| SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION WEB SITE - UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON |
| POLICY : POLITICS, POWER AND PEOPLE. |
Frederick J. Friend, Director Scholarly Communication, University College London
Collection management policy contains the same basic ingredients as policy in any other field of human endeavour. It is political, in a broad sense, in that collection management policy is driven by the strategic priorities of the organisation. Inevitably political questions bring into play power games and structures. Fortunately or unfortunately power is wielded by people, and policy cannot be divorced from the opinions and ambitions of the individuals who determine and implement policy. This heady mix of politics, power and people may seem far removed from the cloistered calm which is the public perception of a librarian's life, but this chapter will reveal the struggles from which policy emerges like a rugby ball emerging from the scrum.
The Oxford English Dictionary has as its principal definition of policy: "a course of action adopted and pursued by a government, party, ruler, statesman, etc." A secondary definition implies that such actions should be prudent or wise, and this is an aspect of collection management policy which will be considered later in this chapter. The origin of the word "policy" indicates a link with citizenship, and this is also a thought to be borne in mind as we consider some actual collection policies that result from the political process. The OED definition points to a strong political element in policy - political in a broad sense, in that all libraries are part of a political structure of some kind. When I began my career, still a teenager, in a local public library, I remember that the members of the town council were pointed out to me as users of the library to whom particular attention should be given. From that experience I learned that libraries are as involved in politics as any other public service. When I was studying at the School of Librarianship at University College London, lectures on library management were given by Joseph Scott, Librarian at UCL at the time, and he told the ambitious young librarians in front of him (I was later to succeed Scott as Librarian of UCL) about the workings of the Library Committee. Again a message that libraries are part of a political system and that librarians cannot avoid politics.
In order to understand how the collection management policy of any library is shaped, therefore, we have to understand the political structure of the organisation of which the library is a part. Libraries belong either to public or to private organisations, and the shape of the library collections will be determined by the "raison d'etre"of the organisation, whether that is to serve the public good or to make profit. The collections policy of a "for-profit" library will probably be linked very closely to specific programmes, such as the development of new drugs by a pharmaceutical company. By contrast, a "not-for-profit" library may collect more generally and more widely, although still in specific subject areas. The same factor will come into play in shaping the aspect of collection management which is concerned with long-term retention or storage of books or journals or databases. The "for-profit" library may or may not have collections in historical depth, but it will be current issues which will determine that decision. If a company needs a historical collection for its current research programme, the company library will maintain such a collection. "Not-for-profit" libraries also may or may not maintain historical collections, but the decision for those libraries is less likely to be determined by current issues than by an awareness of posterity. The public good motivation will extend beyond a wish to satisfy the public good for the present generation. However, generalizations are easy to make and easy to refute, so the distinction between the collection management policies of public and private libraries should not be seen as black and white, but as various shades of grey.
The description of many organizations as acting for the "public good" also needs to be used cautiously. Although in the public sector, university libraries have often been criticised for collecting books and journals in which a handful of specialists may be interested but which can scarcely be described as being of public interest. The word "policy" often conveys the sense of "public policy" and university libraries are increasingly urged to consider the needs of citizens whose taxes pay for the collections but who may find that they are denied access to even the small number of books and journals which will meet their needs. Even those libraries which have "public" in their name cannot be complacent in the face of the new emphasis upon accountability to public policy. Local authority libraries have often failed the needs of their local population by purchasing books which are too populist or generalist, or just one unrepresentative textbook in a huge subject area. Defining the needs of the user population is a challenge for any collections manager, and there is no evidence that libraries in the public sector have been any more successful than those in the private sector. The mission of a public library may be to serve the public, and its staff may do their best to fulfil that mission through a collections management policy, but what criteria can be used to judge their success? Crude usage figures may hide tremendous success in one aspect of collections management, and tremendous failure in another. More sophisticated benchmarking tools are available, but sophisticated tools are often used to produce crude statistics. Another effect of the influence of politics upon libraries is the use of sound-bites of statistics to demonstrate success. One statistic which serves the political purpose of the organization may be publicised, even if it is unrepresentative. Librarians are as guilty of that as their political masters, as many library annual reports will illustrate.
The selective use of statistics also illustrates the political choices a collections manager has to make between short-term impact and long-term success or failure. Most political decisions are short-term in nature, whereas librarians often wish to take a long-term view. An example would be a decision by a university to cease all teaching and research in a particular subject area, when the library director may be reluctant to dispose of the collection in that subject area in case there is residual interest in the collection from library users. The short-term priority of the university authorities will be to save money and space by disposing of unwanted collections, but the library director may argue on long-term grounds that any revival of interest in the subject concerned will make it difficult to build up again a collection rashly discarded. On the other hand the acquisitive instinct most librarians possess has at times created collections which appear distorted by comparison with the subject profile of the organization they claim to serve. Librarians have been over-optimistic about the use historical collections will receive, and there are times when taking the long-term view has been a long-term bad decision. Funding authorities also tend to look upon library collections as commodities, to be bought or sold, moved "en bloc" or retained as an expression of another commodity, the floor area the collections occupy. In reaction to this policy-maker's perspective, librarians and academics have stressed the cultural value of library collections, a value which cannot be quantified. Both views may be too extreme, but even if the end-result is a compromise, attributing either financial or cultural value to library collections is a policy issue.
For any type of library, the collections management policy should begin with the organisation's mission statement and strategic plan. A library director cannot hope to convince those who hold the purse-strings of the value of the library if the library is heading in a different direction to the rest of the organization. As the words used in mission statements and strategic plans are often general in nature, the collections manager needs to understand the politics behind the words and to read between the lines of the public documents. An example might be the balance between teaching and research in a university. The public documents might claim that a university aims to be pre-eminent in both teaching and research, but in order to translate that into library purchasing for teaching or research, the collections manager needs to understand whether the aim for pre-eminence in both areas is an aspiration or a reality. The answer may well vary from one subject area to another, so the closer the collections manager is to the political situation in each subject area, the more effective the collections policy is likely to be. In a large organization this "ears-to-the-ground" factor cannot be realised by one person alone, and one of the most important contributions made by subject librarians is intelligence about the political situation in the departments with which they liaise. Does Department X have any hope of expanding into this new research area? A good subject librarian will know the answer and feed such vital information into the library collections management policy. Subject librarians are also of political importance in representing the library in academic departments. An example is the value of subject librarians in explaining the reason for journal cancellations, for which the library may be blamed if the facts of price rises and reduced funding are not made known. Academic staff tend to believe "their librarian" when they do not believe the same explanation from the library director.
The modern emphasis upon accountability has made attention to such public relations issues much more important. Perhaps there never was a time when librarians could buy what they wanted and discard what they wanted with impunity, but certainly that time is not now! The politics of collection management policy has to include accountability. Collection managers have to be ready to explain why they have devoted so much money to subject x, and why they have allowed the journals collection in subject y to deteriorate. This accountability will have to happen at a local level and increasingly has to happen at a regional or national level. In a city such as London, for example, where there are several large collections covering the same subject within 30 minutes' travelling distance, an important political question is the justification for duplication, and if the justification is high potential use of collections, why are libraries perceived to be unwelcoming to visitors? Perceptions are as important as facts in accountability. The political aspect of collection management policy is therefore a thread which should run right through such policies, from the formation of policy to the implementation of policy.
Collections eat up money, large amounts of money. Librarians may think, rightly or wrongly, that they do not have sufficient funds to meet the needs of their users, but to the owner of a small business libraries look like large businesses. Money brings power, and library budgets give the ability to express power. Some library directors are powerful political figures within their organizations, the library being one of the largest cost-centres. But that power attracts rivals. One of the traditional rivalries in many libraries is between the library director and the library committee, and this rivalry is often expressed as influence over collection management policy. The rivalry may be friendly but no less real for that. A powerful library committee will insist that collection management decisions are its responsibility, not the library director's responsibility and certainly not the collection manager's responsibility. The response of the library director or the collections manager may be to retain power through the complexity of many purchasing decisions, as it is often difficult for a committee with a full agenda to absorb the detail necessary to make effective decisions. It is not unknown for a library director to hide a controversial purchase within a general fund where the purchase will not be obvious. It is not unknown for a library committee to take so much interest in the detail of purchasing policy that it loses sight of the overall strategy which should be its main concern. Hopefully the library director will work with the committee rather than against it, but control over collections policy is an issue which can bring out the worst as well as best in those involved.
Much the same can be said about another expression of power in collection management, and that is the placing of large orders for books, journals or datasets. Libraries have budgets which look attractive to booksellers, subscription agents and other sellers of information. Major purchasing decisions may be made through a process rather like an old-fashioned dance, a courtship between supplier and librarian. The librarian responsible for purchasing indicates that (s)he has to decide where a large order is to be placed: (s)he is looking for a partner to dance with. The sales-people become suitors, inviting the purchaser to dance with them. The purchaser dances with various suitors, discovering more about each one, until the choice of a partner is made. There is nothing improper about this process, and indeed it is essential that the librarian knows well the people and organizations with which (s)he is to do business, but there is an element of power-play in the process. The sense of power is even stronger in the case of a purchase by a consortium, where a very large sum of money may be available for a purchase and where a very large number of libraries may be involved. Suppliers of information are often also in a powerful position, as librarians world-wide have been discovering when negotiating with the multi-national companies that control academic journal publication. The collections manager may be in a weak negotiating position when such a commercial organisation controls journal titles which are essential to teaching and research. And such companies, having shareholders to answer to, do not hesitate to use their powerful position to make as much profit as they can.
More sinister is the danger that a handful of commercial companies will control access to information throughout the world. Certainly some companies have seen the opportunity for even higher profits in the acquisition of companies at other points in the information chain. There are clear dangers for users if one company controls both a digital network and the content available through that network. Would the traditional safeguards against monopolies protect the consumer against unfair price rises imposed by such a company? The rush of commercial interests to enter developments like digital television indicates that they see the potential for profit, but who will look after the interests of the seeker of information? The power of such commercial interests over content derives from intellectual property rights. For this reason commercial companies have been making strenuous efforts to influence national and international copyright legislation. Protecting the interests of users of information in such debates have been librarians, consumer organizations, and organizations representing the disadvantaged in society. Information brings money and power, and a struggle between commercial and public good interests is taking place for the control of information.
In the academic world that struggle is being expressed through moves to change the relationship between authors and publishers. Responses by librarians to price rises imposed by publishers on subscriptions to academic journals have been varied and - it has to be said - largely ineffective. The key to price is power, and at present publishers have the power of copyright to enable them to charge high prices for journals. It will only be as the agencies which fund academic research use their power to insist upon publication in the public domain that the power of commercial interests will be controlled. Control of unfair commercial exploitation is also linked to control of monopolies, and the monopoly publishers presently hold in the copyright of a particular work has enabled them to charge high prices. Using the flexibility of electronic publication to enable the publication of research in more than one format - for example in an early version on a preprint server and a later version in a commercial journal - will enable the academic community to break the monopolistic power that copyright gives to commercial interests. The academic community has always accepted reasonable profit levels, but the profit levels enjoyed by some publishers on the back of academic research have been scandalous.
In this area the word "policy" also takes on its common meaning of "public policy". Power over the cost of information and access to information are matters of public policy. It would be unrealistic to expect all information to be in the public domain. Commercial companies do add value to information. But the relationship between the value added and the price charged to the user of information is a matter of public policy. The second half of the twentieth century was a period in which market forces dominated the price of information and access to information. Information flowed to those who could afford to pay. An important question for policy-makers in the twenty-first century will be the extent to which market forces in information are to be restrained in the interests of the public good. The social need to develop learning opportunities for the disadvantaged in society and for people of all age-groups can only be met if access to information is easy and affordable. This is an issue which will have to be addressed by politicians in many countries in the world but primarily in those countries which are the major producers of published information. Expressed plainly, this is an issue of power: who will control the price of information and access to information?
This aspect of public policy will have a profound effect upon collection management. In academic libraries the major problem facing collection managers is the cost of buying books and journals. At times this is a problem of under-funding of libraries, but many libraries have been successful in increasing their income only to find that they are purchasing fewer rather than more books and journals. Securing higher funding for libraries has sometimes been like pouring petrol on the fire of price rises. Only shareholders in publishing companies have benefited. What really matters to collection managers is not how much money is available but what you can buy for whatever money is available. Collection managers are therefore in a similar position to pensioners in needing low inflation to make best use of their income! Low inflation in academic journal prices in particular will have a profound effect upon collection development, not only in stopping the endless round of cancellations but also in enabling more books and other information materials to be purchased. Such low inflation in the cost of information will only come about as power in the information world is shared more fairly between commercial and public interests.
Policy is determined by people. Everywhere in the information world there are people whose collective decisions determine how effective libraries are in meeting the needs of seekers of information. The motives of individuals, their strengths and weaknesses, their prejudices and their hopes all influence the quality of library collections. It might be argued that the days are past when one individual could shape a library as some great women and men have done in the past, but even in an era of collective management individual contributions make a difference. The organisational structures within which an individual works can prevent good work from bearing fruit or they can enable good work to flourish, but those structures themselves are designed and operated by people.
A collections manager may be the library director or may be somebody responsible to the library director. In the former case, the effectiveness of the library director as collections manager will depend not only on personal qualities but on the priority given to collection development within a wide range of duties. One policy decision in that situation will be that of the way the individual's time is allocated. In most large libraries, however, the library director is unlikely to play much of an active part in collection management. As a library director I was often contacted by booksellers with a view to persuading me to buy this or that book, and I had to explain that apart from very expensive purchases I did not become involved in purchasing decisions. In a large organization collections management should be a job in its own right, as it involves a level of attention to detail which a library director is unable to give. Indeed even somebody whose only role is as collections manager will need other eyes and ears to watch and listen for developments both within and without the institution. This is a vital role for subject librarians. A good collections manager should be listening to as many people as possible before formulating recommendations to go to the library director and library committee. These recommendations should be linked to the organisation's and the library's strategic plans. Collections management is a policy. It has implications for other policy areas. The person responsible for collections management, therefore, has to have be sensitive to strategic issues.
A collections manager also has to have her or his feet firmly on the ground! This is a very practical role, having to do with what is possible as well as what is desirable from a strategic perspective. It is my (painful) experience that unrealistic policies are soon shot down in flames by members of library committees who may not be librarians but who can sense when a librarian's ambitions are bigger than the budget! Equally a librarian can be too cautious. Proposing a visionary but realistic collections policy puts to the test a librarian's personal as well as professional qualities. As a young librarian I often felt that I was a "jack-of-all-trades", and probably "master-of none". Librarians are expected to have enough knowledge of all academic disciplines to understand the needs of users, to be sufficiently competent at keeping accounts to balance a budget, to be good enough managers to ensure that library services run smoothly, and above all to be helpful and polite to users. Of course librarians are also human, and such a combination of virtues is rare. The major problem many librarians face today in performing their duties is pressure of work, and collection managers are no exception. There always seems to be another meeting looming for which complex cost/benefit calculations have to be made, or a policy paper has to be written. There are always trade representatives knocking on the door or telephoning, interrupting the thought-processes which lead to the formation of policy. A librarian may go to a committee meeting wondering, "Have I got the figures right?", not because of any concern about incompetence but because it is likely that everything has been prepared in a great rush.
The people who take the decisions about collection management are not the only people who are involved. The formation of policy in any area carries the connotation of authority, of people with authority to devise and implement policy in a certain area. There are also people at the receiving end, those who feel the effect - for good or ill - of the policymakers' decisions. In the world of libraries those on the receiving end of policy are the users of libraries. How do they interact with the policy formed by the policymakers? A healthy organisation will have procedures in place to consult users in advance of decisions and to secure feedback on the effect of decisions. Some collection management decisions are long-term and will only be judged by later generations. What great wisdom some of our forebears showed in buying books and journals which must have stretched their budgets at the time but which are of incalculable value now! Are we failing the next generation of users by placing so much emphasis upon access rather than holdings? Or are we saving future users' time in refusing to collect items which are not likely to have any potential use? Perhaps the nub of the issue is that not buying now benefits policy-makers - by reducing recurrent costs - but may disadvantage future users as libraries buy for retention an ever-smaller proportion of the world's literature. The policy of access rather than holdings has its attractions but it also carries risk, perhaps greater risk for the next generation of library users than for the present. Certainly a policy of electronic access has to be accompanied by a policy of archiving, to give future generations of policy-makers and users the opportunity for their own access to information.
This description of the formation of collection management policy may strike the disinterested observer as so haphazard and subject to personal whims as being very unlikely to produce a good result! What do we mean by "getting it right" and how do we judge? The ultimate test of any collection development policy must be user-satisfaction: do users now - and will they in the future - find a high proportion of the information they seek? In my experience libraries do not pay much attention to discovering the answer to that question. We collect statistics such as the number of visits to a library but not whether those visits were successful. We collect statistics of the number of volumes borrowed but not how many volumes a user failed to find. The reason for not collecting such statistics may be that they are difficult to collect, or is it because we are afraid of the answer? On the other hand most library users in the UK appear subjectively to be satisfied with library services, and particularly satisfied with the collections. They may complain that the queues at the issue desk are too long, or that the photocopying machines are always broken-down, but a shortage of books will not appear high among their concerns.
Making this point is a reminder that collection management policy in many parts of the world differs fundamentally from the situation in the UK. The influence of politics, power and people will be there in any situation, but the context of poverty, poor infrastructure, and the absence of historical collections gives a sharpness to policy decisions which few UK librarians experience. Success or failure in meeting user needs in such situations is determined far more by external circumstances, no matter how skilful the librarian. One of the challenges for humankind in the twenty-first century may be devise policies for global access to information which are driven less by economic factors and more by social factors. Information cannot be free, but it is just possible, given political will, that access to electronic information will be determined by economic factors less than it has been in the print world. The word "policy" conveys an image of wisdom, of decisions that are thought through carefully. A global information policy needs to be thought through in wisdom, respecting the interests of rights-holders and funding agencies, but also using the opportunities provided by the electronic revolution to widen access to information.
In fact the availability of information over the Web opens up new opportunities for collection managers across the world. In the print era it was difficult to find the bibliographic details of any thing except the most straightforward books and journals. Grey literature, for example, was a collection builder's nightmare. Having identified a publication, ordering it from outside one's own country was also a hit-and-miss affair. Would the advance payment in a foreign currency arrive before the publication went out of print? Would that flimsy pamphlet be damaged in the postal system? Electronic publications bring their own problems, but by comparison with paper, electronic publications are much easier to identify, to order and to receive. There are tremendous opportunities for collection-building in electronic publications, even if the emphasis is on temporary collections for access rather than holdings. So there is a hope than we can "get it right" and satisfy more user needs for information than we have in the past. Great collections have been formed in the past; there is no reason why great collections should not be formed in the future.