IRIS Photos

Planning the Future of Research Library Collections-The Janus Conference on Research Library Collections

John Saylor

With the generous support of the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, the Janus Conference on Research Library Collections: Managing the Shifting Ground between Writers and Readers took place October 9-11 at Cornell.

What follows is a brief outline of the events and some results of the conference.  For more information, I encourage you to see the following online resources:

Over eighty invited participants, primarily collection development officers of the top forty ARL libraries, several library directors, some faculty, and other figures in collection development came together to reflect on the past accomplishments of collection development and to develop an action plan for re-envisioning collection development in research libraries.  Working groups formed to lay concrete plans in several key areas.  The groups are already conferring by e-mail and will convene at ALA Mid-Winter in San Antonio in January.

The Janus theme was chosen by Sarah Thomas.  She assembled a CUL team that spent nearly a year planning what turned out to be a very successful event that we hope will propel the research library community to work together on a national level to refine and address the challenges we presented.

Janus is the Roman god of doors and gates.  The twin faces, gazing in opposite directions, served as a fitting metaphor for the theme of the conference—to look back at where collection development has come from and to look forward to plan a future where it should be going.

The timing of the conference was chosen to commemorate the fact that twenty-five years ago Hendrik Edelman, Dan Hazen, and J. Gormly Miller completed their work on the Andrew W. Mellon-funded plan for reconceptualizing collection development at Cornell. At about the same time, the now-famous ALA Resources and Technical Services Division (RTSD) Pre-conference on collection development was held in Detroit.  In many ways, these two events shaped the vision and set the standards for the then newly evolving field of research library collection development. Since that time, much has changed in the way scholarly information is produced, distributed, and used for teaching and research—and yet many of the objectives and values that inform and drive collection development remain largely the same as they were a quarter of a century ago.

The conference was designed to bring key thinkers in collection development together, to set the stage with several enticing and provocative presentations, to present some major challenges that we felt the national library community needed to work on, and then to assign the attendees the task of discussing the challenges (or coming up with others) and developing an action plan to address the challenges the research library community faces.

Hendrik Edelman, an adjunct professor at the Palmer School of Library and Information Science, Long Island University, and a former assistant university librarian for collection development at CUL, opened the conference with a talk on the history of collection development from his special perspective of someone who was instrumental in the development of the field at its beginning.

The next morning started with a talk by Mark Dimunation, the chief of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division at the Library of Congress since 1998.  Previously, Mark was also a member of the CUL staff as the curator of rare books and the associate director for collections in the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections from 1991 to 1998.  Mark’s talk brilliantly illustrated the importance and necessity of understanding the value of the print artifact as we move further into the digital information environment.

Mark Sandler, the director of collections at the University of Michigan Library, then gave a presentation on library collections in the age of Google.  As one of the “Google Five,” he gave an engaging and humorous presentation stressing that library collections and services will consist of many things in the new era, and not only digital objects, as important as these continue to become.

The morning session was brought to a close by Jean-Claude Guédon, a professor in the Département de littérature comparée, Université de Montréal.  He spoke on the relationship between scholarly communication and collection development and the growing role that repositories (such as the arXiv) are playing and will play in scholarly information exchange.

In the afternoon we fulfilled our promise to put the participants to work. Ross Atkinson presented Six Key Challenges for Collection Development with an Action for Consideration attached to each.  The six challenges were:

  1. RECON. Convert to digital form objects currently only available in traditional form.
  2. PROCON. Ensure objects published in the future are available in digital form.
  3. Core Definition. Define collectively the items that compose a core collection in each discipline.
  4. Publisher Relations. Negotiate collectively with publishers on the best possible access to formal notification objects [i.e., the items they are offering].
  5. Archiving. Ensure the coordinated, long-term maintenance of traditional and digital holdings.
  6. Alternative Channels for Scholarly Communication. Create a network of publishing structures that scholars can use as a supplement or alternative to standard scholarly publishing channels.

After Ross’s talk we split the invited attendees into six working groups, each of which was assigned a “key challenge” in collection development.  Each group had three hours to discuss its assigned challenge in depth and determine whether the challenge was appropriate for action by the research library community and whether they thought the action for consideration could be implemented at their institutions.  Groups were also asked to discuss any of the other challenges if they had time and to identify any major issues not discussed in the key challenges and other actions that might be considered. The groups were specifically asked:

  • Is the action for consideration feasible? 
  • Is it likely your library would be prepared to participate in such action? 
  • If so, what specific steps should be taken to put the action into effect? 
  • If not, why not?

If the action for consideration is not feasible, what action would be feasible to achieve comparable, or nearly comparable, or related goals? 

  • Why is the substitute action preferable to the action under consideration?
  • What specific steps should be taken to put the substitute action into effect?

Following the breakout sessions, a six-member writing team was assigned to work from the discussion notes to prepare a draft strategic resolution, which was presented and discussed in the closing session on Tuesday.  Serving on the writing team were Ross Atkinson, Cornell; David Block, Cornell; Jeffrey Garrett, Northwestern University; Dan Hazen, Harvard; Peggy Johnson, Minnesota; and Joyce Ogburn, Utah. 

On Tuesday morning a two-page synthesis of the writing teams’ records of the breakout sessions was presented to the conference participants for discussion.  The synthesis elicited such an energetic response that over half of the participants volunteered to work on one of the challenges as part of a group that will continue to push an action plan forward to realize the goal of that challenge. Plans are that the leaders of each of the Six Key Challenges will meet by conference call with the other volunteers in their group and then move the item forward with more discussion at ALA Mid-Winter in January 2006.

The conference closed with a summary of the three-day event and a discussion of the next steps, first by Sarah Thomas and then by Brian Schottlaender, the University Librarian at the University of California, San Diego.

The Janus Conference was highly successful in that it generated enthusiasm among the participants to address the challenges of collection development in research libraries on a national level.  The actions to meet the six challenges are being redrafted and will be sent to each of the groups for further consideration and action.

As the conference planning chair, I want to say right up front that this conference could not have succeeded as it did without the hard, dedicated work of the Janus Planning Team, whose members were Ross Atkinson, David Block, Peter Hirtle, Anne Kenney, Mary Ochs, Katherine Reagan, Nathan Rupp, and Kizer Walker. The incredible advice and knowledge of Mary-Beth Bunge, CJ Lance-Duboscq, and Marty Crowe were also key contributers, as were the efforts of Lynne Bertoia, Michelle Hegedus, Andrea Barnett, Aaron Suggs, Jenn Colt-Demaree, and Carla DeMello. I especially thank Sarah Thomas for the support, encouragement, and energy she provided us throughout. I also thank Professor J. Robert Cooke, who provided funding for filming the major talks and summary sessions of the conference. Videos of the talks will be digitally available in the Janus Conference Collection in the Cornell University Open Access Repository.

Next: Using the "Mobile Lab"