New Series: Librarians Investing Ahead
How modern librarians are tackling the obstacles they face head-on. A new blog series in partnership with Gold Leaf.
It is no secret that universities across the world are experiencing financially challenging times. A powerful mixture of adverse circumstances – the outbreak of wars in Europe and the Middle East, the rise of far right politicians who have scant regard for tertiary education, threats to world trade caused by tariffs, and, in the West, falling birthrates and the unwillingness of young people to run up huge debts to pay for degrees that may not result in the kind of employment they hope for – have combined to undermine the prestige and solvency of many universities.
Institutions in the developing world continue to battle the same inequities they have been addressing for decades: hugely insufficient funding (even by present-day Western standards), talented would-be students hamstrung by poverty; and a dependence on donations that can be fickle and always dangerous to rely on. Sometimes the threats are existential – weaker institutions are being shut down or amalgamating with others in order to survive.
The situation of academic libraries directly mirrors that of the institutions they serve. When funds are low, investment in the library necessarily drops – and that includes investment in staff and buildings, as well as in teaching, learning and research materials. However, librarians at all types of institution are proving themselves resourceful, imaginative and resilient as they embrace the challenges of their rapidly-changing environment.
These challenges are not only caused by politics, demographics and economic uncertainty, but also by seismic shifts in the ways in which teaching, learning and research are conducted, resulting in demand for different kinds of resource at a time when every dollar of the library resources budget has to be accounted for and spent to maximum effect. The role of the librarian is changing, too: modern librarians often assist in teaching in both formal and informal situations – some even have teaching qualifications; they provide essential support for researchers hit by the double whammy of bewildering open access choices and the now-established requirement to publish research data; and at many universities, they are the agent of choice for assessing how the university can best deploy the opportunities offered by artificial intelligence and, at the same time, ward off the potential damage it may cause.
There is just one way in which almost all librarians fail: they are not good at singing their own praises. This is partly from the natural modesty that comes with the perennial role of supporting others, but even more of the paradoxical fact that, as Steve Sharp pointed out in a recent De Gruyter Brill webinar: When librarians are doing their job properly, they tend to be invisible.
Unfortunately, this has sometimes led the good and the great in university hierarchies significantly to undervalue the library’s contribution. This new series of De Gruyter Brill blog posts for and about librarians is therefore timely. We are going to interview librarians across the globe who are addressing adversity with aplomb and making often shrinking resources go further than anyone would have thought possible. We invite you to celebrate their achievements and perhaps gain some tips along the way. Welcome to Librarians Investing Ahead.
Watch this space for part one, an interview with Hasina Afroz, University Librarian at BRAC University in Bangladesh, launching June 2nd, 2025!
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[Title Image by Eoneren/Getty Images]