Academic Librarianship

Citation

Genoni, P. (2011), "Academic Librarianship", Library Management, Vol. 32 No. 1/2, pp. 129-130. https://doi.org/10.1108/01435121111102638

Camila Alire and G. Edward Evans will be familiar names to many Library Management readers. Alire has extensive experience in academic libraries in the United States (she is currently Dean Emeritus at the University of New Mexico and Colorado State University) and has recently served as President of both the Association for the College and Research Libraries (2005‐2006), and the American Library Association (2009‐2010). Evans has worked in academic libraries for some half a century, including 25 years as a Library Director. Both Alire and Evans have also published extensively on a variety of aspects of contemporary library practice.

It is relevant to note the stature of these two authors, as it is not common to have two such senior practitioners coming together to write a textbook. The breadth of senior experience of Alire and Evans bring to the task is immediately noticeable in a book that consciously and systematically embeds academic librarianship within the context of broader histories and developments of higher education in the US (and indeed beyond). Underpinning Academic Libraries is an astute acknowledgement that the role – and perhaps more importantly the future – of academic libraries and librarians is being shaped by the need to respond appropriately to the constant flux within the higher education and research sectors. Therefore, in order to position individuals to work in these libraries they require a very good grounding in the various contexts (historical, administrative, legislative, social and technological) in which universities operate and which directly impact upon the future of academic librarians and other higher education workers.

Accordingly, the book is divided into four parts, the first three of which (“Background and historic context”; “Higher education today”, and “Campus and library commonalities”) comprise ten chapters and over half of the book. In essence these three parts are describing the environment in which modern academic libraries develop and provide their services and collections. In doing so, these three parts provide a great deal of fundamental information that has all‐too‐often fallen outside the scope of similar textbooks. For example, the chapter on “Governance” gives an important introduction to the complex and sometimes arcane management structures that govern universities, and the following chapter, “Funding”, provides a detailed and very useful account of higher education revenue and expenditure. It is just this sought of detail that often eludes librarians – even those who might have been working in academic libraries for some years.

The fourth part of Academic Libraries is titled “The academic library today”, and in these six chapters the reader is given an overview of the various operational features that constitute the modern academic library. These chapters are consistently informative and constantly enriched by the knowledge conveyed in the preceding sections of the book. The writing style is necessarily concise and focused, and there is very little that isn't highly relevant and succinctly expressed. Readers looking for more detail on some of the big issues will need to follow the many other suggested readings, but the book convincingly introduces the reader to the complex and challenging environment of the twenty first century academic library. It is also firmly grounded in the authors' own hard won experience – a feature of the book is the use of “side‐bars” providing anecdotes from the authors' own workplaces to demonstrate the way in which various issues are manifested at the “coalface”.

Another unusual feature of the book is the concluding chapter entitled “Leaders look toward the future”. It incorporates selections from 21 short essays commissioned for the book from senior academic library managers, in which they were asked to address the future of academic libraries. Short segments from these essays are included under some 12 headings that refer to the various “challenges” that confront academic libraries. This effectively summarises many of the central themes of the book in the words of senior practitioners, and in doing so produces a slightly grim outlook in the form of many warnings of the consequences for academic libraries if the right management choices are not forthcoming. It is interesting to note that the essays from which these various quotes have been selected can be found on a companion web site www.neal‐schuman.com/academic/. Reading these essays in full indicates that they provide a generally more up‐beat assessment of the future of academic libraries that was evident from the “challenges” based approach and the selective quoting used in the book. Nonetheless, the warnings remain clear regarding the numerous pitfalls that await academic libraries if managers are not sufficiently flexible, active and intuitive in (re)inventing their future.

Finally, two questions will rightly be asked of any textbook; does it serve a purpose beyond a student audience; and, does it have relevance outside the particular geographic context in which it was written? Both of these questions can be answered in the affirmative. First, the book's broad contextual sweep mean it will serve as a useful primer for non‐student readers, including experienced librarians who might be complicating a shift into academic librarianship. And second, the key pressures and drivers in the higher education environment in the United States are sufficiently global that readers in other developed countries with a fully‐modern higher education sector will be able to identify with the many challenges and potential responses described in Academic Libraries. Some sections of the book are certainly US‐centric, but the adaptable reader should have little difficulty in recognising the same issues in their local context.

Academic Libraries is a superior textbook.