Maryland's Public System of Higher Education

The USM in 2010: 

Responding to the Challenges that Lie Ahead

Libraries

Maryland's libraries, higher education and other, are struggling to keep pace with the dramatic changes (and rising costs) generated by Web-based communication.

The costs of journal subscriptions (many of which are converting to or adding electronic formats) have risen at the rate of more than 4.5% per year for more than a decade, while USM library budgets have barely kept pace with inflation. In order to stay within budget, academic libraries have been forced to reduce their purchases, limiting the breadth of scholarship available to students and faculty.

To address the problem, libraries have employed two major strategies. First, they have collaborated to increase their leverage with suppliers. Second, they have automated, using technology creatively to reduce the costs of doing the routine business of circulation, cataloging, and acquisition and to add new services, such as delivering worldwide access to online databases, cataloging the Internet, and offering hold and recall services through VICTORWeb (an online service which allows patrons to have a book delivered to the location of their choice). Currently, higher education librarians in Maryland are proposing to collaborate in the collection of electronic content (e.g., online journals, databases, and texts). This effort is called the Maryland Digital Library (MDL), and it offers a highly leveraged approach to licensing online academic materials. The Maryland Digital Library and the USM's Library Information Management System (LIMS) have shown that our libraries are most successful when they follow both strategies listed above, and automate as a consortium.

The most serious changes facing libraries derive from the requirement to serve a whole new style of learning, highly dependent on the World Wide Web and on remote access to content in digital form. The whole text, not just bibliographical data, must be accessible. Professional help, like reference librarians, must be available to students who want to access library resources at anytime, from anywhere. Access to specialized resources must be arranged for all members of work groups that may span multiple institutions on several continents. Physical libraries, in addition to housing traditional collections, must also provide ports and computers, team meeting spaces with network connections, and spaces for experiencing multimedia and virtual reality presentations.

Technology also creates opportunities that libraries have never had before. Unique collections can be digitized and shared with broader audiences. Crumbling acid paper publications can be digitized once and archived for the benefit of many. Publications can be created in digital form, with the added attraction of multimedia illustrations. Hours can be extended without hiring round-the-clock security guards. And scholarship can be enhanced through customized services for individual patrons.

Libraries depend on each other's resources so extensively that users often do not know where the information they are using resides. What matters is high-speed access over a dependable link. Links within the USM are provided by the University of Maryland Academic Telecommunications System (UMATS), another highly successful collaborative effort of USM institutions.

USM Response

USM institutions will:

• Provide the library and telecommunications infrastructure for higher education in Maryland. Non-USM institutions will be encouraged to participate through the quality and affordability of our services.
• Support budgets that allow USM libraries to continue to convert to or acquire digital resources and provide access to online resources.
• Experiment with new models of providing, transforming, and storing information that meet faculty and student needs.
• Continue to collaborate through the MDL initiative in order to develop the most cost effective approaches to acquiring electronic academic support materials.