Editorial: From Parry to Follett: the changing world of the university librarian

The published reports of government commissions or committees of enquiry do not usually make for particularly exciting or stimulating reading - that is unless one's livelihood or career prospects are directly affected by their recommendations. Mostly they are workaday documents, written in fairly dry tones, collating evidence, and making recommendations that may well be ignored by those who commissioned them. However there are the occasional exceptions - reports which seem to represent landmarks in the development of their subjects. One such, was the first official publication that I ever read from cover the cover - the University Grants Committee (UGC) Report of the Committee on Libraries, chaired by Dr Thomas Parry (University Grants Committee, 1967).

I was then working as an assistant in a reference library prior to taking up an offered place at library school, and was disappointed to discover that the only title from the reading list supplied to me, which we had in stock, was this rather boring looking green document with an unappealing title, and which in any event was for reference use only. The Parry Report therefore became my clandestine reading matter during quiet evening duties, and I was soon surprised to find it to be both interesting and informative.

The Parry Committee was set up in July 1963, at a time when the university and further education sectors in Britain were beginning to grow rapidly, following the Robbins Report (Committee on Higher Education, 1963). More than half a century after the establishment of the so-called 'red-brick' universities in large provincial cities, the 1960s saw the establishment of several entirely new university and other institutions of higher education, together with a substantial growth of the existing ones. The UGC - which was then the funding agency responsible for this expansion - charged their Libraries Committee with the task of considering the most economical and effective arrangements for meeting the library needs of these developing institutions. In doing so Dr Parry's committee of eminent academics provided a comprehensive description of library provision to higher education in the UK which served as a textbook of good practice for the next decade or so.

The University Librarian of the mid-1960s had entirely different problems and pre-occupations from his or her counterpart today. At the time there was no single unified national library service but rather a heterogeneous mixture of government funded libraries and bibliographic agencies. Thus one of the most important chapters of the Parry Report considered the role of a national library as an essential means of providing support and a degree of co-ordination to the work of academic libraries throughout the country. This was just one recommendation that was to lead to fairly soon afterwards to further and more detailed investigations, resulting in the establishment of the British Library in 1973.

The Parry Committee was also compiling its report at a time when academic libraries were working in a fundamentally different economic, political, and intellectual climate to that of today. The growth in student numbers was then being matched by a concurrent, and more than equivalent, growth in the funding for higher education. Also, there then was much more of a spirit of community between different academic institutions without the need constantly to compete with one another. Thus the issue of library co-operation, both between the different kinds of libraries in a particular area, and also between university and college libraries throughout the country, was crucial to the committee's vision of an effective service to an academic community.

Several important changes to the work of academic libraries since the Parry Report have been at the operational level and relate to the techniques, the equipment, and the management styles employed. By the mid 1960s the volume of new materials added to stock was just beginning to be a problem, but our predecessors did not foresee the extent of the growth in the volume and variety of academic publishing that was then beginning to take place. Relatively few professionals questioned whether university libraries should be able to continue expanding entirely unchecked in order to keep pace with the intake of new materials. These ideas began to change in the mid-1970s when the Atkinson report propounded the concept of the self-renewing library, with an 'access' as opposed to a 'holdings' policy (University Grants Committee, 1976). Similarly, whilst Parry did devote one of his twelve chapters to Administration and Staffing, and another to Finance, these were clearly not regarded as the major issues for the consideration of his committee. The concept of 'management' - whether of personnel, finance, or information - is nowadays regarded as being fundamental to the work of professional staff at all levels. Yet this word hardly figures throughout the 280 pages of this report.

Perhaps the most far reaching changes upon the work of academic libraries over the last quarter of a century has however been due to the impact of computers and information technology. The Parry Committee was sufficiently forward-looking to devote two pages to the topic of 'Data Processing and Computers' in which they correctly foresaw that this technology would one day have a considerable impact on the work of any library. Also in the section of the report dealing with medical libraries there is a brief recognition of the usefulness of emerging electronic information services such as the Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval Service (MEDLARS), together with the fare-sighted recommendation that a computer terminal should in future be a basic piece of library equipment. However even the most optimistic technophile of the 1960s would have been unlikely to have foreseen the extent of the changes in working patterns, and the services provided to users that would be brought about by the widespread introduction of automation.

After two decades of relative stability - which some might describe as stagnation - the last five years have seen yet another period of rapid change and growth within the higher education sector in Britain. This time the rules have changed. The government, through the various Higher Education Funding Councils (which have replaced the UGC) have made it clear that they are expecting a substantial increase in student numbers throughout the decade, but without a corresponding increase in funding. This will inevitably place a far greater strain on existing academic institutions, and in particular, upon the services which are provided to support their work. Academic librarians were already under pressure, with the development of new specialisms and teaching techniques, the constantly growing volume of academic publications with prices which seem to rise well above the rates of inflation, and the introduction of new information formats and services. It was the misgivings that were being expressed over the effect of all these changes upon quality of the library services which led to the establishment of another detailed review, twenty-five years after the publication of the report of the Parry Report.

Whereas the Parry Committee took nearly four years over their deliberations the Joint Funding Council's Libraries Review Group, under the chairmanship of Sir Brian Follett, Vice-Chancellor of Warwick University, have taken a little more than one year. Their report was published in December 1993 (Higher Education Funding Council for England et al.,1993), and in recognition of the changed times in which it was produced, it was rapidly made available to the academic community in an electronic form over the Joint Academic Network (JANET). Indeed nearly two months after publication, I am still awaiting the sight of a printed copy.)

In common with its illustrious predecessor, the Follett Report is a sensible, readable, and accessible document with welcome yet realistic recommendations. In future it will likewise be seen as a milestone in the development of academic libraries and information services in Britain. The Follett Review Group did not seek

to present a comprehensive description of library provision in higher education, nor analyse all of the issues involved. Rather it has focused on those areas where it believes practical proposals for progress can achieve most effect in the foreseeable future.

Thus it had a far more restricted remit than Parry and did not seek to look at the role of the university library in its wider social and national context.

Inevitably these days, the whole thrust of the Follett Report is to look at issues of funding, both for the higher education funding agencies which jointly commissioned the review and also for comparable research funding agencies. Particular attention is paid to issues of management, the role of libraries in the support of teaching and research, and in the present and future impact of information technology. A number of background studies and consultancy reviews of these subjects were commissioned. Two of these - the Fielden Consultancy report on the staffing aspects of library management (Higher Education Funding Council, 1994) and a quantitative and qualitative survey by the Library and Information Statistics Unit - have been, or else will be published independently. Others, such as the futuristic sketches of academic life at the turn of the next century, prepared by the Information Technology Sub-Group, are included within the body of the report

The Follett Report looks in some detail at the opportunities afforded by the exchange of information over computer networks such as JANET in the UK, and increasingly from overseas academic and commercial networks via the Internet. In this respect the rather restricted remit of the review is unfortunate, since a wide variety of different kinds of libraries and other institution will shortly be making use of the 'Information Superhighway' However, the report recommends that academic institutions should review the provision of their local area networks to ensure that they will be of sufficient capacity to take advantage of the forthcoming advanced fibre-optic network SuperJANET, which will be an ideal vehicle for future high resolution electronic document delivery systems. Similarly it recommends the provision of research funds to encourage the development of new network navigation tools and to promote the growth of new campus-wide information servers (CWIS).

Attention is also given to the future role of electronic documents, whether digitized versions of existing publications, or else entirely new electronic journals or document delivery systems. With the advent of SuperJANET there will be the potential for multi-media information sources available over the network. Once again there are proposals to provide research funding for the production, evaluation, and distribution of these products and services. The Follett Review also recognises that these development will inevitably give rise to all kinds of problems relating to the copyright interests of publishers and authors. Accordingly there is a recommendation to the funding councils that they should sponsor an investigation within this area.

Other funding initiatives are aimed at assisting library staff at all levels to adapt to the rapidly changing world in which they are required to work, and to enable them to train their users. Thus one of the recommendations is for the establishment of a national training programme in information technology. This would encompass the development of in-service training courses and workshops in the use of networked information, the development of user training materials and courses, and the liaison between practitioners and the Departments of Information Studies on both initial training needs and also continuing professional education.

However, perhaps the most important single message in the Follett Report is addressed equally to the senior managers within the university sector as to their librarians and information officers - that is the need for institutional information strategies and not merely separate information technology strategies or library strategies. The academic library of the future will increasingly have to adopt the 'Just-in-time' information delivery strategy rather than the 'Just-in-case' purchase and collection strategy. It will be the hub of an integrated information system which takes advantages of not only the information resources of the parent institution but also comparable institutions both in the UK. and overseas.

Thus, as with the earlier Parry Report, the Follett Review underlines the basic need for co-operation between the library and information services of different institutions, and a willingness to share resources, in order to provide an effective service to all. Unfortunately this laudable aim, which is to the obvious benefit of scholarship as a whole, runs directly contrary to the prevailing ethos of university life. These days it is a spirit of competition rather than of cooperation which is encouraged by the funding bodies. Institutions, departments, and individual academics are constantly prevailed upon to compete with one another, for student numbers, for resources, for research funding, or for performance related pay. Yet few scholars, and even fewer library and information officers, who were educated during the 1960s and early 1970s took up their chosen vocation out of a spirit of competitiveness. The tradition of co-operation between academics and academic institutions is therefore likely to survive for some time to come. Whether or not it has a long-term future among the next generation, I cannot say.

David Stoker

February 1994

(With thanks for the advice and co-operation of Professor Judith Elkin of the University of Central England and Professor Charles Oppenheim of the University of Strathclyde.)

References

1. Committee on Higher Education (1963), Higher Education: Report of the Committee appointed by the Prime Minister under the chairmanship of Lord Robbins, HMSO

2. Higher Education Funding Council for England et al. (1993) Joint Funding Council's Libraries Review Group: Report, HMSO

3. Higher Education Funding Council for England (1993) Supporting expansion: a report on human resource management in academic libraries for the Joint Funding Council's Libraries Review Group, HMSO

4. University Grants Committee (1967) Report of the Committee on Libraries, HMSO

5. University Grants Committee (1976) Capital provision for university libraries. Report of the Working Party, HMSO