Open Access And Its Impact On The Future Of The University Librarian

We are shifting from content ownership by individual libraries to joint provision of services on a larger scale, says Stephen Barr

With the publication of the Finch report earlier this year and the UK government's announcement to commit £10m to help make research findings freely available, there has been a gear shift towards a more rapid movement into an open access world for the publishing of scholarly information.

While there has been a lot of discussion around what that shift means for academic publishers, and there is now a lively dialogue between researchers and scholars in different disciplines, there seems to have been less discussion of what this shift means for libraries and librarians. Yet the move towards open access is a profound change for the whole infrastructure of scholarly communication, and is bound to have impacts on the library as it does on other parts of the process.

At SAGE, we are interested in understanding the long term impacts of changes in scholarly communication on all of its traditional stakeholders. In association with the British Library, we held a roundtable to discuss some of the challenges and changes ahead for libraries, and produced a report summarizing the key findings and discussions from the meeting. Attended by members of the librarian community and representatives from relevant institutions including IFLA (International Federation of Library Assocations and Institutions), UKSG, SLA (School Library Association), and JISC, the panel highlighted the important role that librarians will still play in managing and advising on information and information budgets. But as open access grows, they say, traditional roles will be reduced and others will need to shift in emphasis in how they are carried out...