ARL 247: The Changing Role of Intellectual Authority

ARL 247: The Changing Role of Intellectual Authority.

ARL Bimonthly Report 247, August 2006
The Changing Role of Intellectual Authority
Download a PDF of this article
by Peter J. Nicholson, President, Council of Canadian Academies

Remarks presented at the 148th ARL Membership Meeting held in collaboration with the Canadian Association of Research Libraries in Ottawa, Ontario, May 18, 2006.

Today I will argue that what qualifies as intellectual authority in contemporary societies—who and what to believe—is changing fundamentally. I will speculate as to the reasons, and I will draw out some of the implications for institutions of knowledge brokerage, among which research libraries are of course prominent.

The thesis in a nutshell is this. People today are much less prepared to defer to the experts. But at the same time, we are being swamped with data and information—a glut that cries out for analysis and summary. So there's a dilemma. Who to turn to? Increasingly the answer is—Well, to ourselves of course, as individuals empowered by a World Wide Web that has rapidly evolved into a social medium. More specifically, it is a medium that today supports massively distributed collaboration on a global scale that—we can only hope—will help us make sense of it all.

How does this deep social and cultural transformation relate to the particular concerns of those of us in this room? I can do no better than quote from an ARL Task Force on Collections and Access Issues to the effect that transformation in libraries mirrors the ongoing change of the research institution, just as the transformation of the institution reflects broader societal and cultural changes. The transformation of the research library cannot be understood apart from this larger context and the cultural changes that shape institutional growth.1

My purpose in these remarks is to offer one outsider's perspective on what seem to me to be the deepest and most pervasive changes that are shaping the transformation not only of the library, but of all forms of intellectual authority in today’s society.

Let me say at the outset that I am not particularly comfortable with the future I foresee. I am, after all, a charter member of the "old guard" and will never really belong to the new. But I am also an optimist and a realist. The world has changed—and so must we.

Recommended professional reading, for all librarians, not just those in the academy...