ALUMNI AND LIBRARIES
Universities, Libraries and the graduate: where to the relationship?
Across the campuses of many of our most prestigious universities, quiet and cautious negotiations are being attempted by academic librarians wishing to craft more robust and higher value service offerings to graduates in the form of access to their information resources: these negotiations are fraught with difficulties which, on first inspection, may seem understandable, but which, when examined more closely, may be based as much on prejudices we have about working professionals and the relationship we as educators should have with them, as they are about logistical and financial concerns.
They are among the most powerful, renowned and prestigious people in the world. They’re found in the highest social ranks, and hold positions of enormous influence in all areas including science, commerce, industry, the military, the arts, politics and government.
Look closely at the organizational structures of any of the top tier universities around the world, and it becomes clear that while individually an alumnus is not especially recognizable, as members of their group, they are covetedandcosseted. Their achievements are tracked and recorded by their home institutions, and – if not tainted by failure or scandal – they are ceremoniously paraded and lauded on educational web-sites all over the world.
In the US particularly, they have long been a significant source of money in the form of bequests, endowments and gifts, although these days many universities no longer speak directly of money or gift-giving, preferring instead to talk more euphemistically of “engagement” and the degree to which the alums do or don’t engage.
However, while the receipt of financial support is a seriously serious affair, there is a much more fundamental reason for the importance to which educational institutions attach to this particular group, and why increasingly they are being brought in to play a strategic role of informed advocacy by universities and schools competing voraciously for student numbers and top positions on global rankings.
Many institutions have learned via feedback from prospective students that alumni endorsements play a powerful role in their choice of universities, so much so that for many, the alumni have become a strategic priority: providing an important network of supporters and advocates scattered across the globe, not only speaking highly of their alma mater, but indirectly and powerfully promoting the brand by association – a fact that works best the higher the achievement of the individual, and conversely not so well when fortunes or reputations are reversed. For that reason, they are increasingly being actively sought for more participatory roles such as career advice to impending graduates, mentoring, and more recently, participation on some educational management boards. For their part, having invested much, monetarily and personally, in their education, graduates are looking to their universities for more ongoing and tangible support, which in a less-welcoming economic climate, can mean more direct and substantive help in making and retaining a successful transition to a meaningful future.
No surprises then that there is considerable effortbeing directed at keeping graduates engaged and supportive. But with much at stake, how do those universities hold up their side of the ledger in terms of providing mutually beneficial relationships. Put more crudely, what, apart from prestige and the opportunity to network with fellow alums, can graduates expect to get back for their support and engagement?
So far, most institutions have focused their outreach efforts under a general banner of “continuing education”, typically delivered through the provision of short courses, themed breakfasts and network dinners with big name draw cards from political or business life.
But increasingly, university administrators are looking at the resources in their academic libraries as rich deposits of intellectual capital from which great benefits might be extended to complement and enrich the alumni’s engagement and association, while the graduates are looking to their academic libraries to continue to provide them with the rich veins of information sources which they have come to appreciate as critical to good research practice.
For libraries, the take-up of information resources plays magically well within the mantra of lifelong learning initiatives, and this in turn, works well to extend, beyond the awarding of degrees, the educational credentials of the university as evidenced by its influence and relevance within the broader society.
The graduate as an information consumer:
As knowledge consumers, graduates are generally at the high-consumption end of the market, and skilled at discerning quality from time-wasting dross. At the top end of the corporate ladder, they are well served with the information services they need to sustain their corporate, professional and individual advancement, while at the “kick-stool” end they are hungry for the type of information and knowledge resources theyare uniquely qualified to recognize and value as critical to success.
Start-up entrepreneurs and small-size innovators, who do not have ready access to the knowledge they need to thrive and succeed with a capital “s”, are prepared to hunt for it, and within limits, pay for it as an investment on return. They are not satisfied with much of the free internet content, and for those critical moments in their careers or businesses, they know the value of being well-informed and that means access to the high-value specialist sources available to the researchers walking the corridors of academia.
But while they are prepared to pay a reasonable fee for quality information, if acting singly, they neither can afford, nor are they capable of replicating, the vast interdisciplinary, multi-layered and complex information resources that large academic libraries are uniquely capable of amassing into a coherent, wide-ranging information powerhouses: and not only amassing them, but managing them and providing the not-inconsequential specialist support courtesy of trained and experienced subject specialists providing value-adding research support on tap.
As a result, a university graduate not attached to a major corporation that is equipped with a robust and customised information service, is today left precariously under-resourced in information terms just when we as a society, are asking of them that they return to us the investment we made in their education by delivering more responsible and better performance, and while they’re at it, return some special benefits to the institutions that helped them to qualify for their intended roles in the society at large.
The Libraries:
The quality and breadth of information that today’s academic library isable to provide is nothing short of mind-blowingly impressive and powerful, with millions of full-text digital sources accessible remotely, instantly and at any time of the day. Buttoday’s digital library is locked down bylicensing restrictions which dictate to whom libraries may offer the resources and the manner in which they may do so. This has happened in a manner that hasshifted the axis of service delivery irrevocably and in a way unimaginable only a couple of decades ago when libraries dealt primarily with print, and they could have been said to “own” their collections, and be able to pretty much do with them what they liked within copyright law.
This is because in the print world, access to library content only requires that users physically walk into a geographic space to read, and if they wish, copy desired material on site. Compliance with copyright and other regulations, was, and still is, accomplished to an acceptable degree, by libraries alerting users to their responsibility to comply with legal requirements as contained in the various national Copyright regimes, a requirement fairly easily managed with appropriately located signage, and with some fairly benign processes and protocols in place.
In the digital environment however, libraries “own” neither the database sets nor their content, but rather the access to them along with contractually laid out specifications, set by the commercial information vendors, on who may be given right of access. And coupled with access-enabling identification and authorization technology and protocols, ascertaining who is using what, and under what specific entitlements has infiltrated the rules of usage with a much sharper definition of an “authorized user”.
In this environment the onus to manage and audit compliance has been elevated to the libraries, and in this regime the alumnus is unequivocally a non-authorised user, as is any non member of the educational institution.
Notwithstanding local variations, so far, large libraries have been reasonably successful in stretching licensing contracts to permit walk-in, on-site access to electronic database sets by bona fide researchers, but with increasing pressures on libraries to find ways to support their alumni communities, the real test of commitment is being measured by whether libraries are prepared to offer access to electronic resources on the same basis as is currently available to staff and enrolled students - and that means remote access from any location 24X7.
It also means remote access from any home work station or - and herein the real sticking point for commercial vendors - from any business office. It is precisely for that reason thatnegotiations with database vendors to have alumni included in license contracts, have to date had limited and patchy success.
So why the difficulties?
The delivery of information content to library constituents that has been the unquestioned preserve of libraries for hundreds of years is most challenging to publishers when those library resources can be tapped into by users geographically dispersed, and therefore not readily containable within the confines of quadrangles, college dorms and university libraries.
Under the badge of educational enterprise, academic libraries, it is argued, pay proportionally less than the true commercial worth of the digital assets which they make available to the students and staff who are part of the academic community, precisely because the enterprise is educational in nature and not commercial – the implied message being that educational activities, if not in some way “noble”, under a particular type of lens, can be generally viewed as benign.
However, enter into any discussions with vendors about the inclusion of alumni as authorised users and the immediate response will inevitably edge around the theme of the potential loss of revenue that could otherwise be realized through corporate subscriptions.
This is of course a nonsense position as there is nothing to stop educational institutions devising appropriate cost-recovery arrangements with alumni that could link to a realistic capacity to pay based on, say, revenue or similar indicator, which would offset this perceived revenue threat, and have that fee factored back into the library subscription costs set by the vendors.
But peel the onion further and what is exposed is a further and more finely nuanced source of opposition, one that is embodied deep within much of what libraries and academic institutions work around, and which is given its strongest emblematic exposure within copyright law – and that is the differentiation we make between the use of information for personal study and research [which is sanctioned] and the use of information for commercial purposes [which is not].
Again this is a regrettable position that is buttressed by a prejudice embodied – rightly or wrongly – in our view of people once they enter the world of work. Put very crudely, the prejudice is contained in the view that because members of the corporate world primarily seek to make moneyit ought not to be in the province of tax-funded institutions to prioritise their educational or informational needs: a view that sits cosily next to the supposition that those engaged in corporate life ought not be helped to have ready access to information which they might use for their personal or corporate success and profit.
Leaving aside the fact that all information is only as good as the use to which it can productively be put, this is also a somewhat silly argument if for no other reason than the fact that corporate individuals can get access to the same information if they are prepared to pay for it.
It would be simple to conclude that at the end of the day, all this jostling for access and services is simply about money.
But strip away all the concerns about who pays who and for what, and there remains still an uncomfortable question that begs to be answered if we are to get some clarity about enhancing and extending the relationships between the higher education institutions and their alumni: if we believe it a worthwhile act to invest money to produce architects, neuroscientists and bankers, why would we not wish to support them, if suitably recompensed, to be highly successful architects, neuroscientists and bankers throughout their professional and corporate lives, even if that success is inevitably expressed and measured by financial gains.
The reality of course is that for many of the players in this story, the bigger picture of educational institutions working hand and glove with corporate entities and business people to generate mutually beneficial success is fine up to a point. It is perfectly able to be assimilated, without undue nervousness, in non-overt and gentlemanly series of educational pastimes as long as it does not intrude on the commercial realities of the information market place.
Education enterprise versus commercialsuccess:
But as we increasingly expect of those involved in corporate life to adapt to a fast-paced, changing global world, and display the personal and professional growth needed to remain successful, fulfilled and of value to the society in which they are primary and critical players, there is an argument for the proposition that universities should be in the business of providing ongoing value to its alumni communities, and through the workings of alumni associations, keep the degree value - for which many graduates have invested heavily in real money terms - strong and vital.
The fact that commercial success may in turn lead to more generous endowments back to the universities is no less a crude and limited understanding of the role education could be asked to play in continuing to develop our graduates beyond the award granting role.
In true lifelong-learning fashion, universities could be in the business of creating symbiotic relationships that bring more wealth back to the educational institutions while taking a stronger role in the continued professionalization of our corporate leaders. And if profit making ensues, let’s celebrate that as part of the total package of educating and delivering professional players into the corporate world on which much of the workings of our societies depend.
For their part, libraries want to appease their constituents and maintain their role in the information supply chain by offering what their customers want. By enveloping alumni within their customer profiles they can be seen not only to support the total institutional effort towards this coveted group, but also justify their budgets by pointing to the effective and pivotal role they can play in the overarching strategic goals of their institutions in contributing to the advancement of society at large.
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