A summary of group discussions which resulted from the drafting of a national action plan aimed at strengthening and advancing area librarianship.  Group discussions examined four key areas: education and preparation of area librarians, continuing education and professional development, the effective application of electronic and network technologies, and the feasibility of partnerships and cooperative initiatives.  From these discussions, next steps are outlined to continue drafting an action plan

Schmidt, Nancy J.

English

IUScholarWorks

Reports on Action Plans 
 
The second day of the conference focused on discussing action plans related to the topics 
discussed on the first day of the conference. Jim Neal introduced the discussion with remarks as 
follows:  
Some urgency and defensiveness in terms of the future of area librarianship are 
symptomatic of economic budget challenges we are facing in our universities. Under times of 
stress and economic duress, ugly things sometimes come to the fore, but also opportunities 
present themselves, and that is what we are embracing. In this current crisis there are options to 
create a golden age of area librarianship, which I believe many library directors around the 
country think is appropriate, relevant, and necessary. We have developed over many years what 
is clearly one of the world's richest sets of research collections. In many cases, the best 
collections in a particular language or about a particular geographic area are in the United States 
rather than in that country or geographic area itself.  
With the rapidly expanding volume and diversity of research information which is being 
produced on a worldwide basis and the sustained extraordinary and increasing cost of that 
information, we have experienced and face a future of erosion in our collective abilities to 
develop collections of research breadth and depth. What we’ve been talking about here is the 
need to re-think our collection building and resource access strategies and forge more rigorous 
coordination across our universities. We must coordinate our applications of technology and seek 
partnerships to define a creative approach to cooperation. Our efforts in this task will be 
influenced by several critical assumptions:  
 
1. Print-base collections will remain dominant, at least over the next decade,  particularly 
for most of the world areas in which we are involved.  
2. Price increases for scholarly information will continue to grow significantly above 
standard inflation rates.  
3. Print collection investment through preservation programs will remain essential.  
4. Digital applications will become more relevant and important.  
5. More resources will be allocated to electronic information and access services, but this 
will vary significantly by discipline and by world area.  
6. Virtuality will become more relevant.  
 
There is an ongoing need for investment in local collection development, because we 
cannot lend to or share with other libraries what we have not identified, acquired, and preserved. 
I call this the “virtuoso” library, and you are the virtuosos in that library environment. There will 
also be a rapid growth in resource-sharing activity requiring new levels of commitment and 
capability to identify the availability of and to deliver documents. I call this the “virtuous” 
library. Virtuality demands virtuosity and virtuousness. Collection development decisions will 
continue to be driven by institutional priorities and faculty research interests. This blocks in 
some ways our ability to cooperate, but we need to recognize that our vitality, our success, our 
survival is very much influenced by our ability to support the needs of our local programs and 
the needs of our own faculty and students. We will need to become more focused on the 
coordination of our collective programs. Future planning and success will depend on our ability 
to address three issues:  
 
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1. Will campus academic dynamics permit planned rather than ad hoc assignment of 
research collection responsibilities across our libraries? Can we, in fact, create a planned 
approach to coordinated collection development?  
2. Can we invest at institutional and cooperative levels in technology and staff support 
needed to permit identification and easy movement of materials across and between  our 
libraries? If we do not make investments in technology and staff infrastructure,  all 
cooperation becomes moot.  
3. Can intellectual property right and copyright laws and interpretations be shaped to permit 
the free flow of information needed by faculty and students across universities? We are 
going to confront later this summer, I believe, a systematic erosion in the fair  use 
capabilities that were built into the 1976 copyright legislation. We, as a library 
community, are not well-prepared to respond to these challenges. I think it will be 
couched in the electronic information rhetoric, but ultimately it will undermine our ability 
to move materials and to support the type of cooperative efforts that we are talking about.  
 
As background for the discussion of action plans, Mary Krutulis and Jim Neal then  
provided a brief recap of the discussions held on the first day of the conference.  They also stated 
basic assumptions drawn from the first day's discussions, as background for developing action 
plans:  
 
1. Area studies programs and international research will continue to be priorities at  
American universities.  
2. Educational programs and research will continue to require access to international 
resources.  
3. Area expertise and experience will continue to be essential for collection development, 
organization, and servicing of area studies resources.  
 
The ability of area librarians to successfully support high quality teaching and research needs  
 will depend on:  
 
a. an adequate stream of well-prepared new professionals,  
b. the continuing development of current staff,  
c. the effective application of electronic and network technologies,  
d. creative approaches to cooperation and partnerships,  
e. the identification of new funding sources.  
 
Conference participants were divided into four groups to develop action plans for:  
 
1. education/preparation for area librarianship,  
2. continuing education/professional development,  
3. effective application of electronic and network technologies, and  
4. cooperation/partnerships. The four groups were asked to present actions and strategies 
that: 1) address area librarian-specific issues, not general library issues, 2) are 
measurable, 3) assign responsibility, and 4) assign priority on achievability and impact.  
 
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Education/Preparation of Area Librarians  
It is assumed that area studies will provide the primary source of recruitment for area 
librarians and that library schools will not be a primary source of recruitment.  It is further 
assumed that the visibility of area studies on campuses needs to be increased.  
A labor market survey, more demographic data, and information on the career paths of area 
librarians need to be collected to expand the survey data collected by Indiana University.  ARL 
could coordinate this.  
 
1. A list of basic skills and competencies of area librarians needs to be compiled.  This can 
be done by area librarians' organizations.  
2. Existing dual degree programs and courses on area librarianship need to be investigated 
in detail, in order to determine how to expand them by electronic means.  
3. More internships are needed for students.  The LC fellows program might be expanded; 
foundations could be approached to support internships.  
4. Liaison between area studies associations and library schools is needed.  A speakers' 
bureau of area librarians could be established.  
5. University libraries need to develop outreach programs for area studies.  
6. A national conference on the education of area librarians with wide participation could be 
held by ARL or ACRL.  
7. Area studies associations could provide their own education programs.  
8. A listserve could be developed to communicate with prospective area studies librarians.  
9. An ALISE program on area librarianship could be developed.  
 
Continuing Education/Professional Development  
1. Language skills development could be provided by intensive summer language programs.  
2. Foreign travel support should be provided and international exchanges promoted.  
3. Summer workshops could be held which focus on new technologies.  Successful 
workshops should be used as models and tailored to the needs of area librarians.  
4. Collaborative collection development institutes that include multiple areas could be held 
by ALA/CMDS and library schools.  
5. Released time is needed to attend courses and sabbatical leaves are needed to develop 
skills. These can be provided locally.  
6. Regional library organizations can provide senior fellow programs with an area studies 
focus.  
7. Grants could be provided for area librarians from smaller institutions to visit larger 
institutions. These might be provided by Title VI institutions.  
8. Special issues of national journals could focus on area librarianship.  
 
Effective Application of Electronic and Network Technologies  
1. Area based information fairs should be held at area studies meetings.  
2. Criteria for evaluating electronic resources in area studies should be developed.  Generic 
criteria can be used and specifically adapted to area studies resources.  
3. Technology-based workshops should be held in countries overseas.  USIA and UNESCO 
are possible sources of support.  
4. Electronically distributed descriptions of uncataloged resources should be developed.  
5. Area librarians should make an inventory of available area studies electronic resources 
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and distribute it nationally.  
6. User friendly area studies home pages should be developed.  Sharing home pages should 
be encouraged.  
7. Digitization should be used as a preservation tool.  
8. A status report on the development of Roman scripts for OCLC and RLIN is needed.  
9. Status reports on the use of technologies in foreign countries are needed. Area librarians' 
associations can compile them.  
10. There is a need to preserve electronic materials.  
 
Cooperation/Partnerships  
1. An assessment of the three ARL demonstration projects on German, Japanese and Latin 
American materials, their cost, and benefits should be made.  
2. A white paper is needed on cooperative collection development projects.  Successful 
projects should be widely publicized and funding sources made aware of the importance 
of cooperative collection development.  
3. The Center for Research Libraries should catalog all of their collections. The area studies 
microform projects can encourage this.  
4. Electronic resources should be shared through natural alliances.  
5. Cooperative projects should be developed that focus on specific kinds of resources such 
as government documents.  
 
Next Steps  
Following the presentation of the four subject specific action plans by the facilitator for each 
discussion group, Jim Neal summarized the next steps for the area librarianship project: 
  
1. Indiana University needs to refine the data collected for the project, publish it, and 
publicize it by various means including discussion in focus groups with faculty.  
2. There is need for interview data with area directors and area librarians to supplement the 
data collected by Indiana University.  
3. Data collected in the project should be used to redefine the positions of area specialists. 
This redefinition should be brought to the attention of library administrators.  The 
discussion of the redefinition of area specialists' positions should be on a listserve.  
Someone needs to be found to moderate the listserve.  
4. The primary responsibility for disseminating information from the conference lies with 
area librarians, not library administrators, through communication with their area 
librarian associations and locally in their institutions. Indiana will send information on 
the conference by e-mail to participants that can be communicated to appropriate 
constituencies.  
5. A structure is needed for continuing communication among conference participants. Who 
will be responsible for this?  
6. There needs to be future discussion of area studies librarianship within contemporary 
library environments.  
7. There needs to be a meeting of the officers of area librarian organizations to discuss 
common issues.   
 


Reports on Action Plans

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Reports on Action Plans

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