College and Research Libraries 50th Anniversary Feature- Foundations of Academic Librarianship Michael K. Buckland The bases of academic library service are twofold: the role of any academic library service is to facilitate access to documents, and the mission of each academic library service is to support the mission of the academic institution it serves. These two bases need to be interpreted for each situation in order to provide meaningful foundations for service. Consideration of the founda- tions of academic librarianship requires (1) distinguishing of ends from means, (2) examina- tion of values (what good does it do?) as well as capabilities (how good is it?), and (3) descrip- tion of the nature of these concerns (i.e., theory). After a century of relative stability, a new period of change has started. Library resources in electronic form indicate radical changes in the means of library service. Computer-based information processing of library materials by users adds a new dimension to library service and to the role of librarians. e view the foundations of aca- demic librarianship as being the conceptual framework and un- derlying assumptions within which library services are provided in an academic environment. The foundations of academic librarian- ship have two basic elements: (1) the role of library service is to facilitate access to documents; and (2) the mission of an aca- demic library is to support the mission of the academic institution served. Interpret- ing these two general statements for any given situation provides the foundations for effective library service. The first statement stimulates us to ask how 11 facilitate," II access," and "docu- ments" should be interpreted. and how the role of the library service is related to the roles of others. Hitherto, the dominant interpretation has been the judicious as- sembling of local collections as the only ef- fective means of providing convenient physical access to documents, augmented by bibliographic tools and bibliographic advice. Contemporary changes in the technology underlying access to docu- ments strongly suggest a need to recon- sider how we provide services as well as changes in relation to the roles of others. The second general statement suggests that what should be done is unique to each specific institutional context, a point noted in early issues of College & Research Libraries. 1 Any examination of the foundations of academic librarianship must meet three conditions: 1. We need to distinguish between means and ends. The purposes of, and justification for, library service should not be confused with the techniques and tech- nologies adopted as means for providing service, even though the availability of techniques and technologies limits our op- tions. 2. We need to consider not only what is good and what is not so good, but also dif- Michael K. Buckland is Fulbright Research Scholar, Technical University, Graz, Austria (1989) and Professor, School of Library and Infonnation Studies, University of California, Berkeley, California, California 94720. The author wishes to thank Professor]. P. Danton and Dr. C. Martell for their helpful comments. 389 390 College & Research Libraries ferent sorts of goodness. "How good is it?" is a measure of quality or, in effect, a measure of capability with respect to serv- ing some actual or imagined demand. This kind of goodness is appropriate for the evaluation and measurement of means, that is, of the tools and techniques for pro- viding service, as in "a good collection" or ''a good catalog.'' ''What good d~es it do?" is an entirely different question- one appropriate to the evaluation of ends and to the relating of means to ends. A third form of goodness lies in the question "How well is it done?," which has to do with cost-effectiveness, efficiency, and ef- fective management generally. 2 3. We need to be able to describe the na- ture of our concerns or, more concisely, we need adequate theory. Theory in librar- ianship and adjacent areas of info~ation science has been ill-treated. In ordmary, general usage, "theory" denotes a de- scription of the nature of something, ''a scheme or system of ideas or statements held as an explanation or account of a group of facts or phenomena. " 3 Too often this definition has been eclipsed by the narrower sense of theory used in physical sciences as a strong hypothesis suscepti- ble to experimental refutation. Inasmuch as librarianship is not, and is unlikely to become, a physical science, the quest for theory in the narrower sense is predict- ably frustrating. 4 • In brief, examination of the foundations of academic librarianship is concerned with the ends and means of library ser- vice, recognition of the difference be- tween them, exploring the goodness of li- brary service, and developing and refining descriptions of the nature of these concerns. HISTORICAL CONCERNS Modem librarianship as we know it was developed in the second half of the nine- teenth century and was characterized by (1) the idea of library collections for ser- vice, (2) the notion of purposeful book se- lection, and (3) the adoption of a series of technical innovations such as relative shelf location, improved cataloging codes, more systematic approaches to shelf ar- rangement and classification, and sus- July 1989 tained efforts at standardization and coop- eration. 11Modern librarianship as we know it was developed in the second half of the nineteenth century and was char- acterized by (1) the idea of library col- lections for service, (2) the notion of purposeful book selection, and (3) the adoption of a series of technical innovations.'' Since then terminology has evolved, the scale of operation is much increased, and technical refinements have been made. Nevertheless, many of the underlying concerns in the early issues of C&RL, fifty years ago, and of the Library Journal, an- other fifty years before that, are still strik- ingly contemporary. Yet it seems that the relative stability of the past century is but a prologue to an- other period of radical change, compara- ble in significance to that of the nineteenth century with its new techniques. This time the change is enabled less by new ideas than by a change in the underlying tech- nology. At risk of simplification, three phases can be identified. Until recently library op- erations (e.g., technical services, circula- tion) and library materials ("collections") were both based on the technology of pa- per and cardboard. More recently, library operations have been moved to computer technology, while the library's materials still remain overwhelmingly on paper. ''The prospect that library materials, as well as library operations, will in- creasingly exist in electronic form in- dicates radical change in the means of library service.'' The prospect that library materials, as well as library operations, will increas- Foundations of Academic Librarianship 391 ingly exist in electronic form indicates rad- ical change in the means of library service. See table 1. The analysis in table 1 invites comment. What is important about phase m is that the materials will increasingly be available in machine-readable form, that users will need access to them, and that access will, therefore, be provided. The eventual bal- ance between paper materials and elec- tronic materials or the prospects for paper- less libraries are of little significance compared with the fact that arrangements for access to some electronic texts, images, and other data will have to be provided. Because paper seems unlikely to ~ap­ pear, we may expect phases II and m to coexist indefinitely. The change from phase I to phase II, the introduction of computers for library op- erations, can be viewed as an evolutionary development. Much of the change repre- sents the mechanization of procedures that were previously manual. The changes have been, at least until the provi- sion of online catalogs, mainly for internal efficiency and for the convenience of li- brary staff. In contrast, the future change from phase II to phase ID, to library mate- rials in electronic form, can reasonably be viewed as more revolutionary than evolu- tionary in that the implications for the pro- vision and use of library services appear to be more radical. A long period of relative stability in the means for providing service makes it easy for the distinction between ends and means to become blurred. So long as there is one principal means to an end (even with variations in details), more of the end is achieved by more of the means and the distinction between ends and means has little practical significance. But this blur- ring of the distinction hinders dealing ef- fectively with alternative means if and when they become available. THE SITUATION TODAY Today academic libraries are, mostly, in (or moving into) phase II with the immi- nent prospect of also needing to develop provision for phase m. The end being pursued is the provision of access to books, journals, and other li- TABLE 1 TECHNOLOGICAL BASES OF LIBRARY OPERATIONS AND LffiRARY MATERIALS Phase I Phase IT Phase ill library Operations Paper Computer Computer library Materials Paper Paper Computer brary materials.· Academic libraries do not have a monopoly on this role, because much of what is in demand is also avail- able in personal collections, bookshops, from personal contacts, and, indeed, from other sorts of libraries. Even if they do not have a monopoly, however, they clearly do have a major role. In addition to the customary difficulties in providing library service, we now face the radical change in the technology of li- brary materials, which leaves the future unclear. In this situation we need to think creatively and to be prepared to retreat to first principles. There is, however, as might be expected of a busy, service- oriented profession, a deeply rooted em- phasis, reflected in the professional litera- ture, on practical and technical matters- on means rather than on ends. Indeed, se- rious attention to ends, such as A. Broadfield' s Philosqphy of Librarianship is the rare exception. 5 Similarly, works of a theoretical bent that seek to build better descriptions of li- brary phenomena are relatively scarce, es- pecially if one looks for conceptual under- standing as well as the description of surface phenomena such as circulation data and fashions in professional opinion. Nevertheless, there is currently a healthy awareness that major changes are likely and that there is, for example, some convergence between library services, computing services, and telecommunica- tions services. WHERE ARE WE GOING? Librarianship may be concerned with promoting "those profoundly human cre- ations: Beauty, truth, justice, and knowl- edge,'' but it is so in a fashion that is dou- bly indirect. 6 Rather than being concerned directly with beauty, truth, justice, and knowledge, we are concerned with texts 392 College & Research Libraries and images that are representations of some aspect of beauty, truth, and so on. Furthermore, we are, in practice, con- cerned less with the texts and images themselves than with physical objects that are text-bearing and image-bearing, for example, books, journals, manuscripts, and photographs. We deal with physical, text-bearing and image-bearing objects in vast quantities. Most of academic li- braries' operating budgets and space are devoted to the assembling of these collec- tions of objects rather than to their use. 7 Any significant change, therefore, in the technology and logistics of text-bearing objects could have very profound conse- quences. The shift to computer-based library op- erations and, more especially, the advent of library materials in electronic form indi- cate the prospect of radical changes in the means of library service. Library materials in electronic form differ significantly from traditional media. In particular, electronic media, unlike paper and microform, can be used from a distance and can be used by more than one person at a time. The significance of these two differences is enormous. 8 ''Since library materials in electronic form lend themselves to remote ac- cess and shared use, the assembling of local collections becomes less im- portant.'' Technological trends indicate that the costs of computing, digital data storage, and telecommunications will continue to diminish. At least five major changes are indicated: 1. Since library materials in electronic form lend themselves to remote access and shared use, the assembling of local collections becomes less important. Coor- dinated collection development and coop- erative, shared access to collections be- come more important. 2. With materials on paper, having cop- ies stored locally is a necessary (though not a sufficient) condition for convenient July 1989 access. With electronic materials, local storage may be a desirable but no longer necessary condition. Therefore, a catalog defined as a guide to what is locally stored becomes progressively less complete as a guide to what is conveniently accessible. One might as well catalog books pub- lished in odd years but · not those pub- lished in even years. The answer is to shift from catalogs to union catalogs or linked catalogs, and to holdings data linked to bibliographies; this shift reverses our usual perspective on catalogs as biblio- graphic descriptions attached to a library's holdings records. 9 Arguably, the present day catalog, online or on cards, is more a product of the limitations of nineteenth century library technology than of present day opportunities. 3. Meanwhile, those to be served are changing their information-handling habits. Paper and pen are being supple- mented by desk-top workstations that are capable of drawing from a multiplicity of remote sources. This leads to an entirely different perspective, from a library- centered worldview to a user-centered view. 10 4. These technological changes also in- vite reconsideration of the professional or- thodoxy of consolidating academic library services. The view that a multiplicity of branch and departmental libraries is inef- ficient might well change. Under different conditions, the decentralization of aca- demic library service might well be re- garded by administrators as well as by us- ers as an effective strategy. 11 5. ·There is a blurring of boundaries. Differences between the media are dis- solving: Sound, images, and text are all in- creasingly digitized. The functions of the library, the computer center, and the tele- communications office are converging, overlapping, or, at least, becoming more closely related. 12 New patterns are evolv- ing in the relationships between libraries, publishers, and the information industry. And where, we should also ask, are our users going? Part of the answer is that those whom the libraries are funded to serve are making increasing use of the new information technology of computers and electronic storage, in addition to the Foundations of Academic Librarianship 393 old information technology of pen, paper, and photocopier. The new tools provide powerful options for working with data, text, and images. As examples, consider the reduction in labor now required for the compilation of concordances, for complex simulations and calculations, for image enhancement, and for the analysis of large sets of data. There is, predictably, an in- creasing departure in information han- dling from the simple pattern of read, think, then write. 13 OPPORTUNITIES AND PROBLEMS The good news is that new, different means for providing academic library ser- vice are becoming available in a manner unprecedented since the nineteenth cen- tury. But the rational choice of means de- pends on a clear sense of ends. We tend to refer to library users as "readers." Their need to read is the raison d' etre of libraries. But reading is much less centrally important to them. Reading is only a means to the more important ends of learning, discovering, and writing. Should we, perhaps, think of them not as readers but as learners, discoverers, and writers? H we did, would that change our perspectives on the ends and, therefore, on the choice of means in academic librari- anship? Would our concerns become more directly concerned with the use made of texts, images, and data? Academic librarianship today is better placed to cope with change than it was in the nineteenth century. Academic li- braries are now all staffed by profession- ally trained librarians. There is a large structure of journals, conferences, profes- sional associations, and schools of librari- anship available to facilitate discussion and change. The usual pressures remain, with the addition of some new ones and some new players-notably from the information in- dustry. We may want to stop the world and suspend service while we ponder these changes, but we cannot. GUIDELINES What guidelines might assist us in achieving a better understanding of the foundations of academic librarianship? Four emphases are suggested: 1. Ends, means, and understanding. The most basic need is to keep distinctions be- tween ends, means, and theory in mind, even though given ends may themselves, in turn, be means to further, ultimate ends. Another view of these three ele- ments is to think in terms of the cultural val- ues of librarianship, the underlying criteria on which decision making concerning ends is based; library technology, the means at hand for providing library services; and library science, if we use that term in a spe- cialized, narrow sense to denote our un- derstanding of our concerns. These three elements change in differ- ent ways. 14 The values may vary with time and place, but they are, in reality, a reflec- tion of the cultural and political values of each particular situation. Library technol- ogy develops with time. Each new tech- nique or technology provides different op- portunities and different constraints. In general, "improved technology" means fewer or less awkward constraints. Li- brary science-our understanding of li- brary services, their use, and their context-also improves over time; but since we are concerned with cognition and other aspects of human behavior, prog- ress should be expected to be difficult and slow, except in the more narrowly techni- cal aspects. 2. Theory. Theory in librarianship has had a hard time and has been hindered by two unreasonable practices. First, theory has, by tradition, been put in apposition, if not opposition, to practice. H we make the error of allowing theory and practice to be seen as a dichotomy, then, in a busy, practical world where there is much to be done, practice will be emphasized over theory. Second, the high prestige of the physical sciences in recent decades has re- sulted in the substitution of a restricted definition of theory as a strong hypothesis explicit enough for formal refutation by empirical data. 15 Since librarianship is not a physical science, it is not surprising that little ''theory'' in this inapproeriately re- stricted sense has been found. 6 A sensible basis for progress is the use of a normal and more appropriate sense of 394 College & Research Libraries theory as the description of the nature of things . Changing the definition of theory does nothing to diminish the importance of honest, careful, rigorous, and construc- tive theorizing characterized by the active search for contradictory evidence, which is the hallmark of good research and good theory in all fields. 3. Context. At most points, library ser- vices are intimately related to their con- text: users and their inquiries originate from the local situation; library materials are acquired externally; the demand for service is conditioned by the alternatives available in the environment; and the very provision of service, in general and in de- tail, is dominated by the social values of those responsible for allocating resources to and within the library. The mission is, or should be, strictly situational. An un- derstanding of libraries, therefore, neces- sarily implies an understanding of the context of libraries and of how services do and might relate to their complex and changing environment. 4. Schools of librarianship. In 1939, when C&RL first appeared, the numbers, roles, and aspirations of schools of librarianship were much more limited than they are now. The Graduate Library School at the University of Chicago, for example, had high aspirations but faced serious difficul- ties. Gradually the schools have matured, not simply as library schools, but as aca- demic departments. There is scope, now, for a maturer partnership that goes well beyond the schools' role as kindergartens for prospective assistant librarians. 17 RELEVANT NEEDS What, then, are the relevant needs with respect to the foundations of academic li- brarianship? Firstly, the advent of novel, alternative means for service increases the need to think clearly about the ends of academic li- brary service. The ends may not change very much, but they are likely to need to be reinterpreted and reaffirmed at inter- vals in a changing world. In any case, re- sponsible selection of means depends on selection of ends. Secondly, the alternative means need to be explored aggressively, otherwise the July 1989 options will not be known. Thirdly, there is a continuing need tore- turn to basics in thinking about libraries in general and librarians in particular. Aca- demic library services have to do with sup- port for learning, both the study of what others have discovered and research to discover what is apparently not yet known. Yet the librarian's role is often very indirect. Rather than knowledge it- self, the librarian's concern is usually with representations of knowledge: texts and images. Furthermore, much of the time, the concern is not even directly with the texts themselves, but with text-bearing objects: books, journals, photographs, and databases-millions of them. Some- how we need to maintain our underlying concern with the generation and acquisi- tion of knowledge. The term information is itself both central and symbolic in its elu- sive ambiguity. Information can refer to potentially informative material, to perti- nent evidence. It can also refer to the pro- cess of becoming informed, of learning what one had not known. As librarians, we must concern ourselves with how indi- viduals use information (evidence) and also with how they become informed. 11The new information technology is transforming the use of library mate- rials with computer-based tech- niques ·for identifying, locating, ac- cessing, transferring, analyzing, manipulating, comparing, and revis- ing texts, images, and data.'' The old information technology of pen, paper, and photocopier did not encourage much departure from library use as ''read, think, write.'' In contrast, the new infor- mation technology is transforming the use of library materials with computer-based techniques for identifying, locating, ac- cessing, transferring, analyzing, manipu- lating, comparing, and revising texts, im- ages, and data. A whole new dimension to the use of library services is emerging. What would do more for users, for the de- Foundations of Academic Librarianship 395 velopment of academic librarianship, and for rapport with users, than providing as- sistance and helping to solve problems in this area? As B. E. Moon has noted," it is apparent that librarians should be provid- ing a far wider range of services than ei- ther they or any other agents provide at · present. " 18 · Fourthly, if one could, one might wish to postpone consideration of organiza- tional structures, since to impose assump- tions concerning organizational structure is to impose constraints. But in practice, the show must go on. SUMMARY Academic librarianship has two bases: the role of the library is to facilitate access to documents, and the mission of the li- brary is to support the mission of the aca- demic institution served. These two gen- eral statements need to be interpreted and clarified for each individual situation in or- der to provide proper foundations for aca- demic library service. What constitutes the goals of service- the ends-is unlikely to change much. Nevertheless, the ends may need to be re- interpreted, reaffirmed, and clearly distin- guished from means. What constitutes good library service- the means-should change. New technol- ogy and learning from experience should generate new patterns. The late nineteenth century was a bril- liant and exciting period for academic li- brarianship. A century later, the first fifty years of C&RL appear to be a prologue to a new, brilliant, and exciting period, but if and only if our historic preoccupation with technique and with present crises can be complemented and moderated by attention to the foundations of academic librarianship. How well we play our part depends, in large measure, on how well we under- stand what we are about and the context in which we do it. REFERENCES AND NOTES 1. F. C. Hicks, "Professional Aspects of Law Librarianship," College & Research Libraries 1:221-28 Qune 1940). J. P. Danton, "University Librarianship-Notes on Its Philosophy," College & Research Libraries 2:195-204 Gune 1941). 2. R. M. Orr, "Measuring the Goodness of Library Services: A General Framework for Considering Quantitative Measures," Journal of Documentation 29:315-32 (Sept. 1973). M. K. Buckland, "Con- cepts of Library Goodness," Canadian Library Journal39:63-66 (Apr. 1982). 3. Oxford English Dictionary, V.11 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1%1), s.v. Theory, p.278. 4. B. R. Boyce and D. H. Kraft, "Principles and Theories oflnformation Science," Annual Review of Information Science. 5. Broadfield explains, for example, why a professional librarian with a liberal outlook should be opposed to lists of required reading and reserve collections: A. Broadfield, A Philosophy of Librari- anship (London: Grafton, 1949). See also J. M. Christ, Toward a Philosophy of Educational Librarian- ship (Littleton, Colo.: Libraries Unlimited, 1972); and American Library Philosophy: An Anthology, selected by B. McCrimmon (Hamden, Conn.: Shoe String, 1975). 6. F. J. Kilgour, "The Impact of Technology on Libraries," in The Information Society: Issues and An- swers, ed. E. J. Josey (Phoenix, Ariz.: Oryx Pr ., 1978), p .12-19. Reprinted in F. G. Kilgour, Collected Papers of Frederick G. Kilgour: The OCLC Years (Dublin: OCLC, c1984), p.393-97. 7. For the libraries of the nine campuses of the University of California, it was estimated that around 70 percent of the operating budget and also of space could be attributed to the assembling of collec- tions. M. K. Buckland, "The Archival, Dispensing, and Bibliographic Roles of Collections," Jour- nal of Documentation (submitted for publication). 8. M. K. Buckland, "Library Materials: Paper, Microform, Database," College & Research Libraries 49:117-22 (Mar. 1988). 9. M. K. Buckland, "Bibliography, Library Records, and the Redefinition of the Library Catalog," Library Resources and Technical Services 32:299-311 (Oct. 1988). 10. J. Sack, "Open Systems for Open Minds: Building the Library without Walls," College & Research Libraries 47:535-44 (Nov. 1986). 11. M. Gorman, "The Ecumenical Library," The Reference Librarian 9:55-64 (1984). 396 College & Research Libraries July 1989 12. R. K. Neff, ''Merging Libraries and Computer Centers: Manifest Destiny or Manifestly De- ranged," EDUCOM Bulletin 20:8-12, 16 (Winter 1985). 13. B. E. M~on, "Co-operative Networks and Service to the Scholar: University Library Resources for Online Research," British Journal of Academic Librarianship 1:41-52 (Spring 1986). 14. M. K. Buckland, "Education for Librarianship in the Next Century," Library Trends 34:777-87 (Spring 1986). 15. C. B. Oldman, "Scientism and Academic Librarianship," in Information in Society: A Collection of Papers, ed. M. Barnes and others. (Leeds: School of Librarianship, Leeds Polytechnic, 1981), p.15-29. 16. Boyce and Kraft, "Principles"; L. Houser and A. M. Schrader, The Search for a Scientific Profession: Library Science in the U.S. and Canada (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow, 1978). 17. M. K. Buckland, "The School, Its Faculty and Students," in Changing Technology and Education for Librarianship and Infonnation Science, ed. B. Stuart-Stubbs (Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Pr., 1985), p. 117-27. 18. Moon, Co-operative,p. 51. 50TH ANNIVERSARY YEAR: 1939-1989 IN SEPTEMBER COLLEGE & RESEARCH LIBRARIES Guest Editorial by C. James Schmidt, former editor 50th Anniversary Features Old Forms, New Forms: The Challenge of Collection Development by Ross Atkinson Management of Information by Miriam A. Drake Retrieval of Selected Serial Citations: An Analysis through User Interviews by Rita H. Smith, Sook-Hyun Kim, Theresa Pepin, and Steve Thomas Selected Reference Books of 1988/89 by Eileen Mcilvaine Library Collection Deterioration: A Study at the University of Illinois (Research Notes) by Tina Chrzastowski, David Cobb, Nancy Davis, Jean Geil, and Betsy Kruger