The Financial Crisis

AcADEMIC LIBRARIES are in crisis, and it appears that the larger the library, the larger the crisis. The major need for charting a course to a successful future is definition of fruitful objectives. Such objectives as library support of and coordination with its institution's programs are no longer sufficient; these rationalized goals of the past are inadequate for the future. To establish useful system objectives, much research must be done to determine needs of students and faculty.1 For instance, it has been customary for academic librarians to speak of faculty library use as though each faculty member has basically the same needs, but a recent Harvard report reveals that 65.7 per cent of the Harvard tenured faculty does not feel that the Harvard libraries are one of three most atb·active or three least ~ttractive ~fea­ tures of the Harvard environment. 2 Can it be that for two-thirds of the Harvard faculty the quality of the count y's largest university library system does not diHer significantly from that of other institutions?