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This report has had an extended and complex history. Its origins date to the spring of 1989, when Neil Rudenstine, then executive vice president of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and now president of Harvard University, and I decided that the Foundation should undertake a study of the economics of research libraries. Both of us had long been interested in research libraries, initially as users and then as university administrators. We were convinced not only of the great importance of these institutions but also that, in certain respects at least, they were at risk of becoming an endangered species. Rapidly rising costs of both library materials and space were one evident source of pressure; the proliferation of journals and other library materials was a second pressure point; and it was also far from clear how these libraries were to be affected by, and were to respond to, the rapidly developing electronic technologies.
Support of research libraries 1 has been one of the continuing interests of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and so our personal interests were merged with a strong institutional interest. The trustees and staff of the Foundation have been committed to continuing to support the evolution of research libraries, but, in company with almost everyone else, have been unsure how best to address what are clearly systemic questions. There was a pressing need, in our view, for a careful analysis of trends in such key variables as the volume of acquisitions, the worldwide pool of publications from which acquisitions were made, prices of monographs and journals, and library expenditures-seen both in absolute terms and as a percentage of overall university expenditures. We were also interested in knowing more about trends in the composition of library expenditures and, even more particularly, about experience with automation and its costs.
Thus, a principal objective of this research has been to describe the library landscape as it appears today, in its collecting, operating, financial, and electronic dimensions. The picture that emerges is by no means definitive, but we believe that it does provide a basis for exploring new directions in a more thoughtful way than we could have done otherwise. In company with other research projects that have 2 been conducted by the staff of the Foundation, this study was intended to inform our subsequent activities, including grant making. We are making the report generally available in the hope that it will be of interest to others concerned with these same issues-not only librarians, who will already be familiar with much of the material presented here, but also college and university administrators, publishers, scholars, and all others involved in the process of creating and using scholarly materials.
1 My predecessor as president of the Foundation, John E. Sawyer, played a major role in stimulating support from many foundations for the work of the Research Libraries Group. More genera By, he played a leadership role in thinking about the future of libraries and especially of ways in which more collaboration might be possible. It is significant-and fitting-that the library at Williams College, where Mr. Sawyer served with distinction as president, is named in his honor.
2 In particular, studies of the outlook for employment of faculty (William G. Bowen and julie Ann Sosa, Prospects for Faculty in the Arts and Sciences, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989) and of the effectiveness of doctoral education (William G. Bowen and Neil L. Rudenstine, In Pursuit of the Ph.D., Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992).
As is explained in Chapter I (the Introduction), much more work could have been done-and, we hope, will be done by others interested in pursuing in more detail questions that we have only highlighted. We do not anticipate, however, that the general findings reported here will contain a great many surprises, especially to members of the library profession. Rather, the report will be more useful, we believe, to other members of the scholarly community, all of whom have a major stake in the future of the research library.
This has been a truly collaborative effort, a "many hands" project. That characteristic has been a source of strength, thanks to the presence of a number of complementary perspectives, but it has also been, we have to say, a source of complications. Participants in the study have come and gone, and the project now faces a new reality in that the person who has worked longest and hardest on the study, Anthony M. Cummings, and his chief collaborator, Marcia L. Witte, have both left the Foundation this summer to pursue other interests. They have made heroic efforts to complete their analysis before leaving, and, recognizing that a project of this kind is never really finished in any case, we have concluded that it is better to release the document as it stands now rather than to seek to add to it.
The fact that the entire field of scholarly communication is, we believe, about to undergo even more profound changes than those that it has experienced in recent years-with implications that are far from fully understood-reinforces our sense that we should make the report in its present form available without further delay. The timeliness of the subject, the rapidity of new developments (especially in the area of technology), and the tendency for commentaries to become dated so quickly all combine to encourage prompt publication.
This Foundation intends to continue to pursue aggressively a number of the issues raised in the report but not resolved. Specifically, we are examining the possibility of evaluating systematically some of the "natural experiments" in new modes of electronic publication and dissemination now going on, and we might simultaneously encourage the development of some carefully structured experiments designed to address some of the open questions of quality, means of access to materials, convenience, and costs.
One of our concerns is that fascination with technology per se may interfere with or detract from attention to the quality of content-to the value of what is "published" or otherwise made available. Also, it is far from clear how different kinds of libraries, different categories of scholars, and different groups of potential authors may be affected by prospective developments. While it is relatively easy to speculate about future developments, it is much harder to know what their effects will be on readers and users, authors, publishing entities, libraries themselves, and other institutional participants in the process of scholarly communication. At issue are not only substantive questions of the quality and quantity of scholarship and of access to it, but also mundane but vitally important ancillary issues such as pricing, costs, and financial returns. The Foundation will continue to seek ways to stimulate thoughtful explorations of these fascinating-and complex-issues.
THE BROADER ROLE OF THE LIBRARY
Before identifying the participants in this study more fully and thanking others who have helped with this research, I wish to add a more personal comment concerning the broader role of libraries. I want to recall aspects of libraries that transcend, for me at least, information processing. There is a danger that current and prospective developments will exalt the technocratic and the impersonal over subtle characteristics and qualities that need to be preserved if libraries are to continue to serve their full educational function. At their best, libraries are warm and welcoming places that speak to some of the most fundamental values of the academy and of the society at large.
It has been said often that all of us are autobiographical when it comes to education, and I would not deny the proposition as it relates to my own experiences with libraries. I have a stronger recollection of days (and nights) spent in Doane Library at Denison University than of any other aspect of my undergraduate education. To this day I remember vividly the arrangement of the stacks, the location of the most comfortable working spaces, the faces and names of librarians, and the inscription that I passed each time I entered the building:
Then, at Princeton, my life as a graduate student and as a faculty member revolved around Firestone Library. My carrel is still "my" carrel, and I was fortunate to have my first faculty office right in the library. The department reading room, seminar room, and lounge on A Floor of Firestone Library were the locations of many of my most educational experiences. And the privilege of browsing through the stacks, finding books that had been checked out by faculty members such as Jacob Viner, was just that--a privilege.
Why do great libraries have such a hold on so many of us? In part, I think, because of their ambience, the sense they give of the power of ideas and the luxury of being stimulated and encouraged to think for one's self. Libraries are humbling places, because they remind us of the vast store of knowledge which we can approach but never really control. They are humanizing places, because we are brought into contact with so many lives lived in the past as well as in the present. They are symbols of the continuity of learning. They stand for such basic principles as freedom of expression, the need to recognize and respect a diversity of views, and the obligation finally to come to one's own conclusions-and then to be held accountable for what one has written.
I do not believe that new technologies will, should, need to, or can supplant the pleasures of holding a book in one's hand and turning its pages. Somehow, someway, we have to take fullest advantage of the power of high speed processing and communication without losing sight of the larger purposes of the enterprise. It is true that the library is under significant pressure not only to change but also to accelerate its rate of change. It is no less true that the processes of change must respect all the functions and attributes of the library if it is remain a vital center of learning in the broadest sense.
THE PARTICIPANTS IN THE STUDY
When we first began this study, we were fortunate to obtain the part-time services of an exceedingly able person, Laura 0. Lazarus, who devoted countless hours to assembling the raw data from the invaluable historical files maintained by the Association of Research Libraries. In addition to entering the data for our four library composites 3 on spreadsheets, Ms. Lazarus did a considerable amount of statistical analysis, including estimating trends by means of least-square regressions. In short, she did most of the spade work for what became Part 1 of this study.
In the summer of 1990, the project acquired a new leader. Anthony M. Cummings, a musicologist who has just become dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Tulane University, returned from a sabbatical at Villa I Tatti in Florence and agreed to take primary responsibility for completing this study While Mr. Cummings has worked hard on all aspects of the project, he played a particularly critical role in drafting all of Part 2, which is concerned with the implications of the new electronic technologies for research libraries.
Marcia L. Witte, a research associate in the Foundation's New York office, has also been a critically important participant in this project. After working on the library project sporadically (while doing a number of other things), she worked essentially full-time on it for the six months following January 1992. Ms. Witte has reworked all the figures and tables in Part 1, which is concerned with historical trends in acquisitions, expenditures, publications, and the prices of publications, and she and I have collaborated on the text of these chapters.
The last of our principal collaborators, Richard H. Ekman, has reviewed the entire manuscript, made any number of revisions and additions (especially in Part 2), and seen the final report through to publication. Mr. Ekman, as secretary and a senior program officer of the Foundation, is also responsible for leading the further efforts in this field that the Foundation is now developing.
The Foundation's vice president, Harriet Zuckerman, also made valuable editorial contributions, especially to Part 2 of the study.
This brief summary of the roles played by a shifting constellation of staff members is intended to document the collaborative nature of this study and to assign some measure of credit-and responsibility. The Foundation is indebted to all these individuals for their hard work on this project.
Acknowledgments
A very large number of people and organizations gave generously of their time and advice in the course of our work on this project. Some are identified in the pages that follow. A few should be given special mention here. The Association of Research Libraries, and particularly Duane Webster, Ann Okerson, and Jaia Barrett, assisted us at many stages. We are indebted to Ann Okerson especially for her helpful synopsis of the report, which has been enhanced by her own extensive knowledge of this field. A near-final draft of this document benefited from readings by Richard De Gennaro and Jerry Green of Harvard University, Kendon Stubbs of
3These are sets of libraries with similar characteristics. See Chapter 1 for a full discussion of these composites and of the underlying data.
the University of Virginia, and David Penniman of the Council on Library Resources. Patricia Battin of the Commission on Preservation and Access, James Coleman and John Haeger of the Research Libraries Group, Donald Koepp and Ira Fuchs of Princeton University, Scott Bennett of Johns Hopkins University, and William Y. Arms of Carnegie Mellon University were also helpful to us at critical times in the life of the project. Our colleagues at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation were patient and supportive while we were in the throes of this study, and Alvin Kernan, the Foundation's senior advisor in the humanities, gave us fresh perspective at important junctures. There are literally hundreds of other individuals with whom each of us had instructive conversations along the way, and we apologize to each of them for not including specific expressions of our gratitude here. The views expressed in the following pages are solely those of the authors and we take full responsibility for any errors of fact or interpretation.
William G. Bowen November 1992