Meeting the information needs of interdisciplinary scholars: issues for administrators of large university libraries - Navigating Among the Disciplines: The Library and Interdisciplinary Inquiry

Library Trends, Fall, 1996 by Susan E. Searing

Abstract

Large University libraries face particular challenges in selecting information resources, organizing them, and providing direct services to support interdisciplinary scholarship. The tension between generalization and specialization is manifested in these core activities and in the debate over branch versus centralized libraries. External factors affecting library strategies include the organization of interdisciplinary research and teaching, institutional downsizing, new management theories, changes in scholarly communication, and the forthright political nature of some interdisciplinary fields. Although this article focuses on describing the challenges posed by interdisciplinarity rather than recommending solutions, examples of innovative approaches are noted.

Introduction

Interdisciplinary research and teaching is blossoming in North American universities. Enrollments in programs designated as interdisciplinary have increased dramatically, while the revival of general education requirements has helped to mainstream interdisciplinary approaches to undergraduate learning (Gaff, 1989; Casey, 1994). This trend has triggered a crisis within traditional disciplines. From art history to physics, the utility of discipline, as both concept and practice is now widely questioned (Klein, 1993). As Michael T. Ryan (1994) notes: "The `I word' is all-pervasive; its consequences are everywhere. in the curriculum, in hiring decisions, in research, in the organization of institutions" (p. 100). Despite its prevalence, however, this trend has failed to attract the attention of academic library leaders. A search of the literature on librarianship and higher education yields few publications that grapple with the implications of interdisciplinary research and teaching on academic libraries.

The frog-in-the-soup-pot metaphor seems apt here. A frog tossed into a pot of boiling water will instantly leap out, but a frog immersed in a pot of lukewarm water, being a cold-blooded creature, will contentedly simmer to death as the water climbs to the boiling point. Librarians sit in the middle of the soup pot of higher education. They make incremental changes in library policies and practices in response to changing realities in research and teaching on and off campus. The curriculum bubbles around them, and so much else is going on in the busy kitchen - the delivery of new high-tech gadgets, the temperamental antics of knife - wielding budget chefs, the demanding special orders of influential diners - that it is easy to overlook the obvious.

Challenges for Library Administrators

This article aims to provide an overview of administrative issues in supporting interdisciplinary library use at large universities. Most librarians still conceptualize their responsibilities in terms of major library functions:

1. the selection, acquisition, and management of information resources, still dubbed collection development, although the stress on local ownership is fading; 2. the organization of information, encompassing cataloging, classification, and their variants in the electronic environment; 3. direct services to users, including reference and its younger sibling, library instruction.

The scant literature on the impact of interdisciplinary scholarship on research libraries circles around these three themes; consequently, this article employs these as useful lenses for examining current thinking and practice. All three areas reveal a tension between generalization and specialization, which is written large in the organizational structure of multi-library universities. After looking at the issues internal to libraries, this article turns its vision outward toward the broader domains of higher education and the scholarly community, with particular attention to the politics of interdisciplinarity. Although this article focuses on describing the challenges posed by interdisciplinarity rather than recommending solutions, examples of innovative approaches are noted.(1)

Information Resources

The university library is obligated to provide knowledge resources in support of the intellectual pursuits of faculty and students. How can library policies and procedures assure that interdisciplinary subjects do not slip through holes in the collecting net?

Ryan (1994) describes the challenges that selectors face in keeping abreast of new ideas, vocabularies, and research methods in the disciplines. The emergence of hybrid interdisciplinary fields exacerbates the problem for the individual selector and adds a problem of coordination for the library overall. Generally speaking, the work of collection development is organized to mirror the organization of knowledge within the university, with materials budgets linked to specific academic departments. At libraries with a number of selectors on the staff-all seeking to maximize the impact of their limited budgets - a constant redrawing of boundaries between one's subject domain and another's often ensues. A subject can easily be lost, if no one accepts responsibility for it - a particular danger in interdisciplinary and "supradisciplinary" knowledge areas (Metz & Foltin, 1990).