Jim Neal's Keynote Address at the VALE Annual Meeing

Jim Neal, the Vice President of Information Services and University Librarian at Columbia University was the keynote speaker. The title of his talk was “The Imperfect Storm: Propsects for Systemic Change Across Academic Libraries.”

I will say without reservation, it was the best VALE Keynote address since the annual conference commenced. I took notes to prevent my mind from wandering. My analysis will not be exhaustive. I will focus on the statements that impressed me the most.

There are changing roles in the library with a corresponding shifting vision. There are redundant and inefficient library operations and old work flows that need to be changed. Is the traditional reference desk really needed? [my thought]. This is an aging and ineffective service paradigm. There is constant change and new organizational models need to be built. We must respond to smaller budgets and prepare for accountability.

He mentioned that alumni and donors are largely ignored. My experience has been that very few alumni use the NJIT Library. Perhaps if we reached out to them, they would use our services and make donations specifically to support library resources.

A last copy print repository network is needed as libraries should be less reliant on printed books. He proposed a national public digital library with a dot lib domain that would create access to digital collections. There should be a national strategy for a print depository program.

He also briefly discussed:

• The creation of a library PAC (political action committee)
• 3 electronic books were purchased for every print book this Christmas season
• Columbia has 2 FTE librarians involved with assessment
• Columbia and Cornell are involved in a collaborative agreement called 2CUL
• The research libraries of NYPL will allow Columbia and NYU graduate students to check books out of the library

One remark that he made that I enjoyed was “Information Literacy – Stop the Madness!” I do feel that many librarians are coming on too strong with information literacy. It is important, but is only a small part of the academic curriculum.  I certainly don't think that Jim is "anti-information literacy."  I just interpret him as thinking similiar to me that librarians should tone it down somwhat.  People can feel threatened when we are in their faces so to speak.

Jim really covered a lot of ground in a small amount of time.  As of Monday January 10th, his powerpoint was not on the VALE site.  I would like to include it here.

Photos from the conference were taken by Ray Schwartz

The Powerpoint of Jim Neal's talk can be found at http://www.valenj.org/annual-conference/2011/keynote-speaker (entered by Bruce on January 18)