LIBER 39TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE - Statsbiblioteket

PaRaLLEL sEssIons 1.1 to 4.1
sEssIon 1.1
mIchaEL JuBB (REsEaRch
InfoRmatIon nEtWoRk, uk):
chaLLEngEs foR LIBRaRIEs In
dIffIcuLt EconomIc tImEs
There has been much discussion over the
past 18 months about the financial difficulties
that academic libraries are facing, and expect
to face in the next few years. A number
of bodies including the American Library
Association, UKSG, and JISC in the UK have
begun to gather evidence on these issues. But
there has been little in the way of attempts
to consolidate and analyse this evidence
systematically to draw an accurate picture of
the actual experience of libraries from across
the sector, or their plans for dealing with the
prospect of cuts in their budgets.
This presentation draws on the work referred
to above, as well as evidence from an
international survey from the Charleston Observatory;
from detailed analyses of library
statistics from the UK, the US and Europe;
and from a series of interviews and focus
groups undertaken by the RIN and the CIBER
team at UCL where the available evidence
was considered in depth by a wide range
of library directors and senior university
managers in the UK, as well as with senior
representatives of the publishing community.
In the UK we are moving from a decade
in which library budgets rose significantly
– though not as fast as university budgets
overall – to one where libraries are being
asked to model cuts of 5-10% a year over
the next three years. Such cuts cannot be
made simply by seeking efficiency savings,
important as those might be. Many directors
are thus looking radically at the nature as
well as the levels of service they can provide
in support of their universities’ teaching,
learning and research missions.
The presentation thus presents evidence on
trends and prospects for the future in such
areas as
- efficiency savings, what has been and
what might be achieved, both by individual
libraries and in partnerships with other
libraries
- the balance between content provision,
staffing and services
- the provision of books and journals, in both
print and digital form, and the costs of that
provision,
- staffing levels, structures, and re-structuring
- service provision including areas such as
opening hours as well as newer areas of
activity such as support for open access initiatives,
and data curation and preservation
- income generation to support library
services.
Many library directors are seeking ways of
dong things differently, and see budget cuts
as an opportunity to rethink what the library
does and what it means. But there are as yet
few concrete proposals that will transform
services or yield large-scale savings. The
presentation will thus also review, in the light
of the current financial climate, the various
steps that are being taken to develop a closer
understanding of the relationships between
expenditure on library activities and services
on the one hand, and learning and research
outcomes on the other.
michael Jubb is Director of the Research
Information Network (RIN). He has held
a variety of posts, as an academic; an
archivist; a civil servant; Deputy Secretary
of the British Academy; and as Deputy
Chief Executive of the Arts and Humanities
Research Board (AHRB), which he led
through its transition to full Research Council
status. In 2005 he took up the Directorship of
the RIN, which has been set up to investigate
how to improve the information resources
and services available to and used by UK
researchers across all disciplines, in science,
technology and medicine as well as the arts
and humanities.
29 JunE 2010
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