What Is the True State and Status of Academic Librarianship in the UK? A Response

What a couple of years it has been. We (as society) have had to dig deep, emerging from the pandemic perhaps slightly battered and bruised, perhaps looking at the world through a different lens and, perhaps, asking questions about the “what, where, why, and how” of what we have always done, or perhaps done for too long. In May 2021, a new phrase entered our vernacular, the Great Resignation, coined by Professor Anthony Klotz as a way of understanding a mass exodus from employment and, ultimately, the impact of the pandemic on workforces globally (see Stark, 2021 as one of many press articles on the subject). But the pandemic has not just created a mass exodus. It has also created a pace of, dare I say, unprecedented change in education and the what, where, why, and how. Teaching has shifted from campus to online, and we are now trying to unpack what blended looks like in a post-pandemic world. We are looking to hold on to much of the, arguably, good practice that is evolving from the knee jerk reaction of, to use a technical phrase, the “lift and shift” across rather disconnected learning spaces to something more intentionally and inclusively designed. For libraries, the pandemic has created questions which I believe call for a reimagining in just about everything we do—and how we do it. This includes wrangling the unfathomable and certainly untenable price hikes in e-resources (Gray et al., 2021) but also a need to reimagine our spaces and places, and who we are as professional librarians. As a result, with all of this in mind, I have been interested to see editorials from Wales (2021) and Appleton (2022) chewing over the state of academic librarianship and future gazing the post-COVID academic library environment. I have been thinking about this in relation to the university library in my care over the last year. Who are we as a service—and as professionals within it? How is this evolving, and how do we know that (a) we are getting it right and (b) understanding where there are synergies across professions, institutions, and sectors—and clearly reasoned differences? How do we make space for us to be “the expert in the room”? What skills, knowledge, and behaviors does this mean the professional librarians we employ need? Can we future gaze these and get ahead—be proactive rather than reactive? What follows are my own reflections on these very questions—and hopefully, at least in part, one response to Tim’s question on the state and status of academic librarianship in the UK. Maybe I can also create a “public Twitter spat between librarians.”