The Recession and the Academic Library
Since I’ve decided to post weekly to this blog, I have been searching for a topic to get me moving.
Uppermost in my mind right now is the recession, and what it will mean for my role, my college and the sector in general.
I listen daily to Radio 4, my lifeline to the wider world, and last week’s Any Questions discussed the state of Government funding for Higher Education. It was not surprising news that there would probably be cuts.
There is talk of innovating our way out of the recession and universities’ intellectual capital is mentioned. Would those be the same universities which are themselves warned not to all even further behind the curve in the new JISC / DEMOS report? It is an interesting irony that our universities produce gradautes who go on to “innovate” in business, while remaining fairly static creatures ourselves. Nice that many librarians are often in the front row of such things though.
A note of caution though – in the BBC article to which I linked above, I noted that “innovation” seems largely a buzzword for “increasing Web-ification” of things that we all do anyway. In fact, you’d wonder why as “information professionals we are not re-branded “innovation professionals” seeing as what we generally do is often just less flashy innovation based on pre-existing information and knowledge.
Anyhow, in a similar way to Michael Sandel’s excellent closing words in last night’s Reith Lectures, it really does seem that all this technological “innovation” often masks an avoidance of the underlying problems which are social and political.
Hopefully I can put together something a bit more structured next week!
Michael,
I am glad others are pointing to the ‘real’ issues- social, cultural, political. Too often it is assumed that the machine will fix all, when really the Big Machine is the problem.
Hi Pete!
While I would not go so far as to say that “The Machine” (the ‘net, I guess?) is *the* problem, it seems pretty clear that all our technological innovations do cause some new problems and exacerbate some old ones.
As librarians and information scientists, we really do have a unique arsenal of concepts and experience to draw on; all it takes is a little more organisation and a bit of risk to be more vocal.
I think CILIP needs support from the “edges” of the profession at this point too, all the advice and advocacy cannot come just from the “centre” any more. Or to put it another way, practising professionals are the centre, and have been below society’s radar too long!
Michael,
the Big Machine is, to me, societal expectations/ assumptions about technology/ technique. So these need to be addressed alongside architectures/ platforms etc.