1. Collections 2021 The Future of the Collection Is Not a Collection

2. J. Willard Marriott Library The Recent Past: a Quick Review 1990s: The Gutenberg Terror comes to an end  Stage 1: Journals  Stage 2: Books – piecemeal (NetLibrary, etc.)  Stage 3: Books – wholesale (Google) 2000s: Gutenberg is tamed and domesticated  Print on demand

3. J. Willard Marriott Library The Recent Past: a Quick Review Library hegemony comes to an end  Massive drop in unit price of information  Radical increase in ease of finding  Ready reference becomes a social exercise  Full-text searching obviates the proxy record  Access (for many) becomes virtually ubiquitous  Meanwhile, librarians working busily to undermine their own role as brokers (OA)

4. J. Willard Marriott Library The Current Reality The collection is a bad guess at patron needs  Massive budget cuts make collecting hard to defend Reference service is bypassed and unscalable The OPAC is completely eclipsed as a discovery tool (even with WorldCat) Circulation is down dramatically  Gate counts are up, but the stacks are deserted

5. J. Willard Marriott Library

7. The Current Reality The collection is a bad guess at patron needs  Massive budget cuts make collecting hard to defend Reference service is bypassed and unscalable The OPAC is completely eclipsed as a discovery tool (even with WorldCat) Circulation is down dramatically  Gate counts are up, but the stacks are deserted

8. J. Willard Marriott Library Circ Trends at the University of Utah

9. J. Willard Marriott Library Ten Years from Now... PDA is the new assumption Smart phone = killer delivery app Most academic print acquisition is POD (outsourced or local); much is never added to collections Collecting behavior is trifurcated:  Monuments to Western Civilization (Big Collecting)  Local research & curriculum (Small Collecting)  GBS + just-what’s-needed/just-in-time (Conduit) We search primary documents, not proxy documents Library services have become very difficult to distinguish from other educational services Collections still exist, but their (general) marginality is now freely acknowledged

10. J. Willard Marriott Library Stumbling Blocks Sclerotic librarians (Fainthearted library leaders) Legacy accreditation structures Legacy RPT structures (Justifiably) fainthearted publishers Customer-focused competitors

11. J. Willard Marriott Library Questions? Contact: Rick Anderson rick.anderson@utah.edu