For too long, academic libraries have determined their value by what they control: catalogs, subscriptions, and systems replicating those of the largest institutions. For as long as anyone remembers, academic libraries have been following a one-size-fits-all approach. If larger libraries adopted a collections-centered ethos or a vendor-driven approach to collections, smaller libraries followed along, and for good reason. It created professional consistency, inaugurated an era of interoperability at scale, and gave us all a sense of legitimacy.
Our participation as smaller academic libraries in this larger sphere gave us a sense of solidarity that was rooted in our professional standards and legitimacy in buying into a model of education that stamped librarians as ready to enter the workforce. It wasn’t just libraries building out their industries this way: at the same time small-town newspapers could follow big-city journalism standards and practices, local hospitals could adopt protocols from medical hospitals associated with teaching hospitals, and regional airports could mirror international hubs. As a proven model emerged, it could be scaled down with little to no diminishment in service or product quality and even participate in the larger ecosystem of exchange as a full partner.
Resource constraints limit adaptation
Smaller academic libraries, however, are unable to keep playing this game. Our attempts to preserve expensive subscriptions, staff traditional workflows, and keep a sophisticated tech-stack operational are gripped by a hurricane gale of declining budgets, declining usage, and shifting models of student success. Those that continue to follow the research-library blueprint in this day and age are like local diners copying boutique restarant and country club menus they can’t afford to stock. Or a muffler shop stocking a Lexus dealers’ parts inventory just in case. Or a borough government replicating the services of a major city.
What used to lend legitimacy to the institution now drains resources while misaligning its priorities. All against an undercurrent of change that simultaneously is disrupting the core model where it could be met with local innovation and openness to new models for doing business. In the past, we have gained prestige by being indistinguishable from our larger peers. Our faculty and administration arrive on our campuses fresh out of graduate school or perhaps 10 or 20 years removed and expect to see and actually do see a reassuring presence – a library that appears the same as the one they studiously wrote their dissertation in.
Yet, this nostalgia and loyalty for a static, still-resource-dominant model—rows of books, predictable subscriptions, and familiar services—anchors us to an outdated paradigm that stifles adaptation. Blinded by dated assumptions, administrators and faculty resist: rethinking resource allocation; embracing open-access frameworks, or; redesigning the library around student success, and thereby perpetuate a cycle of stasis misaligned with the dynamic needs of today’s pedagogy and our limited budgets. This loyalty to an old model, comforting as it may be, is a silent barrier to the innovative, equitable, and sustainable library we could build if we dared to reimagine our priorities.
Clinging to prestige-driven, traditional library models stifles the adoption of sustainable, community-driven organizational responses.
Yes, for too long have we been miniature orchestras mimicking symphonies. We have ceded our potential to differentiate ourselves, to respond more nimbly to the moment, and to innovate from the inside out. Because we’ve been dragging heavy collections, workflows, and legacies around with us everywhere we go.
No more, my heart leaps! According to Brian Mathews in “A Cambrian Moment for Libraries,” we’re entering a moment of diversification—a “library Cambrian explosion” in which institutions must evolve into distinct models, tailored to their ecosystems rather than forced copies of a monolithic ideal. Mathews uses evolutionary theory and systems thinking to argue that libraries are no longer safe harbor for uniformity; instead, they must branch into forms that better fit their institutional, disciplinary, and community niches.
Taking the model one step further, our task is to shed the inertia of the past and embrace our evolution through specialized remodeling of ourselves into distinct organizations focused around a supporting vision that turbocharges the distinct, local educational mission. Rather than a one-size-fits-all prescription for the future, we must open to multiple futures and give them serious consideration as possible routes forward.
These could include (a mix of), among many options:
- Innovation incubator that cultivates experimentation and creativity beyond the library’s walls
- Curators of experience: designing engaging learning environments
- Community anchors: re-centering mission on relationships and belonging.
The argument is compelling in that it asks us to start competing not on the same old playing field but as partners innovating inside the larger institutional culture where we better adapt our DNA to the institution’s. This would mean we no longer judge or even think of ourselves according to the usual research library’s yardstick; we value and are valued for how well the library amplifies its own institution’s success.
It’s time to move from being gatekeepers of information and to become engines of student success–driving achievement, retention and readiness for life after college. It’s time to shed the costumes of our larger counterparts. Most of all, it is time to lean into specialization. Our institutions no longer benefit from generic, uniform libraries; they demand libraries that are purpose-built, designed around local priorities, and aligned with the distinct missions of the campuses they serve.
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