance in the libraries. Indeed, I have found your profession and field quite happy to engage in that leadership role in the transformation of the learning process.
Thirdly, I would love to hear that the library has also decided to take a leadership role in the conversion or transformation of scholarly communication. Bill [Prokasy] pointed out in his remarks that publishers have little to do with the production of scholarship. I think that's absolutely true. What we don't know is what will replace publishers. What we do know is that you all will have to have some very critical role in that process. As technology transforms the nature of scholarly exchange and communication in very dramatic and possibly unpredictable ways, what will the role of libraries be? Will they become historical repositories recording what happened, or will they be in the midst of that exchange? I would love very much to have the libraries help us figure out where technology and scholarly communication will intersect, and what their role in that intersection will be.
MR. PROKASY: When I was interviewing candidates for the directorship of the University of Georgia library, the first person I met with was Bill Potter. We were discussing things one might like to see, and I said, "You know, I really would be interested in the library director who would come in one year and say, `Here is all the shelf space I don't need, given the technology.'"
That hasn't happened yet, but I believe it will happen, and it would certainly be good news to have a far more interactive role between our coursework and the library, both of which may be tremendously different in the future. That is far different from archiving and providing access; it has a directly interactive role in the learning process itself.
To even have a classroom with all kinds of technological access possible from that classroom, and have the library resources be an integral and interactive part of what goes on in that room, too, would be good news.
MR. BENNETT: Rather than ask what bad news would look like, I invite any comments or questions that you may have.
MR. EKMAN (The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation): I think most people in this room would stipulate that this is a period of change in the libraries, in that they are now called on to work with other parts of the universities, with presses, and in finding new ways of doing business that take advantage of the newly available technology. And yet, for all the talk of restructuring, of new incentives, and of innovative reasons to be in business, it is awfully hard for the director of any one unit in the university, the library, for instance, to benefit from some restructuring, given the established procedures for budgeting.
What economic incentives are there, for example, for a librarian to digitize a big chunk of the collection and liberate some shelf space? What incentives are there for the faculty to use materials online rather to make use of the budget for summer travel to take that research trip to Europe?
Are there ways in which the academic vice-presidents are now thinking about fundamental changes in the budget to ensure that there will be incentives for different parts of the institution to in fact adopt new ways of doing business?
MR. EMMERT: Well, first of all, I think you have struck on what we at the University of Connecticut have also identified as one of the fundamental issues confronting us: that part of the behavior patterns that make it so difficult to innovate, to try new models of behavior, and to focus on new modes of teaching or learning, are, in fact, the way we allocate resources. We make it extremely risky for the decision-makers -- deans, department heads, and directors -- to move out in new directions.
Therefore, we are trying to move toward, instead of a full responsibility based model like Indiana's, a model that will allow administrative units to have much greater control over the allocation of those resources, eliminating the constrictions they have on the use of resources, allowing them to benefit from whatever efficiencies and innovations they can put into the system, and allowing for sufficient slack in the system to seed some of those innovations.
So, if I got a memo from Paul Kobulnicky saying, "I've created shelf space, and concomitant with that I've freed up two percent of my budget," I would say "Great, what are you going to do with the money?" And I would want Paul to come back at me with a list of programmatic initiatives consistent with the overall direction we are trying to follow at the university, rather than for me to try to recapture the funds.
What we did do, which I hope is consistent with that spirit, although it is hard when you're trimming dollars, is tried to reframe the budget question, taking it away from thinking about it in single fiscal year increments, which is one of the tyrannies of our traditions. Instead, I have put in front of our board a four-year rolling budget that allows us to think of the budget not only in terms of what it holds for today, but also of the implications it holds for the three outyears.
Of course, as you move further out, the surety of where you are in terms of the budget gets a little vaguer. A concrete example is from this last year, when the Board came forward and said, "We are going to move forward to fund gender equity in athletics with a couple million dollars, and we are going to lead the nation in athletic opportunities for women." Who could argue with that? It is a great notion, except that everybody asked, "Well, where is the money coming from?" "Oh, it's in the outyears. Don't worry about it." And I said, "Nonsense. Here are the outyears. Show me where you think that money is coming from." It completely refocused that debate, and we wound up reducing the size and the cost of that program, stretching it out over multiple years and minimizing the impact on the rest of the institution.
So we are trying to do the kinds of things I believe you were asking about.
MR. BENNETT: Would anybody else like to offer a thought on this?
MR. INFANTE: I would like to point out that, increasingly, libraries are engaged in activities of cooperation and collaboration with each other, bringing about a kind of savings.
We in the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) are rather proud of the activities in which we have engaged ourselves. For example, Tom [Shaughnessy] has come to an agreement with the University of Michigan, to share our [Minnesota] library on Southeast Asian activities. The major difficulty in providing sufficient incentives to the libraries these days is that everything seems to be overwhelmed by the increasing cost of journals. I would dearly love to be able to say to Tom, "Tom, bring me the bill for the increase in the journal cost and we will settle that, and then we will discuss all of the rest and make sure appropriate incentives are provided." However, we are in a difficult period of time right now. In spite of that, I think there are a number of activities engaged in amongst libraries, including those internal to the university, those within the state, and those across states, with a considerable amount of payoff.
We in Minnesota, in very difficult circumstances, managed to obtain a major allocation of $38 million from the state government for an access center, for which we have agreed to be the library repository for the entire state of Minnesota. A center for the technology of the entire state.
It is that kind of economy that also delivers service beyond the university to bring to the entire community the kind of savings and value for which people are willing to invest.
MR. KOBULNICKY: We have talked about creating a new model for faculty behavior that facilitates change throughout the academy, and a new mode of instruction that promotes a kind of broad, institutional awareness of just how necessary the faculty is.
But what does the model faculty member, who is responsive to the things that need to happen now, look like? How do we provide a model for the faculty, when there currently is none?
MR. INFANTE: One example that was fairly successful at the University of Minnesota was a restructuring in our College of Education and Human Resources. There wasn't a radical change in faculty perceptions and values, but one significant difference is that, whereas there had been previously a feeling of idiosyncratic behavior and of ownership course by course, now there is a feeling of a common accountability of the entire process. For example, before, faculty members received individual evaluations from students in their courses, but now they have taken considerable effort to look at the evaluation for the entire curriculum.
One of the things that has struck me while observing and participating in these changes is that they didn't come about because the faculty was allocating its time differently. Indeed, I am convinced that at the College of Education and Human Resources there was less effort and time involved in certain educational processes than before. Nonetheless, this system promises a much more coherent and unitary understanding of what each individual course is trying to accomplish, even though each faculty member may not be directly involved in the course.
The faculty is eager to be involved in this sort of restructuring, but the problem has been that we had not been able to institutionalize and sustain these activities. So one of the things we have worked on and in which we are beginning to be successful is in institutionalizing them, and we have thereby fabricated an enormous amount of pride in them.
MR. PROKASY: When I heard this question, I was puzzled by the fact that I didn't have a quick response like I thought I would. Then I discovered why I didn't: because the answer doesn't lie with the definition of what a model faculty member is. As a matter of fact, I'm not so sure I want to know what a model faculty member is.
Rather, what we need are "model departments." Departments have roles, responsibilities, and missions to define, but what we have tended to do in the past is emphasize the individual faculty member, providing the payoff there. By using that model over the years we have really destroyed the idea of a community.
Unfortunately, I am not sure just yet how to find a way to reinforce or reward departments within which faculty differ greatly in what they do. We need to find a way to accommodate substantially varied faculty members within the goal of also serving a departmental mission.
MS. GILLILAND: I totally agree with that. However, no one, not any of us, will give up our current mode of doing things until we believe in and see where we fit into the new process. Jim's example of what occurred in the University of Minnesota's College of Education and Human Resources, I believe, was successful because they had defined the process they were going to use.
Clearly, when individuals are given the choice whether or not to be a part of the program institutionalizing the rewards for a college, if they are involved in defining the process, most people will take part in the final product. It isn't just the time and the resources, but also the people who are necessary to get you where you want to be going.
The fragmentation we have at the faculty level we brought on ourselves, and it has, in fact, served us quite well, particularly in terms of the federal government funding enterprise. But we have to move away from the fragmentation in order to do what we have been talking about on this panel. At the University of Arizona we have tried to do this institutionally with our faculty development program, of which the library is a key component. It is working well, except that there isn't a critical mass of faculty involved from any one college. And so we stand the danger of losing the program if we don't change that participation, and we therefore are also focusing on the individual colleges.
One final comment: I am not convinced that these ideas will ever, at least in the way we are currently structured, be able to come from a dean.
MR. KOBULNICKY: When we were hearing about what would be good news from librarians, several of you mentioned that we could form some kind of partnership that would solve the journal problem. I believe partnerships with the publishers were alluded to.
We have had long discussions about what we can do to break the chain of scholarly communication in order to improve it and make it cheaper. Yet, in all the partnerships that we are forming with publishers, I don't see any of them saving money. In fact, everything costs more. What we have accomplished in these partnerships is provide better access. The key, then, to breaking the chain lies with the faculty, because it is the faculty who write the articles, submit the articles, and sign away copyright; and they are the ones who edit and read the journals.
Bill mentioned that publishing houses may be less important in the future. But the biggest problem we may be confronted with is how to change the faculty culture from being so wedded to the traditional scholarly journal.
MR. PROKASY: Well, my comment about their future was partly tongue-in-cheek, and so I don't have a great answer there. This has been a discussion we have periodically had over quite a bit of time. I completely agree with Paul's point. Basically, what we have been doing is spending institutional resources to produce new knowledge, which we then hand over ownership of to publishers, who then charge us to get the knowledge back.
If we are going to continue the journals as they now are, institutions and professional societies ought to be more involved in publishing these journals. The problem is, how in the world do we really pay off scholarly information exchange and new learning using contemporary technology, instead of going through the usual publishing techniques? I don't have a good answer to that, except that we have to experiment. There are some agencies trying to do this, and in time it will work. Journals in physics, which serve strictly an archival, rather than educational, function, are particularly suited; the education has taken place long before the journal ever appears in print. So, if we build on that speed of interchange, we can use it as a wedge to convince people to experiment with changing our mode of publishing. And anytime libraries can take advantage of this medium, we are the better off for it.
MR. EMMERT: The economics of scholarly journals is just downright bizarre. It is an artificial exchange. It's not clear what the value added is of this process; I absolutely agree with Bill. It is in the hands of the faculty and the scholarly societies, and we have, with the advent of technology, the prospect of significantly altering the entire nature of scholarly exchange and scholarly communication.
Clearly, the extent to which there is domain consensus around the intellectual problems of a discipline has some bearing. Physics does work well because of its temporal nature, whereas fields such as humanities or political science don't work quite as well. But those don't strike me as insurmountable problems. To have the publishers involved in the archival function is one thing; to have them involved in intellectual exchange is quite another. We are moving toward a new model of scholarly exchange; I don't know what it looks like, but I would love to have you all engaged in that debate.
MR. INFANTE: Let me make one last comment. From time to time, Tom has come to me to complain about the cost of certain journals, and ones I always look at are Chemical Abstracts and Math Reviews. I particularly look at Math Reviews because it is published by the American Mathematical Society, courtesy of Mike Hughes. I have gone to the executive director of the Society and have found that in each issue there are approximately 10,000 hours of free work involved.
I have come to the conclusion that in many cases I think we had better stop bashing the publishers around and really look at the process of the technology itself to find if there is a fundamentally better way of doing it. Because, you know, not with providence I am involved in the American Mathematical Society, and looking precisely at some of these problems, one of which is that the Society is going bankrupt, so I don't think blaming each other is working.
MR. BENNETT: We clearly have not run out of things to talk about, but we have run out of time. Please join me in thanking our speakers.
MS. CLINE: I would like to add my thanks; this has been a very invigorating afternoon. I would also like to thank you, Doug, for moderating this lively group, and all of you for making this an outstanding afternoon.
We appreciate your taking the time to meet with us. We have many shared concerns. This will give us an opportunity, I believe, to further strengthen the collaborative relationships that have existed within many of our member institutions, and I speak for all of us when I say we are looking forward to a continuing, and, most likely, an increasingly larger role for libraries in redefining the research and the learning environments on the landscapes of both the United States and Canada, and, in so doing, to rebuild that public trust.
Thank you all for a very good day.