Myths and Realities: The Academic Viewpoint I

PaulOlum Written from the perspective of the president of a graduate research-oriented university, the author explores the nature of the academic library, its size and structure, the matter of re-trenchment as it affects acquisitions and services and the issue of who makes decisions about the library. Faced with a library space problem, the University of Oregon studied alternatives such as off-campus compact storage and decided that this was an optimum decision only for libraries with collections in the four-to five-million-volume range. Faced with a serious budgetary problem , the University of Oregon, with wide support from the faculty, maintained the library acquisitions budget and provided adequate compensation for inflation. n the discussion that follows, I will take seriously the title of this program and talk about some myths and realities for academic librarians. I must begin with a couple of remarks to set the context. First, I am not a librarian nor have I made the kind of extensive use of library resources that is the hallmark of the scholar in the humanities and in many other fields. I am a mathematician, once upon a time a physicist, and for me the library has meant very largely the mathematics or science library. It is relatively easy to get to know intimately such a departmental or field library. My other remark is that I will be talking solely about the library of a graduate research-oriented university and much of what I say may not be meaningful or appropriate for the library of a four-year college or a community college. I will talk about four things: the nature of the library, the size and structure of the library, the matter of retrenchment as it affects acquisitions and services, and (briefly) the question of who makes decisions about the library. To begin with, let me ask how we should look upon the library in the university. What is it? I think the general view is that the library sits there in the middle of the campus as the repository of the collected wisdom of the ages. Carlyle would have gone further, of course. He indicated that one needn't have said center of the campus; there was no reason to have anything else but the library to make a university. None of us really believe that, I assume , although it is a nice description of the depth of feeling one has about libraries. …