The future of the 'research' library in an age of information abundance and lifelong learning.

The game has changed. We face an array of possibilities and challenges that will leave no library untouched. We are, whether we want to or not, about to become much more than we are now--or much less. Roy Tennant, 1998

The Research Roles of Libraries

The 'research' roles of libraries have been several:

* Libraries with collections of materials which are objects of research. Many of the 'Australian' collections of the National Library and the state libraries fall into this category, eg oral history recordings, or manuscripts, which are unique items,

* Libraries with collections of materials which report the results of research--typically university libraries with large collections of peer-reviewed academic journals,

* Libraries which serve producers of research--university libraries serving academic staff and post-graduate research students, and

* Libraries which serve users of research--traditionally university libraries serving members of their institution, and to a lesser extent the public, and National/state libraries serving the 'independent researcher'--either to support further 'research' or 'learning'--traditionally regarded as different activities in an age of didactic teaching.

The Nature of Research

Several developments are impacting on this comfortable traditional pattern of research library services.

Firstly, the number of individuals engaged in 'research' has increased dramatically. Changes in educational approach, from primary school to university, mean that children as young as 7-8 years are engaged in research. Simple--yes, limited in scope to local observations--yes, short on wider analysis--yes, but nevertheless research, in the sense of investigation producing new data or thinking which can contribute to broader understandings. Rather than receivers of information transmitted from teachers, learners of all levels can be viewed now as 'neophyte researchers'. As well as this general pedagogical trend, the number of traditional academic researchers (staff and postgraduates) in Australian universities has increased very significantly over the past 30 years. To these can be added an increasing number of 'citizens of the Third Age'--typically, older ex-academic or ex-professional, generally educated people who have retired from full-time employment, in their 50's and 60's, pursuing independent research activities of interest to themselves.

As Houghton and his colleagues have concluded in their wide-ranging study of Australian research information '... there is a new mode of knowledge production emerging, changing research practices and bringing new information access and dissemination needs'. (1) This involves increasing diversity of location, increasing focus on interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary research, increasing focus on problems, and greater emphasis on collaborative work and informal modes of communication.

Outside the educational arena, the drive for improved government policy and service delivery has resulted in an increasing amount of problem-oriented research undertaken either directly by government organisations, or contracted through commercial and academic consultancies and research grants. This is occurring at all levels of government--federal, state and local.

The broadening of research activity has resulted in a shift of the balance of research away from discipline-focused work with the bulk of overall research activity now being problem and/or application-oriented, and often of a narrower locational focus. Such research may be highly beneficial for a local community, but a challenge is created in how the results may be integrated for broader understandings in the field concerned.

Research Outputs

These changes in the pattern of research have considerable implications for libraries which purport to provide their customers with a 'research service'. Until relatively recently, university libraries could assume that they were meeting their user's requirements by subscribing to a good range of academic journals from the major societies and commercial publishers, together with a reasonable coverage of monographs providing some integrated understandings of research in a field.

But the outputs even of academic research are being…