College and Research Libraries Libraries and Computing Centers: A Blueprint for Collaboration Richard M. Dougherty Considerable attention has been focused in recent years on the uncertain relationship be- tween academic libraries and campus computing centers. It is commonly assumed by some that one or the other will eventually become dominant on most campuses. This paper argues that the two organizations will continue to have distinct, though closely related, identities for many years. In this context they can best serve their users and institutions by establishing carefully constructed programs of collaboration that recognize both their common links in information science and their historically different missions. ibrarians now generally recog- nize the growing relationship between campus libraries and computing centers. Pat Mol- holt, for example, recently predicted a gradual convergence in the function of these two organizations. 1 But a seldom discussed issue that both intrigues and worries people is, Will libraries be ab- sorbed by computing centers? Interest- ingly enough, there are professionals from computing environments who are wondering if computing centers might be absorbed by libraries. Of course, these are questions for which there are no ready an- swers and that are little more than red her- rings. But they do suggest the existence of unease and concern among professionals of both groups . Questions of organizational change have been stimulated by statements such as those attributed to Richard Van Horn, chancellor of the University of Houston, who sees the computing center merging into the library, 2 and Raymond Neff, vice chancellor for information technology at the University of California-Berkeley, who in a provocatively titled article, ''Merging Libraries and Computer Cen- ters: Manifest Destiny or Manifestly De- ranged,'' presents his rationale for why he believes the university library can be merged with the university computer cen- ter. 3 The prospect of mergers may make for fascinating cocktail conversation at con- ferences and will certainly keep electronic mailboxes full, but speculations about mergers and absorptions only cause us to continue focusing on the wrong issues. Li- braries are not going to be physically moved into computing centers, and com- puting centers will not find themselves housed in campus libraries. The crucial question from our point of view is, Will the library be organizationally absorbed by the computing center? Even more to the point, Will the library director report to the head of the computing center, or to the person in charge of information tech- nology? One way to stimulate discussion and de- bate is to be provocative. When Columbia University recently announced a merger of its computing center and its library un- der the direction of its university librarian, Patricia Battin, many in the profession breathed a sigh of relief. These same indi- viduals also become nervous each time a report reaches the press that the librarian Richard M. Dougherty is Director of Libraries at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109 289 290 College & Research Libraries of a particular university will henceforth report to the person in charge of informa- tion technology rather than to the chief campus academic officer. The significance of such events, however, is often over- blown. ''The attention of librarians and com- puting center professionals should not be focused on the rhetoric of mer- gers and takeovers but on the roles their respective organizations can play as the principal providers of in- formation to campus communities.'' The temptation to report an apparent trend toward a major organizational up- heaval proved irresistible to a Chronicle re- porter who wrote an article dramatically entitled ''Campus Libraries Seen Threat- ened by Other Sources of Information. " 4 Such rhetoric implies questions of in- terunit trust and well-defined jurisdic- tions between units that don't exist on most campuses. In fact, the meeting to which the reporter referred simply exam- ined the changing roles of libraries and computing centers. In the case of Colum- bia University, the implication of such a headline is thoroughly misleading. Patri- cia Battin, in describing the changes at Co- lumbia, talks about the Scholarly Informa- tion Center as a philosophical construct rather than a physical entity that brings to- gether the Columbia libraries and the computer center. 5 It is important that we become more pre- cise when we use words such as merger, ta- keover, and absorption. The distinctions are not merely semantic, for if we are to avoid struggles over turf while we learn how to harness the talents and resources of li- braries and computing centers, issues must be discussed accurately, frankly, and openly. And we should take care not to contribute, however unwittingly, to the dramatic inventions of outside observers. The library's traditional mission has been to provide materials and information · to all campus users, whether a freshman July 1987 at a community college or a Nobel laureate at a distinguished research university. It seems only logical that librarians take full advantage of the new information tools now available because of technological ad- vances in fulfilling this mission. It is en- tirely reasonable that specialists in com- puting centers offer their services through established research facilities on campus. The attention of librarians and computing center professionals should not be fo- cused on the rhetoric of mergers and ta- keovers but on the roles their respective organizations can play as the principal providers of information to campus com- munities. The relationship between li- braries and computing centers is changing rapidly. Soon, higher education profes- sional will not refer to "library issues" and "computing center issues"; they will be concerned with cross-campus issues in information science that will reach the heart of the library's traditional mission. As a visionary, Van Horn can set the tone at his university and stimulate an en- vironment that moves his institution to- ward the organizational infrastructure he envisions. The necessary climate for change may already exist on his campus. While I fully subscribe to Raymond Neff's thesis that the functions of libraries and computing centers are converging, I don't conclude that organizational mergers are likely or even inevitable in the short term. Over time new organizational infrastruc- tures will take shape, but no specific struc- ture will be universal. Rather, the organi- zational structures are more likely to reflect the history, traditions, and institu- tional personalities of individual cam- puses. Because the difference between libraries and computing centers is so great from an organizational viewpoint, I believe models that rely on coordination and col- laboration are more likely to predominate in the near term than models that subordi- nate one unit to another. Too often, we are prone to extrapolate from personal experi- ence or from decisions that are idiosyn- cratic to a specific organization. The changes that have taken place at Columbia University and Carnegie-Mellon Univer- sity, for example, should not lead one to generalize about trends in organizational patterns. The underlying circumstances and organizational changes involving the libraries and computing centers in those cases were quite dissimilar. 6 Many will recall the euphoria in the 1960s over media, which hypnotized many educators and caused a large num- ber of colleges and universities to combine their libraries and audiovisual centers to form new units that went by names such as 11 divisions of instructional media.'' Too often these mergers were not predicated on a well-thought-out organizational or educational philosophy. They were mar- riages of convenience and were often made only for the sake of fashion. In retro- spect I wonder to what extent those merged units advance education, scholar- ship, or the role of information services. One guiding principle we should follow as we prepare our profession's future is that changes should be based on plans that en- hance the educational mission of our insti- tutions, not on the mere impression that certain redirections are, to be blunt, trendy and likely to attract attention. A scenario, only slightly hyperbolic, will illustrate the danger of focusing too nar- rowly on mergers of libraries and comput- ing centers. A merger undertaken without prior agreement of the staffs directly af- fected could produce some unexpected negative consequences. In the parlance of Wall Street, such an action might be char- acterized as a hostile takeover. Assume for a moment that the directors of a library and a computing center have been in- formed that their campus administration intends to reorganize the two separate units into a single campus information agency. Neither the head librarian nor the computing center director embraces the decision with enthusiasm. The staffs of the two units are even more displeased. What options are available to those who do not want to be merged? The library staff could very well decide to seek sup- port from another interest group in the university community: a white knight, to borrow another term from Wall Street, to save them from an undesired fate. In this instance the knight wears the robes of aca- demic regalia. After all, many faculty do Libraries and Computing 291 not view the current rush to '' technify'' with great enthusiasm. The computeriza- tion of a large campus is a multi-megabuck undertaking, and as former EDUCOM president James Emery reminds us, it is important to build a commitment to such a project among faculty. Even when philo- sophically in agreement with the proposi- tion, the large costs of computerization could divert funds from projects that have a higher priority for faculty members, namely graduate student support, travel budgets, and perhaps salaries. 7 A disaf- fected staff could play on the natural sus- picions that some faculty harbor toward technology. In using such terms as hostile takeover and white knight, I realize I may contribute to the climate I have decried in this paper, but I bel1eve it is important to underscore the point that libraries and librarians have typically accumulated a great deal of insti- tutional capital among their faculties, and they can easily draw upon that capital in times of stress. The absence of a commit- ment among library and computing center staff, in other words, could have a detri- mental impact on the quality of informa- tion services that a new agency could de- liver to faculty and students. Several people asked me why I raised the spectre of staff opposition. Some think that discussing the possibility might be a selffulfillng prophecy; others simply be- lieve that such organized opposition is un- likely. Of course there is always some risk in raising potentially contentious issues, but I have witnessed occasions when fac- ulty opposition to a policy has brought li- brary and university administrations to heal. Downs and McAnally, in a classic li- brary management article in the early 1970s, reported that the role of library di- rectors was being affected by ''hard times and inflation, changing theories of man- agement, and technology.' ' 8 In the intervening period the stresses identified by those authors have not dis- appeared; in fact, most library managers would argue they have only intensified as the pace has quickened. Moreover, we know from actual experience what can happen to a library administration that de- cides to automate without a staff commit- 292 College & Research Libraries ment. From a director's perspective, such undertakings are fraught with risk. What should be clear, based on common sense and the hard knocks of experience, is that reorganization of libraries and computing centers into divisions of information sys- tems, if undertaken without careful ad- vance planning, may not succeed in achieving the objective of providing high- quality information services to the campus community. Up to now I have focused on the nega- tive aspects of the issue-namely, what strategies and behaviors to avoid-but if one agrees that the functions of libraries and computing centers are converging, the crucial question is, What can a campus administration do to build bridges that will enhance opportunities for mutually beneficial collaboration? ''The staffs of both organizations must learn more about each other's professional cultures and technical vocabularies.'' Librarians have been deeply involved with library automation for almost two decades; nevertheless, there is still much we can learn from computing center pro- fessionals. At the same time, profession- als from the computing center have much to learn about libraries and the services li- brarians deliver. Timothy Weiskel, a pro- fessor of anthropology at Yale, offers some interesting speculations on how the two organizations might adopt a strategy often observed in nature; i.e., one of be- havioral mimicry or morphological imita- tion. Weiskel describes this process as fol- lows: Libraries will take on many of the capabilities of computer centers to handle electronic media and make documentation available in machine- readable form. Computer centers ... will begin to adopt traits traditionally characteristic of libraries. Not only will they begin to catalog, conserve and archive material in much the same way as librarians have learned to handle books in the past, but in addition the nature of their 'user-service' facili- July 1987 ties is increasingly likely to match the conven- ient, efficient and considerate reference service we have so long enjoyed in university libraries. 9 In order to stimulate a process of con- structive organizational mimicry, we must first begin to establish formal working re- lationships at operational levels. The staffs of both organizations must learn more about each other's professional cul- tures and technical vocabularies. As more is learned, we might expect to see greater .... mutual appreciation for what each profes- sional specialization contributes to the campus information environment. Tom Michalak, librarian at Carnegie- Mellon, identifies activities that seem to be converging at his institution. First, main- taining library databases, chief among ,. them the online catalog, in computers housed in the computing center. Second, providing access to commercial databases through gateways maintained by the com- puting center. Well-known sources of in- formation such as BRS, Lockheed, and SDC are included in this category. Provi- sion of these services requires coordina- tion by both organizations. Third, orga- nizing and making available numeric databases such as those organized by the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research, the library offers guides and machine-readable directories and the computing center provides con- sultation and software. Finally, over the next few years both organizations are likely to be involved in the general use of optical devices to store large bibliographic and nonbibliographic databases. 10 In surveying the functions of computing centers and libraries on campuses today, one is struck by the simultaneous occur- rence of similarities and dissimilarities. How many librarians, on a day-to-day ba- sis, worry about computer operating sys- tems such as UNIX or VMS or how to ac- quire and finance a supercomputer, or how to provide support to faculty whore- quire heavy-duty computing power to support vector processing? But then, how many computing professionals care about bibliographic instruction, authority con- trol of large bibliographic databases, or in- terpreting the structure of the literature of a discipline to a researcher? While more writers understandably emphasize simi- larities, it is also worthwhile to keep in mind that many important differences be- l-' tween libraries and computing centers do exist. To forget Jhis is to invite the risk of oversimplifying the complexity of bring- ing about closer and better relations. I continue to view the new information technologies as tools that librarians can use to collect, organize, store, retrieve, J. and disseminate information. The future roles I envision for librarians are not too dissimilar from the essential roles as they were articulated by Jesse Shera many years ago: Knowing books and men-knowledge of the materials and their sources, and empathy with ~ the patron and his needs-these are the twin pillars upon which library service rests. 11 Fundamentally, little has changed since Shera identified the twin pillars, because providing the right book to the reader when it is needed is still the sine qua non of librarianship. But the new tools avail- ~ able to us are adding new levels of service. In this new environment, Battin believes that librarians will be very much involved in teaching, consulting, planning, design- ing, and coordinating activities related to information functions. 12 What are some of the issues that a uni- versity will have to address as it shapes a campus infrastructure to facilitate and ~ support technology-reliant, information- rich services? In addition to gaining the all-important faculty support, it will have to deal with costs of technology, pricing of information services, intellectual property rights, information acquisition policies, and lastly, growing intra-organizational ~ dependencies. COSTS OF TECHNOLOGY · Technology is expensive-very expen- sive. It is not unusual to hear price tags ap- proaching $50 million (or more for large campuses) when planning a fully comput- erized campus linked together by a tele- communications network. And institu- tions will find that no matter how much they buy, there will always be more infor- mation technology available than they can afford. Choices will have to be made. And Libraries and Computing 293 in order to make intelligent choices a uni- versity community will have to reach a clear understanding of its mission and of the consequences its decisions will have on the quality of instruction and re- search.13 Moreover, the initial capitalization costs must be supplemented by additional high expenditures. Over the next few years university administrators will have to commit ever-growing budget allocations to maintain what is currently owned and to purchase succeeding generations of technologies. In a recent study, Martin Cummings found that it is not unusual for a research library to allocate more than $1 million annually in direct support of computer-related activities. 14 Such ex- penditures will become commonplace in the near future. Certainly, a university or college must be prepared to invest large sums to support its expanding technology environment. And establishing the eco- nomic base on which to build an informa- tion environment will not be a trivial issue for most campuses. PRICING OF INFORMATION SERVICES The manner in which institutions price information services could have a major impact on users' behavior and attitudes. The tradition of free library and informa- tion services, which have long been sup- ported through a system of indirect subsi- dies (i.e., through tuition and general fund support), has had a profound impact on users' attitudes toward libraries and on the way they actually use them. In con- trast, computing centers have grown up with a tradition of charging for many of their services. Raymond Neff hopes that "computing center usage for manipulat- ing information will become a no-charge item . . . following the library model. " 15 But for now, at least, libraries and comput- ing centers operate differently, and any changes in pricing policies must be thought about very carefully. I was never comfortable with the trend toward charging for database searching and interlibrary lending and borrowing, although I realize that no other choice may have been open to us. In the case of interli- 294 College & Research Libraries brary lending, the objective was to balance lending and borrowing among institu- tions and to keep the volume of traffic to manageable levels. In the case of database searching, our objectives have been to (a) limit the amount of subsidy a library must commit to the activity, and (b) keep traffic at levels staff could accommodate. But by initiating charging schemes, librarians also demonstrated that users were willing to pay for information and access to mate- rials. I would like to see direct charges to students and faculty avoided, but in light of the high cost of the new information technologies, I am not optimistic that this is possible. ''The existing copyright law repre- sents a barrier to our fully exploiting the new information tools.'' University administrators are well aware of the consequences of providing li- brary and computing center users with free goods. They assume, based on similar experiences, that there is little incentive for users to use library and information re- sources judiciously when services are free, but that once charges are introduced, patrons will become more selective. In view of prevailing attitudes toward infor- mation as an economic commodity, just preserving the tradition of free service for basic activities such as reference, circula- tion, reserves, and course-related com- puting may be a challenge. And given many users' apparent tolerance for paying for services, charging for specialized ones such as the creation of personalized data- bases or the formulation of multivariable literature searches is likely to become the norm. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS Information technologies that allow li- brarians and computing center profes- sionals the ability to store, manipulate, and disseminate bibliographic data or in- formation in full-text electronic formats July 1987 have rendered traditional copyright pro- tections virtually meaningless. The exist- ing copyright law represents a barrier to 1', our fully exploiting the new information tools, and, although an eventual accom- modation is likely, one should not under- estimate the difficulties we face before agreements with creators, producers, and consumers of information are achieved. Authors and publishers will not relin- quish easily what they believe to be their property and rights. But as professionals whose mission is to disseminate informa- tion, we must guard against agreements that could compromise our ability to do our job. Policy issues related to intellectual property must be resolved in such a way that the rights of both creators and users .. are protected. Librarians and their profes- I sional associations, therefore, should par- ticipate in the shaping of new copyright law. We must not take for granted that a new law would automatically preserve the rights that librarians view as central to their mission. · CAMPUS INFORMATION ACQUISITION POLICIES Many college and university libraries have developed collection development statements that profile existing strengths of collections as well as current intensity of collecting activity. The best-known tool for this purpose is the RLG conspectus. The conspectus was devised as a way to help libraries better manage their exten- sive collections and help collection devel- opment managers relate print collections to those of similar libraries. The informa- tion collected during a conspectus project is also used in the formulation of interin- stitutional collection development andre- source sharing projects. A great deal of progress has been made in our ability to manage print collections. But with electronic data playing ever- larger roles, an institution will want to de- velop a campuswide policy governing the acquisition, bibliographic access, and dis- semination of information in electronic formats. The absence of such a policy is likely to lead to excessive duplication of re- sources and inadequate knowledge and access to what is available. As a Columbia University database policy committee concluded, There is no centralization of information about databases in the University. Nor is there uni- formity of access to or support for these data- bases. This has led to duplication of effort in some cases and to barriers to the use of schol- arly information in others. 16 ..- ORGANIZATIONAL DEPENDENCIES Until recently, libraries and computing centers could operate virtually indepen- dently without fear of disturbing each other. The growing convergence and overlap of activities, however, has begun to blur the boundaries between the two units and in tum to create interunit depen- dencies, as simple illustrations make clear. If the computing center manages the campus telecommunications system and the computer on which the library's on- line catalog resides, the library is depen- dent on the performance of the computing center for the quality of its services. At the same time, the most visible and widely used product a computing center can dis- tribute to users through its telecommuni- cations network will be the library's cata- log. Both units, in other words, are associated with the quality of the product delivered and are therefore mutually de- pendent. The growing use of information technol- ogies by students and faculties will create a broad series of dependencies across the campuses, and not just between libraries and computing centers. It will be impor- tant that campus policy makers take steps to prevent units and individuals from building technological railroads of differ- ent gauges. On large campuses, it is not uncommon to find several distinct net- works not linked by an overarching net- work that allow users to work among the systems. Before a campuswide network can become a reality, though, a series of gateways between such disparate net- works must be created. This linking of sys- tems and users into an affordable, unify- ing network may become one of the most Libraries and Computing 295 difficult challenges facing campus offi- cials. DEVELOPING A CAMPUS STRATEGY The convergence of library and comput- ing center activities is an issue from which no sector of the campus community is ex- empt. Creating a coordinated campus net- work will require careful planning, hard choices, and a new set of underlying as- sumptions and policies governing the pro- vision of information services. Many campus constituencies will have a stake in the new network environment, but stakeholders will not view the new en- vironment with equal enthusiasm. The greatest challenge to campus planners is to create circumstances in which all parties feel they have benefited, a classic win-win outcome. We want all parties to feel they have gained in status and career enhance- ment. A friend and former mentor, at a time when we were trying to convince a group of skeptical faculty and librarians to adopt a course of action some opposed, counseled, "if all else fails, maybe a little bribery will do the trick." In more polite terms, what is needed is a set of incentives that can be strategically employed to cre- ate the necessary environment. .~~Technology is giving us the oppor- tunity to reshape the way scholarship is conducted." As for fostering constructive and endur- ing relations between libraries and com- puting centers, many actions can be taken almost immediately. For example, joint working groups could begin to wrestle with issues of common concern. The de- velopment and maintenance of databases; the acquistion, bibliographic control, and distribution of software; and the securing of literary property rights are but three ex- amples. In addition to closely examining such issues, these joint working groups could provide opportunities for profes- sionals with distinctly different organiza- 296 College & Research Libraries tiona! cultures to learn more about each other, which is crucial if these two groups . are to ever build bonds of mutual respect for their unique roles: Society has entered the information age, and the future of many professions and occupations is very uncertain, but infor- mation has been and continues to be our business. To paraphrase a recent Wall Street Journal ad, "Information is not power, where to find it is." Ours is a pro- fession with a future if only we will seize the opportunity. And, in my judgment, we can enhance our opportunities even further by joining forces with profession- als from the computing world. Technology is giving us the opportunity to reshape the way scholarship is con- ducted. In a technologically oriented envi- ronment, scholars will have ready access to a wide variety of discipline-oriented databases and the contents of library cata- logs plus the capabilities of reaching from a single terminal many databases and July 1987 compiling personal files of bibliographical information. They will soon be able to cre- ate personal stores of articles, reprints, electronic messages from colleagues, and numerical data sets-unique collections that will generate thinking and research in rich and productive ways. These exciting developments should stimulate anyone in the business of storing and providing in- formation to search for new avenues of co- operation and collaboration. ...._ The campus information environment envisioned by Van Horn is exciting. The manifest destiny projected by Neff is man- ifestly not 11 deranged. 11 Librarians and computing center professionals will find, if they take the opportunity, that they are natural allies. Both have special and com- plementary skills that are in short supply. Working together, they should become a powerful influence in the reshaping of re- search and scholarship in higher educa- tion. REFERENCES 1. Pat Molholt, "On Converging Paths: The Computing Center and the Library," The Journal of Aca- demic Librarianship 11:284-88 (Nov. 1985). 2. See reference to Van Hom in M. Mitchell Waldrop, "Personal Computers on Campus," Science 228:438 (Apr. 26, 1985). 3. Raymond K. Neff, "Merging Libraries and Computer Centers: Manifest Destiny or Manifestly Deranged," EDUCOM Bulletin 20:8-12, 16 (Winter 1985). 4. Judith Axler Turner, "Campus Libraries Seen Threatened by Other Sources of Information," The Chronicle of Higher Education (Dec. 4, 1985), p.30-31. 5. Patricia Battin, "Crossing the Border: Librarianship in the Information Age," The Harvard Librar- ian 19:9 (Sept. 1985). 6. For a view from Carnegie-Mellon see Thomas Michalak, "Libraries and the Information Revolu- tion," CMU Libraries' News Resources, no.5 (Mar. 1986) (special issue). 7. James C. Emery, "Issues in Building an Information Technology Strategy," EDUCOM Bulletin 19:8 (Fall1984). 8. Arthur M. McAnally and Robert B. Downs, "The Changing Role of Directors of University Li- braries," College & Research Libraries 34:103-25 (Mar. 1973). 9. Timothy C. Weiskel, "Libraries as Life-Systems: Information, Entropy, and Coevolution on Cam- pus," College & Research Libraries 47:554 (Nov. 1986). 10. Michalak, "Libraries and the Information Revolution." 11. Jesse H. Shera, Introduction to Library Science (Littleton, Colo: Libraries Unlimited, 1976) p.64. 12. Battin, "Crossing the Border," p.10. 13. See Battin for further discussion of these points. 14. Martin H. Cummings, "The Impact of New Technologies on Library Services," Proceedings of the 5th Annual Meeting of the Society for Scholarly Publishing. 15. Neff, "Merging Libraries and Computer Centers," p.9. 16. Columbia University, Final Report of the Columbia University Database Policy Committee (New York: Columbia University, 1985), p.1.