“My universe is here”: implications for the future of academic libraries from the results of a survey of researchers

One of the major challenges of university libraries is to adequately support the information needs of researchers. This paper outlines the results of a survey conducted by Deakin University Library into the information needs of researchers and the library’s perceived role and performance. The survey consisted of twenty-three interviews conducted with researchers, and its results challenged established ideas regarding researchers’ preference for print, age of resources required, and reliance on specialist rather than general or cross-disciplinary databases. Of note were the decreasing physical use of the library, the increasing importance of online resources and the changing need for library support services. The study raises some key questions relating to the future of libraries and the role of librarians.

Academic libraries

Academic libraries are taken to refer here to two particular types of library: university libraries and those libraries which serve the vocational education and training (VET) sector through colleges or institutes of technical and further education (TAFE). (School libraries are dealt with in a separate chapter.) Universities cover undergraduate programs, principally Bachelors degrees, and postgraduate programs such as the Graduate Certificate, Graduate Diploma, Masters degrees and doctoral programs. The main TAFE awards are Certificate, Diploma and Advanced Diploma. Universities are largely funded by national government - the federal Commonwealth Government in Australia's case - although, as elsewhere, an increasing amount of university funding needs to come from non-government sources, particularly research funding. In Australia institutes of TAFE are funded by state and territory governments, although from 2005 the Federal Government began providing funding for the development of technical colleges outside the TAFE sector that would provide vocational education for secondary school age students. This latter development may well be affected by the change in federal government in late 2007.

The mission for academic libraries globally is to support the teaching, learning and (where appropriate) research activities of their parent institutions. In Australia and New Zealand, universities and their libraries have also had a long tradition of reaching out to the community, contributing to the cultural and intellectual life of the nation. Australia has thirty-nine universities; of which thirty-seven are public institutions and two are private. New Zealand has eight universities. The libraries supporting these institutions are diverse, of high quality and innovative. Based on 2005 figures, there are sixty-eight institutions in Australia's VET sector, with over 1,100 campuses, 1.7 million students and some eleven per cent of Australia's working age population accessing TAPE (Oakley & Vaugha 2007: 43).

Visions, illusions and facts : a reflection on the partnerships between academic libraries and vendors in the new information landscape

Is the industry in chaos? How do we to meet the future information needs of the international scholarly community?

The one certainty is that forecasting is never easy. Libraries, vendors and publishers are all working in a rapidly changing environment. It is a fair prediction that there will be fewer participants and less competition in the marketplace. The potential for libraries to be locked into one vendor for access to electronic journals is real. Whether this access will be in perpetuity, no one can give an absolute guarantee. Intellectual property rights, commercial viability and communication standards are all of concern.

We've seen the vision, what's happening now? The Australian academic and research library market has an international reputation for being informed, frank and through necessity, pragmatic. When planning information access and delivery for the next two to five years we are told libraries need a reasonable indication of what is real. Vendors, more than ever, are contributing to a shared understanding amongst libraries, publishers and vendors of the priorities and concerns of different sectors of the industry.