portal: Libraries and the Academy

portal: Libraries and the Academy 1.1 (2001) 1-13

The Entrepreneurial Imperative: Advancing from Incremental to Radical Change in the Academic Library

James G. Neal

Fundamental changes in higher education, information technology, and scholarly communication are provoking a radical revisioning of the future academic library. ¹ The library must pursue strategic thinking and action, fiscal agility, and creative approaches to the development of collections and services and to the expansion of markets. Higher education libraries are advancing away from the traditional or industrial age library, a model that is no longer viable. The combined impact of digital and network technologies, the globalization of education and scholarship, and increased competition for resources will produce a very different library in the academy over the next decade.

Academic libraries have behaved fundamentally as anticipatory libraries, selecting and acquiring information resources on a global scale in largely print/analog formats that respond to the current, and anticipate the future needs of faculty and students. These materials are organized, stored, and preserved for dependable access. Library staff provide dissemination, interpretation, and instructional services to enable effective use.

In the transitional or responsive academic library, the processes of information acquisition, synthesis, navigation, and archiving are increasingly focused on networked and interactive access to digital multimedia information at point of need, and on the innovative application of electronic technologies. Academic libraries are now implementing this model, serving as both providers of global publications and portals for users to resources that are increasingly created, stored, and delivered online. The library is both a historical archive and a learning and research collaboratory. [End Page 1]

The future academic library will carry forward these network and digital revolutions and also integrate a more market-based, customized, and entrepreneurial approach to the packaging and delivery of information. Academic libraries will become centers for research and development in the application of technology to information creation and use. They will become aggregators and publishers, and not just consumers of scholarly information. They will function as campus hubs for working with faculty on the integration of technology and electronic resources into teaching and research. They will be regional and national centers for lifelong learning opportunities for information professionals, and they will be providers of information services to broader academic, research and business communities. This vision for the academic library predicts a significant moderation in the cost increases for knowledge, acquisition, and access as new models of scholarly publishing are successfully launched. It envisions massive expansion and diversification in new learning communities. The vision includes a redefinition of the library as a virtual resource not limited by time and space, and therefore not dependent on buildings for the housing, use, and servicing of information. The vision sees a repositioning of the academic library as a successful competitor in the information marketplace for new business, and for corporate, foundation, and federal investment.

My objectives in this paper are to acknowledge the revolutionary environment in which academic libraries are developing, to outline the nature of entrepreneurship and innovation, and their relevance to library advancement. I will discuss the impact of changes in global learning and scholarly communication on library entrepreneurial opportunities, and relate recent experiences in the Libraries at Johns Hopkins University as a case study in entrepreneurial activity. I will then define several key elements for successful entrepreneurial development in the academic library.

David Close and Carl Bridge, in their book Revolution: A History of the Idea, argue that "the essential feel of revolution derives from its cataclysmic quality . . . it destroys people's security and unsettles their convictions." ² Thomas Kuhn, in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, observes that "the transition from a paradigm in crisis to a new one from which a new tradition can emerge is far from a cumulative process." ³ Karl Marx, in his theory of knowledge or theory of epistemology, emphasizes that ideas do not exist on their own and are real and have value only when they are translated into action. He points to a pot of water over a flame. We...