ACRL's Top Ten, and Aggie Librarian's reaction.

from ALA's web pages:

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The ACRL Research Committee developed the top ten assumptions after surveying member leaders and conducting a literature review. A panel representing community and liberal arts colleges, research university libraries, as well as an observer of the higher education environment reacted and commented upon the assumptions at the ACRL National Conference.

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So shall I, here, presently.

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“These assumptions underscore the dominant roles that technology and consumer expectations are increasingly playing in libraries,” said Pamela Snelson, president, ACRL and college librarian at Franklin and Marshall College. “The underlying trends offer new opportunities for academic libraries and librarians to embrace the future.”

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What about opportunities to ENGAGE and SHAPE the FUTURE....?

Anyway, on to the top ten list...

1. There will be an increased emphasis on digitizing collections, preserving digital archives, and improving methods of data storage and retrieval.

...all without much thought given to the consequences of doing so or the propriety of doing so for long term preservation issues, which remain problematic as ever.

2. The skill set for librarians will continue to evolve in response to the needs and expectations of the changing populations (student and faculty) that they serve.

Translation: get high tech, or get the hell out, you book nerds and sentimental reading advocates. Heaven forbid you forget the "customer is always right" and you darn well better obey the unquestioned law of "give 'em what they want".

3. Students and faculty will increasingly demand faster and greater access to services.

And will resent the hell out of anyone who tells them to slow it down and be a bit more reflective and contemplative and maybe engage in some meaningful dialogue.

4. Debates about intellectual property will become increasingly common in higher education.

And will get increasingly ridiculous as Freemarket Fundamentalists continue to try, in the words of the late Bill Hicks, to "stick a fucking dollar sign in front of everything on the goddamn planet."

5. The demand for technology related services will grow and require additional funding.

Perhaps to the point of starving, crowding out low-tech resources, including the human kind, in a mad scramble for an ever smaller slice of funding pie..?

6. Higher education will increasingly view the institution as a business.

Who increasingly pays the piper calls the tune I guess. I for one do NOT view this as a good thing; and moreover this is not a future trend, it's right here, right now. Remember that until the major land-grant institutions, like my Alma Mater, a University education was the exclusive purview of the wealthy and well-to-do upper middle class. History Lesson, Aggies--that's why we call 'em T-sips!! "State" schools have gone from "State funded" to "State supported" to "State-repressed", some would say. Their tuition certainly keeps spiraling upwards and out of the hands of the ordinary citizens of merely ordinary means they were created to serve in the first place.

7. Students will increasingly view themselves as customers and consumers, expecting high quality facilities and services.

You get what you pay for...either collectively or as an individual. Caveat Emptor.

8. Distance learning will be an increasingly common option in higher education and will co-exist but not threaten the traditional bricks-and-mortar model.

At least the digital barbarians have scaled back their ambitions a tad, perhaps. Though part of me says "traditional face-to-face instruction for the wealthy, let the rabble eat the pixels and bytes of online education", which will be the only "education" we permit them by ratcheting up their weekly workloads just to make ends meet.

9. Free, public access to information stemming from publicly funded research will continue to grow.

Well, I sure hope so, at any rate, though the trend has been to privatize this kind of crap...socialize risk, privatize gain are the operant ideologies at work here...I'd love to see that trend reversed, I just don't see any evidence to bolster that expectation beyond pure hope.


10. Privacy will continue to be an important issue in librarianship.



You bet it will. Privacy will continue to be an important issue in all facets of human life, but especially in the library context, as it goes so much to the root of our timeless library ethics.
Good luck to all RML's out there who keep passively resisting and fighting the good fight on this one.