Twenty years. Two decades. 20. XX. 1,040 weeks. 7,305 days. No matter how I say it, it seems like a good chunk of time. And today marks my 20th anniversary working at UMass Chan (or as it was known when I started here, University of Massachusetts Medical School). In 2005, January 3rd was a Monday. Thank goodness that this year it’s Friday. The week’s over. Whew!
For the past several years I’ve given an annual library update to our university’s Committee on Scientific and Research Affairs. I did this year’s presentation on December 18th. Being so close to my 20 year mark, I chose to talk a bit about how much the library – and the med school – has changed since I arrived. It was a cathartic exercise. Looking at the numbers, the trends, the shifting priorities for the university and my profession was helpful, because for a while now, I’ve been feeling like a victim of gaslighting.
The school has grown exponentially the past 20 years. There’s not been a day without construction somewhere on campus. We have 4 large new buildings for both clinical and research endeavors, 2 new parking garages (and half of an old one gone to make room for one of those buildings), significant extensions to the connected hospital. Class sizes have ballooned, particularly for the medical school. Our research community is now a research enterprise, probably twice what it was when I got here. We’ve taken on new sites all over the state for education, research, and health care advocacy. We also now have TWO Nobel Prize winners among our faculty. A medical school founded in the 1970s to train primary care physicians for Massachusetts has rapidly grown into a world renowned medical education and research center. On so many fronts, we celebrate all of these things. In fact, celebrating our rankings and our growth is really the thing that I believe our current administration prides itself on the most.
However …
I arrived on campus in 2005 and joined a staff of 38 in the library. We had 4 people in administration, 8 in Research & Education Services, 7 in Technical Services, 2 Systems Librarians, 14 people working in Access Services, and 3 specialized librarians. (We also had 7 people working for the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, New England Region.) Today, we have a staff of 16. (We still have the contract for the NNLM and there are today 10 people working for Region 7.)
In 2005, our mission was to provide access, services, and educational and research support to 1,920 faculty and students (not counting our hospital/clinical partners or administrative and professional, non-faculty staff) of UMass Med School. Today, our mission is to provide the same (though in some very different ways) to 5,027 faculty, students, researchers, administrative staff, and yes more of those uncounted hospital/clinical partners. Easily in the thousands. In short, it’s very much a tale of two trends. A sharp, upward trajectory for the institution as a whole, and a steep and rapid decline in the department that I’ve called home for most of my time here.
To be fair, academic medical/health sciences libraries are very different today than they were in 2005. Back when I started, we had floors of journals and books, bound and unbound. A print library requires a significant investment in technical services staff in order to run efficiently and effectively. The shift to digital collections has changed not only our staffing needs, but also our physical space. Tremendously! Today we have zero print journals, outside of archived volumes, and a very small book collection. Students have much more space to study individually or in groups, or what’s most common, in groups alone. The place is brighter, lighter, more open without all of those lines of shelves. AND it is busy. It remains as busy as ever. Seeing students studying is something that hasn’t changed in 20 years. Seeing students in the library is a given. Anyone saying otherwise is simply demonstrating their lack of awareness of reality.
We no longer need lots of staff to check in, catalog, and bind journals and books. We answer a lot more reference questions via email than in person, so we need fewer people to cover the front desk. It’s not surprising that our staff is smaller, BUT 80% smaller denies a significant truth – that is that the demands for services, education, and research support have NOT declined over the years. They have grown. We reach more people in much more complex and time-consuming ways than we ever did when I started here. We have tools to track research outcomes, tools to manage systematic reviews, tools to archive and disseminate the work of our community. We have skills and expertise in areas throughout the educational curriculum and the research life cycle. We work collaboratively and in partnership with faculty, students, administrative staff, and researchers on projects of all kind, many demanding much more than what we used to offer at the old reference desk.
In 2005, we had one library staff person for every 64 patrons. Today, we have one for every 314. Again, this only counts faculty and students. Add in members of the larger research community, the scores of administrative staff, and countless individuals who work for our clinical partners and who knows the ratio. But I know one thing for sure, it’s damaging.
It’s damaging to the quality of education and research we’re able to provide to our community. It’s damaging to the well-being of staff. And it’s incredibly short-sighted for an administration to continue a push for growth without any sound, financial planning and/or prudence to ensure the infrastructure for success is in place. When departments, like the library, are deemed nothing more than “cost centers” to be cut whenever a budget shortfall appears, one cannot help but question the priorities of the university at large. (I wrote more on this topic a few years back, when we were beginning to really hear the message of budget woes.)
Once upon a time, I worked for a stainless steel manufacturing company and the chief leader of the business, Dan, had a great saying, “It costs money to be good.” It’s too bad we don’t have more Dans in higher education, because it DOES cost money to create an environment and an institution that produces excellence in education, research, and in our case, too, health care. When I landed on this campus 20 years ago, I felt like this truth was a given. It’s certainly a different world today.
I wish everyone a happy, healthy, and peaceful 2025. May you find and feel valued in what you do.
A Librarian by Any Other Name 