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Creating the Academic Commons Guidelines for Learning, Teaching, and Research Thomas H. P. Gould THE SCARECROW PRESS, INC. Lanham • Toronto • Plymouth, UK 2011 111-081_Gould.indb1-081_Gould.indb i 55/4/11/4/11 110:470:47 AAMM Published by Scarecrow Press, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 http://www.scarecrowpress.com Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY, United Kingdom Copyright © 2011 by Thomas H. P. Gould All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gould, Thomas H. P., 1953– Creating the academic commons : guidelines for learning, teaching, and research / Thomas H. P. Gould. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8108-8108-2 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8108-8109-9 (ebook) 1. Education, Higher—Computer network resources. 2. Education, Higher—Effect of technological innovations on. 3. Internet in higher education. 4. Distance education. I. Title. LB2395.7.G68 2011 378.1'7344678—dc22 2011000525 ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America 111-081_Gould.indb1-081_Gould.indb iiii 55/4/11/4/11 110:470:47 AAMM Contents Preface v Acknowledgments ix Introduction: The Millennial Library xi PART 1: SUPPORTING STUDENTS AND FACULTY 1 1 The Learning Commons 3 2 The Teaching Commons 31 3 The Research Commons 51 PART 2: THE SUPPORTING ELEMENTS OF AN ACADEMIC COMMONS 73 4 The Components of an Academic Commons Archiving Scheme 77 5 The Electronic Book 103 6 Libraries as Publishing Houses and the Long Tail Theory 129 7 Access, Security, and Funding Options 155 PART 3: EVOLVING ISSUES FACING THE ACADEMIC COMMONS MOVEMENT 177 8 Copyright, Intellectual Property Rights, and Privacy 179 9 Selling the Millennial Library and Its Academic Commons to Its Stakeholders 203 iii 111-081_Gould.indb1-081_Gould.indb iiiiii 55/4/11/4/11 110:470:47 AAMM iv Contents 10 Long-Term Challenges: Politics, Staffing, and the Fourth Commons 225 Appendix A: Resources for Survey Techniques and Analysis 247 Appendix B: Research and Collaboration Tools 251 Appendix C: Library Case Studies 257 Index 277 About the Author 285 111-081_Gould.indb1-081_Gould.indb iivv 55/4/11/4/11 110:470:47 AAMM Preface I am, unabashedly, a lover of libraries. I also love universities. To stroll across these beautiful places, such as the University of Oklahoma or George- town University, and, of course, my own home at Kansas State University, is to appreciate not only the care given to native landscaping and urban design but also the very uniqueness of community that is part of all learning institu- tions. Universities are not just the special places of learning for all countries and all peoples. They are—at their best—a self-contained escape from the mundane world. They attract those seeking what is missing. Of course, that “missing” is a mere degree of qualification for some. But for many others, it is something far more, an indescribable sense of belonging to a noble quest. I defy anyone to stroll the streets of Cambridge and not sense what has pre- ceded, what has been learned, and what has been shared in those classrooms and courtyards. At the heart of every university is its multidisciplinary access point to all information: the library. For denizens seeking information, their quests begin and end here. Whether it is the catacombs of the stacks, the vast ex- panse of tables and new technology tools, or even the special smell that all libraries share, these are special places filled with special people. These are the gathering points of learners, scholars, and teachers. In my days at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I spent entire days wandering through the graduate library looking here and there for what I had not found and never knew even existed. I spent hours in special rooms set aside for graduate students, surrounded by books and journals that would remain until I returned. Seems so old-school today, but that room was a quiet place within a quiet place. I doubt they are even used today. I looked patiently through dust-covered volumes of Sociological Abstracts, amazed when I found what v 111-081_Gould.indb1-081_Gould.indb v 55/4/11/4/11 110:470:47 AAMM vi Preface could not be located using FTP or other (now primitive) online search tools available at the time. What is still present in all libraries is information and access to untold “pages” of information I could not even imagine twenty years ago. This book is, at its core, about information, information storage, and those we have designated as the experts in how all this information will be retrieved. But it is also about a special type of library and a special type of librarian: the mil- lennial library and millennial librarians who can offer unique assistance to students, teachers, and researchers in an age when the sum total of all avail- able information exceeds what can be found by any one person. This work cannot pretend to be the final word on what a millennial library will look like in even five years (as the included case study updates illustrate). It does not suggest that every possible service or software application is listed here. It is the paean of one lover of libraries who sees the unfolding new library as a natural consequence to thousands of years that precede it. ABOUT THIS BOOK Let us all agree that technology in 2011 is a moving target. A very quick, vague, hard-to-track moving target. I fret in my dreams that the moment I consign this work to production, something momentous will occur. I fret in my waking hours that something is already happening somewhere that I have missed or overlooked. I ask only that my gentle reader take into account that this topic is a moving target. The book is divided into three sections: supporting students and faculty, the supporting elements of an academic commons, and the evolving issues facing the academic commons movement. Section one addresses three types of academic commons already in place at some universities: learning, teaching, and research. To my knowledge (re- member: moving target), no university library is addressing learning, teach- ing, and research commons as three separate units. Some have mixed parts of each together. Again, to my knowledge, none has a single overarching commons concept that addresses all or incorporates a fourth commons I of- fer later in the book. I may be in error and can only say that if you feel your library has accomplished this, then bully for you—and please let me know! Section two delves into archiving, e-reserves, the fate of books, libraries as publishers, and issues swirling around access, security, and sustainability. No doubt some of these will raise eyebrows: Libraries as publishers? Librarians as archivists? Electronic books (and their accompanying reading devices)? As I note in several places in this section (and others), little is settled as we try 111-081_Gould.indb1-081_Gould.indb vvii 55/4/11/4/11 110:470:47 AAMM Preface vii to understand not only where we are now but especially where we will be in a few years. Some libraries are already acting as publishers, with universities looking to their central storage facilities (read: e-reserves) as a step in that direction. Some librarians are already wrestling with the issue of what to save and what to ignore. This challenge is made more manifest by the rapid drop in electronic storage costs: It is now possible to store everything, if we want. But just because we can, should we? And though the Kindle and iPad have most certainly raised the level of discourse regarding electronic books, much is left to be chewed on as we move more and more toward a new delivery scheme for our printed tomes. Section three addresses the issues likely to be confronting librarians and their administrators in their quests to establish the commons outlined in section one: copyright, intellectual rights, and (perhaps the newest issue) privacy. This part of section three is presented in a policy approach intended not to wade through the voluminous forest of pertinent cases but to look at the overall landscape and potential outcomes. This section also attempts to look at how a university library administration can “sell” the idea of its academic commons to the public: students, faculty, and university administrators. And, finally, as might be expected from a book such as this, I attempt to peer even further down the road to what might occur in the near term in the areas of the academic commons: university turf wars, acceptance of change by staff, and the need for a fourth academic commons, one devoted to librarians them- selves. This “LibTech commons” is envisioned as a worldwide commons shared by librarians at every library. In its way, it can be seen as a precedent to a global library. It would also be the foundation for the creation of a new idea that grows directly from existing library practices: searchology. The need is clear: In a forest of trillions of trees, we will more and more depend on a professional who can find the right tree (or trees), thus facilitating research collaboration on a scale we have never enjoyed.

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