Internationalisation: Australian librarians and expanding roles in higher education.

To understand the need for internationalisation in higher education, there must be an acknowledgement that the pressures of globalisation are transforming national higher education systems to become effective in international education markets. The fastest changes have been accomplished by governments that have centralised control of their educational systems. Australia was selected for study because its government has chosen to radically change its system of higher education to make it competitive in the global market. Beginning in 1987, government directives began mandating changes that have transformed the entire educational landscape from a two-tiered system to a single tier of entrepreneurial universities. Much has been written about the change process in Australia for academics, administrators, and institutions. (1) Less research on how librarians have adapted to these changes has been carried out. This research, therefore, was designed to study academic librarians in Australia in order to determine how the change process has transformed their practice to include internationalisation within the context of the library, the university, and higher education. The definitions below are those applied in this study. They arc listed here because some Australian academic librarians might define these terms differently.

* Globalisation in higher education: worldwide political and economic pressures stimulate change in university practice toward corporate structures and entrepreneurial behaviour; the effects are social, cultural and psychological. Globalisation functions as both process and outcome.

* International education (Australian government definition): attraction of full fee-paying international students to Australian institutions for a competitive English-language education.

* International education (in the higher education context): educational collaboration between individuals, nations, organisations and universities to enlarge understanding and direct change at the institutional level of higher education. It is also defined as study abroad.

* Internationalisation in higher education: the process of integrating international practice and perspective into the research, teaching and service components of the university.

In a shrinking and troubled global environment, governments are urging higher education to provide qualified graduates ready to compete in the global market. Universities generally recognise that they have a responsibility to ensure that students not only learn their subject, but that they also become culturally competent global citizens. Good student outcomes can only be attained if academic staff members have a high level of cultural understanding and worldly experience.

Despite the need, higher education generally does little to encourage or reward international understanding and scholarly exchange for librarians and other professional staff. Not all librarians are trained to work in the expanding global environment of higher education. Therefore, it is incumbent upon librarians themselves to change library procedures to become student-centred and internationally astute; to do that, librarians will have to enlarge their own perspective to an inclusive, culturally competent global view. (2) Institutional library practice must also become internationalised in line with university missions. As Oakshott has noted, librarians will have to become an integral part of strategic planning and implementation of university policies and programs in order to 'show the centrality of libraries in achieving university goals'. (3)

In order to understand the process of change and how libraries and librarians are affected, a framework of post-modern perspectives on globalisation was employed to examine the history, economics and politics that were changing higher education. (4) The literatures of international education and internationalisation were also examined for national policies and institutional approaches employed to internationalise Australian higher education. (5)

Another literature review was of academic library literature to determine the pressures of globalisation and internationalisation that drive change for librarians and their professional organisations, and the institutional adaptations adopted by academic librarians to internationalise their environment. (6) Two published dissertations are particularly noteworthy. In Australia, McSwiney places her qualitative investigation of university libraries in the framework of globalisation and internationalisation. (7) The framework for this study is similar to McSwiney's, but the outcomes explored concern professional and institutional activities for librarians rather than outcomes for students. In seeking outcomes of internationalisation for librarians, questions developed by Inger M Bull in her dissertation (8) were adapted for use in this study. Bull asked academics whether the following four independent variables affected change to internationalised curricula: international exchange, international conference attendance, international collaboration, and foreign language ability. Only two variables, international exchange and collaboration, were found to be related to the extent of internationalisation. To Bull's variables was added one more: international/multicultural perspective.

The Survey

The result of the literature search was the formation of the primary research question: what is the role of Australian academic librarians in the internationalisation of higher education? To begin to answer that question, a survey asking about current activities was sent via email through the auspices of the Council of Australian Academic Librarians (CAUL) to the 36 university librarians in October 2004. The goals of the research were twofold. First, this was an opportunity to examine librarians' activities and practices to determine how these practices contribute to internationalisation in Australian universities, and to explore what constitutes best internationalisation practice for librarians. The second goal was to gather evidence for patterns of behaviour which could ultimately be used strategically to internationalise libraries and other institutions of higher education. Thus, the research was designed to examine the patterns of behaviour by individuals and those of institutional change. The findings from the analysis uncover patterns of leadership, activities and programs that may be used strategically in practical and pragmatic ways by other librarians wishing to internationalise their institutions.

Data collected through the survey were analysed using quantitative statistical techniques. The results of the analysis are presented in two sections. First, descriptive statistics are used to present the demographic characteristics of the respondents. Second, responses to the survey questions are explored, noting the frequency of responses, consistencies, and inconsistencies.

Response Rate

The survey was distributed to all 36 Australian university library directors listed as members of the Council of Australian University Librarians. Initially, nine university librarians responded, yielding a response rate of 25%. A second mailing garnered two more responses and brought the total response rate to 33% (n=11). In an attempt to improve the response rate, individual letters were sent via email to each of the university librarians who had not completed the survey. This produced an additional 12 (n=12) survey responses raising the total number of respondents to 23 (n=23, 64%) thus enabling analysis of the information with a reasonably high degree of confidence.

In order to explore the possibility of response bias, a comparison of the respondents, non-respondents, and their institutions was conducted. Using figures reported by Australian Education International, (9) total enrolment for public Australian universities is approximately 811 700, with an average student enrolment of 22 547. The 23 respondent institutions have a total of 572 200 students with an average enrolment of 24 878 students. In comparison, the 13 non-respondent institutions have a total of 239 500 students with an average enrolment of 18 423 students. Although the non-respondent universities were slightly smaller than the respondent institutions, both were close in size to the overall average. Australian universities range in size from 5 000 to 55 000 students. By applying the rule of thirds to the…