Read on Twitter
This is a well-intended piece but misses that alignment with capitalist framing doesn't change the perception of libraries as a resource sink without expertise over the collection. https://crln.acrl.org/index.php/crlnews/article/view/24772/32607
It's also written as though COVID created expectations for seamless resource search and access, and not other factors. COVID is an accelerant of existing conditions, so it's odd that's acknowledged as a budgetary reality and not a systems one.
It's also only a "rapidly shifting resource landscape" if you frame library resources as exclusive to things you license or buy. Again, this is a choice in an article that wants to support open as a concept.
It must be a trip to be a systems or resource management person at either of those libraries and read this article, as though neither author works somewhere that has parallel structures in place for remote learning. Both do.
The authors suggest "incubator" "think tank" or "institute" as alternative metaphors, so let's look at those real quick.
Incubators are dangerous. It's where you monitor a precarious thing under controlled conditions. It's also feminized. You find lots of "foster" and "support" and "nurture" around "library as incubator" which runs against the Be More Corporate advice of the piece.
"Think tank" and "institute" are roughly the same, and would make sense to deploy in a library environment when the library has enough agency to do so. It probably doesn't if you're treating COVID like a singular moment and not one point in a longer history.
And yes, it's correct that the university operates in a revenue and expense structure. But there are exceptions to this model on every campus, departments and areas that are untouched by budget flux because they're treated like utilities. Necessary.
It's possible for (some) libraries to position themselves as both institute-like and a utility under a revenue/expense model, rather than move further into agile structures which can't adequately support scholarly communications initiatives.
Well, agile as in Agile is super helpful in libraries, but "agile" in this article is doing too much work, like "pivot" and "attitudes" and, I. Words mean things. Words mean things.
