ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries 8 / C&RL News ■ January 2004 PARTNERSHIPS AND CONNECTIONS Strategic partnering for service and advocacy by Patricia A. K reitz I n their article on the challenges facing the postm odern library, authors Sharon Elteto and Donald G. Frank w arn that the “relevancy of academ ic libraries [is] at stake as a result of dram atic b u d g et reductions and ongoing changes in the use of librar­ ies.”1 Recognizing the fiscal crisis facing li­ braries, m any leaders in the profession are calling for libraries to strengthen their core roles in supporting cam pus research, teach­ ing, and learning and to becom e m ore pro­ active and effective com m unicators of the critical role the library plays in supporting institutional goals. Responding to this difficult period facing academ ia and interested in highlighting the creative ways academ ic libraries around the c o u n try are resp o n d in g , ACRL P re sid e n t Tyrone C annon has ch o sen “Partnerships and Connections: The Learning Community as Knowledge Builders” as the them e for his presidential year. His intention is to foster opportunities for libraries to “play a key role in developing, defining, and enhancing learn­ ing com m unities central to cam pus life.” Focusing our efforts on supporting the core business of academ ia will ensure that aca­ demic libraries continue to b e places of “o p ­ portunity, interaction, serendipity, and strong collections and rem ain central to the know l­ edge-building process.”2 Savvy library adm inistrators take every reasonable opportunity to communicate their library’s achievem ents and needs to faculty and to cam pus administrations. They nur­ tu re a c a d e m ic c o m m itte e s a n d f rie n d s ’ groups and w ork strategically through cam­ pus initiatives to build support and to spread the m essage about the library’s centrality to the academ ic endeavor. H ow ever articulate and persuasive library directors m ay be, if they are selling this “goodness”3 by them ­ selves, it falls flat before too long. To be successful, all such high-level efforts need to b e g rounded in the w ork of front-line li­ brarians w h o strategically build and c o n ­ sciously nurture partnerships and co nnec­ tions with faculty, teaching assistants, and students. Profoundly effective m essages sup­ ply concrete exam ples of h o w librarians, faculty, and students are actively partnering to m ake a difference in the w ork central to c am p u s life— teach in g , learning, a n d re ­ search. F o r e x a m p l e , m a n y l ib r a r i a n s a re partnering with faculty and students to orga­ nize instructional materials and resources for learning communities, to integrate informa­ tion literacy into coursework, or to co-create digital know ledge repositories. These librar­ ians feel a real satisfaction from their ac­ com plishm ents a n d often receive com pli­ m ents for their efforts from the faculty and students w ith w hom they work. Those same partnerships and connections can create a secondary effect— they potentially provide About the author Patricia A. K re itz is d ire c to r o f technical in fo rm a tio n services a t th e S ta n fo rd Line ar A cce le ra to r Center, e-m ail: pkreitz@slac.stanford.edu © 2 0 0 4 Patricia A. Keitz Librarians as knowledge builders mailto:pkreitz@slac.stanford.edu C&RL News ■ January 2004 / 9 the raw materials for building a cadre of fac­ ulty and student advocates w ho can add their perspective, and often their ow n voices, to help com m unicate th e library’s value. For this to happen, both administrators and front­ line librarians n e e d to think about partner­ ships strategically a n d nurture them m ore intentionally. The S L A C and D E S Y p a rtn e rsh ip O ne exam ple of a know ledge-building part­ nership that has built an enduring level of advocacy is the alm ost three d ecad e col­ lab o ratio n b e g u n by th e Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) and the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) libraries— and later joined by universities in Great Brit­ ain, Japan and the Former Soviet Republic— to collect, organize, and provide access to particle physics research information. The collaboration continues to grow, adding part­ ners with new expertise or content. This part­ nership was initiated by the SLAC library, w hich is a research library serving SLAC, a school of Stanford University and a national lab o rato ry fu n d e d by the D e p a rtm en t of Energy through Stanford. This know ledge-building collaboration could not have lasted as long as it has, nor evolved into such a success, w ithout three key elements. First, it focuses on a core need for the faculty and researchers w ho use it— providing a service of continuing and evolv­ ing value. Second, from its inception, librar­ ians w orked actively to com m unicate u p ­ w ards and outwards and to engage faculty to do the same about the value of the project. Third, librarians, faculty, and institutions par­ ticipating in the project continue to receive concrete benefits from their involvement in the partnership. In 1969 and 1970, librarians at SLAC con­ ducted extensive interviews to learn how par­ ticle physicists did their research, communi­ cated with colleagues, and wrote and distrib­ uted their papers. SLAC interviewers also asked th e physicists to speculate on w h at they wished they could do. From this data4 emerged an ideal scholarly workstation, narrower in s u b je c t c o n te n t th a n V a n n e v a r B u s h ’s MEMEX5 but broader in access to tools for design, analysis, and authoring and broader in functional integration than Bush originally envisioned. Reaching that com prehensive, visionary goal has taken years of partner­ ship building by librarians, physicists, and their collaborating institutions. The partnership’s first goal was quite tradi­ tional, to identify, organize, and provide ac­ cess to the prepublication literature of the fields of particle and accelerator physics. Be­ fore this effort, authors shared advance pa­ per copies of articles (called preprints) they had submitted to journals with their colleagues. Access to advance research information was often based on w ho knew whom. Authors at wealthier institutions w ere able to share their papers widely because their institutions could fund mail distribution. Physicists at SLAC and DESY w orked with the librarians to publicize to their colleagues internationally SLAC’s interest in receiving all preprints. SLAC then com piled the w eekly acquisitions list in a print form, including au th o r contact inform ation so researchers could request a copy of a listed preprint, and distributed this list worldwide. This com­ pilation w as a major m ilestone in dem ocra­ tizing access to the field’s literature, com pa­ rable to the technical innovations in the early 1990s o f th e W eb’s user-friendly Internet access a n d to th e creation of the e-print archive w here particle physicists could self- publish electronic full-text preprints. This list eventually becam e a full-fledged bibliographic database, the “killer a p p ” that popularized the newly invented W orld Wide W eb6 and the first index to list the arXiv.org e-print num bers, and then, of course, to link to the full text at arXiv.org.7 The project con­ tinues to offer integrated access to m ore than a half dozen databases, including abstracted research data form atted for input into de­ sign and analysis software; compilations of secondary and tertiary review literature; di­ rectories of researchers, institutions, and ex­ periments; conferences and conference p a ­ pers; streaming media; and, m ost recently, astroparticle physics publications and a jobs database. The partnership was successful and con­ tinued to be sup p o rted through cycles of b u d g e t c h a lle n g e s by e a c h lib ra ry ’s or g ro u p ’s participating institutions, not just b e ­ cause of its “goodness” for the w orldw ide comm unity of researchers, but also because the partners received direct, concrete value in return for their contributions. Also, the arXiv.org 10 / C&RL News ■ January 2004 front-line librarians involved assiduously com­ m unicated those benefits to practicing physi­ cists, w h o in turn comm unicated them to the supporting universities and laboratories. O ne benefit to SLAC w as that the cost of adding extra staff to receive and catalog the advance literature w orldw ide w as offset by the advantage SLAC physicists perceived of having all th e w o rld ’s prep rin ts available w eekly in their local library. Faculty could sp e n d their time on research and teaching rather than on individually soliciting preprint copies. Staff at the DESY library contributed extensive subject headings to the list and eventually to the database. They w ere al­ ready cataloging the published literature of particle physics by producing an annual print bibliography, th e H igh Energy Physics I n ­ dex.8 In return for sharing this extensive sub­ ject indexing, they saved cataloging time by using SLAC’s advanced cataloging of the pre­ print versions of the later published papers. The librarians at each institution w ho w ork with the databases and with onsite and re­ mote users collect unsolicited comments, most often via e-mail sent to the staff. They share these com m ents w ith library administrators w ho can use them to communicate to cam­ pus administration. For the m ost part these comments are positive, saying things like “you have saved me m any hours” or “your service is invaluable to all researchers.” But front-line librarians also collect and share the negative comments that are occasionally received, since they not only provide opportunities for pro­ cess im provem ents but can, in themselves, b e pow erful testimonials. For exam ple, an angry editor recently sent an e-mail dem and­ ing that w e “please correct your misspelling in my book title immediately— everyone is copying your mistake, as a Google search on my nam e will show. . . . ” Even negative com ­ m ents can sometimes reveal ho w central a service is to a community. The institutional commitments, o f our part­ nerships are long-standing and extremely valu­ able to the organizations participating. How­ ever, within the overall project to build a com­ prehensive, integrated know ledge environ­ m ent for particle physics, individual librarians enter into m ore focused partnerships with faculty m em bers. O ne of the m ost innova­ tive exam ples of this is the “Top Cited HEP Articles,”9a literature database that tracks ci­ tations a n d can calculate a n d display the num ber of times an article has b e e n cited by subsequent articles. A s m a lle r p a rtn e rs h ip A bout ten years ago, a library staff m em ber started com piling a list o f articles in the field that proved the m ost popular, i.e., m ost cited, in any o n e year. With the advice of one of the SLAC faculty, he accom panied the list w ith a couple of paragraphs, clustering the articles into broad topics and restating the subjects or titles of each o n e that had m ade the cut. W hen the original com piler left for another position, the library asked the fac­ ulty advisor to continue the com m entary, if the library continued to run the analyses that p roduced the lists. The annotations have now b ec o m e a full-fledged review of the past y ear’s research findings a n d a n overview of trends in the field. The annual top-cited list, and all-time top-cited compilation, along with the faculty m em b e r’s review , are all p u b ­ lished on the SLAC library’s W eb site and advertised by the library on its W eb pages and o n appropriate electronic lists. The review and the accom panying com ­ pilations have becom e one of the m ost p o p u ­ lar a n d eagerly aw aited publications in the field. Tracking the num ber of hits that these articles get on the W eb has b e e n an effec­ tive metric in justifying the continued exist­ ence of even this small project. Positive e- mail com m ents from researchers inquiring about the publication date of the next edi­ tion are also saved and a d d a hum an face to the W eb statistics. These tw o examples, one of a large, multi- institutional collaboration stretching over de­ cades, and one of a small, tw o-person part­ nership, have several lessons that can be ap­ plied to any partnership at any library. First, each of these partnerships achieves strategic goals that are of core importance to the com­ munities a n d individuals they serve and to the administrations that fund them. They also matter to the librarians on the front lines w ho spend their time, imagination, and emotional and physical energy in the partnerships them ­ selves— they return a high degree of satisfac­ tion to all involved. And finally, the librarian partners m ake a sustained effort both to share credit and to collect stories or statistics— as- (co n tin u ed on p a g e 15) C&RL News ■ January 2004 / 11 C&RL News ■ January 2004 / 15 m onth the head of cataloging will present a brief seminar on demystifying serials hold­ ings. These sessions will occur at a consis­ tent time and day of the m onth in order to facilitate scheduling and planning. This in­ terdepartm ental interaction will also allow opportunities to suggest future sem inar top­ ics and to discuss innovative ways to pro­ vide even better service to our users. O ngoing nurturing of interdepartm ental cooperation and understanding enhances the stability and productivity of symbiotic rela­ tionships. Rumors of w ar and territorial ten ­ sions diminish w h e n people actively w ork together to u n d e rsta n d and su p p o rt each other. ( “Librarians . . . ” co n tin u ed fr o m p a g e 10) sessments both hard and “soft”— about the value of their partnerships. Front line librar­ ians work with their library administrations to share those stories upwards and outwards. In return, the institutions and communities sup­ ported by these partnerships reciprocate the support, even through difficult economic times. Library directors and front-line librarians n e e d to forge their ow n strategic partner­ ship, if libraries are to truly respond effec­ tively to the challenge of becom ing m ore relevant and m aking that relevancy better recognized outside of the library’s virtual or physical walls. Together, m anagem ent and front-line library staff need to identify and select those partnerships through w hich the library can make a real contribution to stu­ dent and faculty know ledge building through concrete achievements. Our goal as librarians should be to nourish these partnerships, make certain that the out­ comes are valuable to the community, and, most importantly, ensure that this value is clearly and broadly communicated. In this way, academic libraries will be better positioned to meet some of our most pressing challenges, such as declin­ ing budgets and charges of irrelevancy, because we will be active and essential partners in the core work of our academic communities—teach­ ing, learning, and research. Notes 1. Sharon Elteto and Donald G. Frank, “The Politics of Survival in the Postmodern Library,” Portal: Libraries a n d the Academy)), no. 3 (July 2003): 495. Notes 1. Will Manley, The Truth A b o u t Refer­ ence Librarians. (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 1996), 8. 2. Ruby E. Miller and Barbara J. Ford, “Inform ation/Referenœ : A Relationship Be­ tw een Cataloging and Reference,” Texas Li­ brary Jou rn a l 66 (Summer 1990): 48-51. Elaine K. Rast, “Narrowing the Gap: Seri­ als Service Im proved by C ooperation Be­ tw een Technical and Public Services,” The Reference Librarian 27-28 (1989): 105-122. 3. Clara Ann Kuhlman, “H ow Catalogers Can Help the Reference Librarian,” Wilson Library Bulletin 26 (November 1951): 267- 269. ■ 2. See Tyrone H. Cannon’s president’s page on the ACRL Web site, www.ala.org/acrl, click on “President’s Page” (accessed December 4, 2003). 3. Concept taken from Michael Levine “Sell­ ing Goodness: The Guerilla P.R. guide to Pro­ moting your Charity, Non-Profit Organization, or Fundraising Event” (Los Angeles: Renaissance Books, 1998). 4. Louise Addis, “A Brief and Biased His­ tory of Preprint and Database Activities at the SLAC Library, 1 9 6 2 -1 9 9 4 ” (M enlo Park: S ta n fo rd U n iv e rs ity , 2002). w w w .s la c . stanford.edu/spires/papers/history.htm l, (ac­ cessed December 5, 2003). 5. Vannevar Bush, “As We May Think,” A t la n t ic M o n th ly , J u ly 1945. w w w . theatlantic.com /unbound/flashbks/com puter/ bushf.htm (accessed December 5, 2003). 6. Tim Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web: The Original Design a n d Ultimate Destiny o f the World Wide Web by its Inventor (New York: Harper, 1999), 46. 7. The arXiv.org e-print arcliive offers auto­ mated e-prints in the areas of nlin, math, cs, q- bio, and physics. 8. Referred to as HEPI, this was the “Read­ ers’ G uide” of particle physics until DESY ceased publication in 1994, redirecting all their print index effort to the online litera­ tu re d a ta b a s e , SPIRES-HEP. w w w .s la c . Stanford. e d u /s p ire s /h e p /. 9. Travis Brooks and Michael Peskin, Top Cited HEP Articles fr o m SPLRES-HEP D ata­ base, SLAC Library (Menlo Park: Stanford Uni­ versity, 2002). www.slac.stanford.edu/library/ topcites/ (accessed December 5, 2003). ■ http://www.ala.org/acrl http://www.slac theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/computer/ arXiv.org http://www.slac http://www.slac.stanford.edu/library/