The Oxygen of Publicity

So the story goes...

The Guardian, in association with the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), has produced a series of articles on academic libraries, with the overall title of Libraries Unleashed. No doubt it is to be applauded for doing so. In the introduction, Stephen Hoare asserts that:

"Information technology, online databases, and catalogues and digitised archives have put the library back at the heart of teaching, learning and academic research on campus."

If this is the case, it must count as one of the Great Paradoxes of modern times (on a parallel with the Grand Challenges). We could say with some justification that:

"Information and communication technologies, online databases, online public access catalogues (OPACs) and digital repositories (digital born texts and digitised print archives) are at the heart of learning, teaching and academic research in the 21st century university. "

It is more difficult to say with justification that these developments and innovations have put 'the library' at the heart of learning, teaching and academic research. It may be more true to say that 'the library', as a building and as an institutional form, has been displaced by these developments, such that neither is it the heart nor even the lungs of learning, teaching and academic research. It is more akin to an artificial limb, prosthetically attached to a mode of being that is altogether other. All that remains is the residual fact that 'the library' is in some awkward sense a point of access to this world, and is the central one only by default and until some better set of institutional arrangements can be made.

Looking back, looking forward, it can only be reiterated that "You might think that academic libraries would be at the centre of this debate, being concerned with learning and with knowledge, but it seems they are, or have become, peripheral in an information-centred, user-centred, mixed virtual-physical service environment."

In which case, we have two sentences:

1. Libraries should be at the heart of learning, teaching and academic research in the university.

2. Information and communication technologies, online databases, online public access catalogues (OPACs) and digital repositories (digital born texts and digitised print archives) are at the heart of learning, teaching and academic research in the university.

It is a question of how one links these two sentences.