Who are academic libraries for?

There is a dearth of literature written by librarians and information professionals positioning, planning, and evaluating how researchers, academic staff, and students use the library services provided by their university. But beyond members of the local community and the public, there is a another stakeholder in the mix who is largely ignored. Yeah, the other people who work at universities. They go by many names; non-academic, support, administrative, or managerial staff. Or in some cases, just the staff. One university I worked for in Australia boldly called them professional staff - and that is what I will call them here.

Several years ago I was working for a large Russel Group university in such a position within their information services group. The research support project I was working on would wrap up in six months time, so needing to get up to speed on the different issues involved I turned towards the library. After searching the online catalogue I had a list of books that looked helpful enough, and I made the trip to building during my lunch break. I asked at the service desk how to go about borrowing books - how many can I check out at once, how long can I borrow them for etc. The response I received left me reeling.

Library employee: "Oh, you're admin staff. You can't borrow items."
Me: "I'm sorry, what?"
Library employee: "Administrative staff aren't allowed to borrow books."

And then she made a sympathetic sad face and I left the building carrying with me a mixture of unpleasant feelings. Foremost, I felt confused. This made no sense whatsoever. What about my professional development? How was I supposed to provide the support that researchers needed without the appropriate skills or knowledge? I also felt incredibly alienated and well, small. I wasn't important enough to be allowed to borrow books? Were other employees, academic staff and researchers, and even students, somehow more legitimate than me? And finally, the pinko-leftie information professional in me was angry. Furious even. Libraries are for everyone dammit.

Long after leaving that organisation, the experience has stayed with me. And while perhaps libraries at other universities aren't so brazenly selective in their definition of who a user should or could be, I've noticed that there are subtle cues that signal to professional staff that the library is not for them. We have induction guides for new members of academic staff, and for about twenty different types of students but not for professional staff. We have library subject guides for students and academic staff in different disciplines, for those involved in different types of research, and for students with disabilities, but not for professional staff. We organise hundreds of hours worth of induction events for students when they arrive, and individual welcome meetings with newly appointed academic and research staff, but none for professional staff. We have budgets grouped by discipline, degree type, and research area, but again nothing for professional staff. We're not sending a particularly inclusive message here and it's kind of embarrassing.

And so is the lack of critical LIS research in this area. Because we know that digital literacy and information behaviour are factors in organisational effectiveness. So it follows that we would be interested in improving both in all our employees. But after combing through literature I could only find a handful of studies that explored the relationship between academic libraries and professional staff. Why is no one talking about this?

When my line manager suggested working more closely with professional staff I took that recommendation and ran with it. However, it's difficult to model something like this when there is little in the way of existing good practice. It's an issue that's close to my heart, and I'm working on it. But with so many other competing interests in academia, it's going to be a long time coming.