The academic library needs to ensure that its facilities and services are aligned to the changing needs of the community it serves; otherwise it risks becoming irrelevant or even obsolete. To avoid this happening, libraries must marry themselves to their parent institution's mission and culture; establish and maintain partnerships with their campus colleagues; and put students at the centre of everything they do. The library also needs to play its part in engaging students by becoming a hub not just for storage and study but also for social interaction and a welcoming place of retreat. Librarians will have to take risks, bypass bureaucratic procedures where necessary, and indeed be prepared to accept some failure in order to press forward and set new standards. To achieve these goals, it is essential to have a loyal, committed and enthusiastic library staff.
This book, Edited by Jacob Hill (Assistant Professor and Reference and Instruction Librarian at Elmhurst College) and Susan Swords Steffen (Director of the Library at Elmhurst College) addresses these issues and more. It draws together contributions from nine libraries in the USA which won the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Excellence in Academic Libraries Award. Contributors range from library heads to liaison librarians to interns, thus giving viewpoints from the varying perspective of their roles and experience.
The tone of the book is set in the foreword when Dr Larry Hardesty (ACRL President, 1999-2000, and initiator of the Award) advises that “the effort to maintain excellence must be constant.” The nine chapters are bookended by a preface in which the editors give a summary of the key points in each library's application for the Award as well as highlights from their respective chapter; and an afterword which pulls together common themes across the libraries.
In Chapter 9, Janet R. Cottrell (Director of Academic Resources and the Library at Champlain) makes the point that:
[…] in reading narratives from award-winning libraries, it is easy to believe that these libraries had advantages that the rest of us lack: financial resources, staffing, time, a history of support.
She notes that in her case she did not and she doubts it was any different in any of the other libraries. Certainly what emerges from the book is a sense of determination and purpose to make the changes that were deemed necessary. What is particularly useful in some of the accounts is the honesty of the contributors acknowledging where they did not do something well and recommending how, with the benefit of hindsight, they could have done it differently.
For those readers with special collections departments in their libraries, it is interesting to read the comments in Chapter 4 by Carla B. Tracy (Library Director at the Thomas Tredway Library at Augustana College). She argues that collections of rare books and manuscripts will never be removed from libraries and that in digitized form they cannot be fully appreciated. As such they “are increasingly used as student and faculty laboratories.” The message is clear: our rare books and manuscripts set us apart and earn their keep in our libraries. Their intrinsic value is understood by our students and staff alike.
This book offers an honest and useful account of how academic libraries may need to reinvent themselves to ensure they continue to offer value. Ways of creating and maintaining excellent libraries are explored. Some of the advice offered and points made may already be familiar but there are little gems of wisdom scattered through the text, some of which are highlighted in this review. It is these, which will particularly engage the reader and which set the book apart.
