Larsen, Svend: Subject Specialists in Danish University Libraries ? Mandarins of the Past or Future Library Stars?
State & University Library, Aarhus, Denmark¹

In Danish research libraries three categories of staff perform library functions, as distinct from administration and support functions. The three categories are:

1. clerical staff,
2. librarians with a degree from the Danish library school after 4 years of education,
3. so-called research librarians, who have a university degree, normally a masters degree or more recently a ph.d., in one or more 'classic' university subjects (which in Denmark does not include library and information science).

The research librarian is the 'Fachreferent' of the German university library and the 'subject specialist' of the American research library. In the following presentation I will use the term 'subject specialist'. I will describe the tasks of subject specialists in Danish university libraries, describe how the tasks have changed in the last decade and I will discuss the future of the subject specialist. Finally I will describe the institutional and organizational setting in which subjects specialists perform their tasks in Danish libraries.

Traditional core tasks

Core tasks for subject specialists were for many years selection and acquisition of material (books, manuscripts etc.) and classification. Deep knowledge of the library's collections and of the classification system was seen as essential to perform these tasks. In libraries with card catalogues and closed stacks classification was important as the basis for shelving and retrieval of books. And unlike cataloguing which is descriptive and technical in nature, selection and classification presuppose some kind of insight in a subject field. The individual subject specialist's combination of subject expertise and historical knowledge of books was not easily replaceable, and as the tasks were performed behind the scenes without direct public contact subject specialists had a privileged position. In some older libraries this was reinforced by the fact that subject specialists were responsible for the maintenance of the classification system. Many older libraries have their own classification system, and the maintenance and development of the classification system was seen as an intellectually demanding task, and the subject specialists working with this got almost esoteric knowledge. They were the mandarins of the library. In addition to these library tasks the subject specialist could do some work in her or his own subject field: translations, bibliographic work or actual research. For many years subject specialists in libraries, keepers in archives and curators in museums were allowed use part of their time working on a subject of their own choice.

I have tried to give the essential strokes of a portrait of the subject specialist as he was not many years ago. The ideal subject specialist, some times called the scholar librarian, embodied values which for many years were considered fundamental. Today some of these values are still considered valid and used in discussions about the future of libraries. But it will be difficult - at least in Denmark - to find a specimen in its ideal form of this kind of librarian. The traditional subject specialist belonged to the research library where the greatest importance was attached to collection development - and this has changed.

From collection development to user orientation

Technological development, new expectations of service from public institutions and financial constraints have induced change in libraries. There is now more user orientation and more focus on services. One manifestation of this is the more systematic use of performance measurement and user surveys. A consequence has been allocation of more resources to public services, longer hours with more service, better staffing of reference desks and other service points. In the Royal Library and in the State and University Library the amount of time used by subject specialists for selection and classification was reduced from more than 50 % of total working hours to 30 %. This was ten years ago and time used for these tasks has been reduced further with some disparity between subject fields. In our library one of the fundamental ideas in organizational change has been the establishment of feedback mechanisms from use to internal services. All staff members, also subject specialists, must have direct contact with users, and as a minimum they must use 20 % of weekly working hours at a reference desk or another public service point. Another means was the introduction of automatic acquisition of monographs in some cases. If a user requests a new book (from this year or the year before), and the library has not got it, the book is bought without further deliberation. Also all foreign books referred to in Danish newspapers are bought without further consideration. The subject specialists dispute this kind of automatic selection. Only a minor part of foreign monographs are selected in this way, but enough to create some excitement. From a management point of view it is not only good service but also an effective way of saying that things must be done in a new way. The introduction of these and other measures were seen by quite a few staff members as a management emphasis on figures rather than on content, as a shift from quality to quantity. It was not the case. It was a change from a definition of quality based on library-internal criteria to a more open concept of quality, which also includes library-external criteria. In these years the catchwords in the internal politics of libraries were not library specific words, but words from management and the private service sector. Only a few years ago we defined demands on staff as this:

• willingness to accept changes
• engaged in improving efficiency
• multifunctional
• has quality ambitions

As you can see there is very little about library skills not to mention subject expertise. The demands stated here reflected the needs of the library at the time, but it was not happy years for subject specialists. In 1996 a user survey in the State & University Library gave a distressing result for subject specialists as one of their main tasks - classification - was questioned: 80 % used the classification system seldom if ever, 14 % used it sometimes and only 6 % used it on a regular basis.

A new kind of subject specialist?

Only a few years ago there was some scepticism as to the future of subject specialists: did they possess the attitudes and skills needed in the future research library? In fact the number of subject specialists was reduced. From 1988 to 1998 the number of subject specialists in the 20 biggest Danish research libraries was reduced by 5 % (from 203 to 193). In view of the discussions about the future role of subject specialists the reduction is quite moderate. I suppose a foreigner would say that this reflects a relatively favourable economic situation in Danish libraries. But more important in this context: the figures do not show that a significant change is under way. Library managers now seem to have a more positive view of subject specialists, and a new kind of subjects specialist is beginning to form. It is possible in one word to sum up, what has created this change: the Internet. The Internet has created new challenges: users expect easier and quicker access to information resources in different format (text, graphics, sound etc.). It has also created new opportunities: new technologies sustain new services and facilitate new ways of working and of working together. There is no need to say much more about this; it is what we all discuss in our libraries and at conferences. I will just say a little about how we experience this and how it affects our perception of the role of the subject specialist. In the early days of the Internet we saw a threat called 'library bypass': libraries would be unnecessary in the digital age with ready information only a click away, or alternatively libraries would end as museums of the outdated print technology. Nowadays we talk of hybrid libraries and see new roles for libraries and librarians. The supply of information is increasing dramatically and users need help with information overload. Users - not all but many - need help with filtering out excess, with focussing on relevance, with evaluation of quality and ascertaining of authenticity. (It is quite easy to give examples of this; I will not into details now, but refer to an article by Nancy John in the journal Libri²). I do not believe this is wishful thinking on part of libraries. In Denmark, as in other countries, we have a national electronic library programme (Denmark's Electronic Research Library) and as part of this we are involved in the development of several electronic portals to information resources in different areas. The areas are defined by faculty (e. g. social science) or by subject (music; clinical medicine). Subject specialists have an important role in the construction and the maintenance of such portals.

New technology not only makes it easy to combine different kinds of resources. It also sustains custom-made services. In contrast to many other information providers on the net, libraries know their customers, they are normally registered as users. Libraries can move from supply-oriented to demand-driven, from passive to active information provision. Knowing their users libraries can put information into context, making sense of information for the library's users. In this process the subject specialist acts as the "liaison officer" between library and faculty. It is a more proactive and extrovert role than the traditional role with emphasis on collecting and classifying. It is an important role: the university we serve has made a survey on libraries, and one of the conclusions was that best results are obtained where the subject specialist plays an active role.

The fact that subject knowledge is seen as important does not bring back the old subject specialist. We need a combination of subject expertise, information technology skills and social capabilities, networking capabilities, and of course the library specific: in-depth knowledge of the characteristics of information resources and of files and file structures. The new subject specialists must have a special or even rare combination of competencies. But they do exist and others are on their way motivated by challenging opportunities created by information technology. They may not be new stars, but they will have central position in the new networked library.

Institutional setting

So far I have concentrated on the library tasks of subject specialists. Some of them have another task: they do research within their subject fields. As mentioned earlier for many years academic librarians in university libraries had the possibility of using up to 25% of weekly working hours on research in a subject they have chosen themselves. It was a possibility or a right, not an obligation. As workload and control of research output increased most subject specialists in our library gave up the possibility.
In the late 1980's the organizational setting around research activities in university libraries was changed. Research activities in libraries (and in archives and museums) were covered by the regulations for government research institutions, such as the national science and technology laboratory, the national environmental research institute, and the national institute of social research. In 1996 the parliament passed a separate law on research activities in archives, libraries and museums belonging to the Ministry of Culture, and a structure of positions and requirements for obtaining a research position were laid down.
We have now two kinds of subject specialists in Danish university libraries: some subject specialists are employed within the structure of research positions and have research as a duty, others are employed as academic staff and do not do research. When this arrangement was introduced there was some misgivings as to the prospect of having different kinds of subject specialists. So far it has worked fairly good - at least seen from a library point of view. If you ask a research manager you might have different view, but that is another story.

Appendix

Subject specialists/research librarians in Danish research libraries (libraries with 2 or more research librarians), 1998

¹ Svend Larsen is Deputy Director, State & University Library, Aarhus, Denmark, and Editor, Libri. International Journal of Libraries and Information Services (K. G. Saur Verlag, München). E-mail: sl@statsbiblioteket.dk

² Nancy R. John: The Ethics of the Click: Users and Digital Information in the Internet Age. Libri. International Journal of Libraries and Information Services, vol. 50, 2000, no. 2, p. 129-135.