With 73 semiautonomous branches, the library is the world’s largest academic collection, a point of pride at the school. But its size and structure have held back efforts to adapt to digital technology and the increasingly high cost of academic journals, said Garber’s statement.
The library branches have individual staffs whose jobs could be redundant after services are consolidated. But Garber said there is no official number of staffers who could be targeted for early retirement plans or layoffs. “We aren’t even at a time at which we could give a meaningful answer to a question like that,’’ he said. And, he added, Harvard generally prefers “voluntary separations.’’
Many Harvard librarians have complained on Twitter and a private e-mail list that they feel left out of the decision-making process that led to yesterday’s announcement. Some, fearing involuntary layoffs in the wake of controversial internal meetings last month, said cuts could hurt the library.
“I want so much to trust this process,’’ said James Adler, who works in cataloging at the Divinity School. “I’m still hoping the university is looking to do the right thing.’’
The plan calls for consolidating services across branches and developing systemwide policies on what materials are acquired, how they are stored and preserved, and how students and scholars can retrieve them.
That is likely to mean canceling identical journal subscriptions held by different schools, a move that could provoke a conflict with academic publishers who will lose money as a result.
Publishers have fought similar efforts at other schools, arguing that even after partial consolidations, the libraries remain separate.
“We have heard of instances of duplicate electronic subscriptions as well as physical journal and books. That’s particularly inefficient,’’ Garber said. “We’re essentially paying twice for the same thing.’’
