Future of Academic Libraries : a talk by Michael Gorman

Nancy MacKenzie, City of Calgary Community and Neighbourhood Services

Following are some of the issues facing libraries and librarians as outlined by Michael Gorman, speaking at the University of Calgary on April 24th, on the topic of the Future of Academic Libraries.

• The number one issue facing the library profession is preservation of recorded knowledge. How can we ensure that the information that is available solely in an electronic format is preserved for future generations? The challenges:
  1. Identifying the information that is worth preserving.
  2. Creating and maintaining a structure of bibliographic control for electronic information.
  
  
• Librarians are part of a unified profession. Many of the issues facing any library are issues facing all libraries. The California tax revolt for example, which resulted in greatly reduced funding for public schools and public libraries occurred without much opposition from the library community. Now, 24 years later the budget for library instruction at the universities in California is huge as the people who are products of these inadequately funded systems enter university and need to be taught the most basic information literacy skills.
  
  
• Reading in a digital age is resulting in "a growing underclass of aliterate people", those who can read but choose not to, "that are sedated by diversion". Sustained reading of complex text is becoming more and more of an eccentricity. The challenges:
  1. What are the actual levels of illiteracy, and "aliteracy"?
  2. What are the effects of illiteracy and "aliteracy" on learning?
  3. What can libraries do?
  
  
• In the past library schools conducted practical research that was the dominant influencing factor in the library profession. Today there is too much emphasis on information science to the near total exclusion of basic library skills. Library schools are graduating students who are uneducated in the core competencies and therefore unprepared for work in libraries. There are also not enough library schools. In the state of California, for example, there are 1.5 library schools serving a population of 34 million.