Guest Editorial: NRC's Planned Cuts to CISTI
by Simon Lloyd
March 17, 2009
I want to thank APLA for this opportunity to share with you the text of a letter I am planning to send to my MP. The intensity of the anger and alarm I feel at the prospect of major cuts to CISTI has come as a surprise even to myself: I'm a special collections librarian with an Arts background, so it would be fair to say that CISTI has not been a big part of my academic or professional life. Part of my upset stems, I suppose, from a general distaste for seeing bad things happen to good libraries (and librarians), but I have the sense, too, that if CISTI were to be cut so dramatically at a time of investment in "stimulus" and "knowledge infrastructure", then -- philisophically, at least -- no library is safe.
While I share many of the concerns raised about the general lack of support for Canadian research and development in the latest budget, including cuts to the three research granting councils, I especially alarmed at the prospect of cuts to the National Research Council’s Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (CISTI). Recent reports suggest that CISTI’s funding will be slashed from its current level of ca. $48 million to $16 million, a crippling decrease of approximately 70%. Even if the actual cuts were to prove less drastic than these early reports suggest, it must be understood that any significant reduction in funding support for CISTI will be extremely harmful to Canadian research and innovation.
With its responsibilities for the National Library of Science and the NRC Press, and its Information Intelligence Service for government agencies and private enterprise researchers, CISTI is essential for the efficient collection, organization, and diffusion of scientific, technical and medical (STM) information in Canada. A significant decrease in CISTI’s level of service will, therefore, have impacts far beyond the NRC, including, for example, a greatly reduced return on investment for the ca. $3.7 billion allocated in the latest federal budget for Canada’s “knowledge infrastructure”. Sadly, it appears that the political vision shown in this funding -- which I applaud -- is being badly undermined elsewhere by the bureaucratic intricacies of the Treasury Board’s “Strategic Review” process, which is, apparently, mandating the cuts to CISTI just described. To extend the infrastructure analogy, there is a real danger of tearing down bridges even as we upgrade the roads leading to them.
In a February 26th message to CISTI’s hundreds of Canadian and international partners, the Institute’s Director General, Pam Bjornson advises: “CISTI will continue to exist but will function on a significantly smaller scale, and will seek to deliver some services via private sector vendors or partners." This completely vitiates the vague reassurance offered at the conclusion of the message: "CISTI’s core value of delivering quality STM information service remains unchanged ... ." Since such delivery is, by definition, a large – and ever-growing -- task, there is no way a “significantly smaller” CISTI can do it.
Furthermore, there is no realistic prospect of this delivery being offered reliably or affordably "via private sector vendors or partners": information vendors are, like most of the private sector, being hammered by the global recession, so this is hardly an opportune time to be looking for "partners". In any case, over-dependence on the private sector for research information distribution saw skyrocketing journal subscription fees -- particularly for STM titles -- over the past two decades, a trend which nearly crippled some research libraries before librarians and researchers (including some at CISTI) began to develop ameliorative measures, such as Open Access. Even if a private sector provider could be found to take on some of CISTI’s services, then, there is a wealth of experience suggesting that they could not offer them to the Canadian research community affordably.
What must surely add to the bewilderment of CISTI’s many partners is the fact that the Institute’s Strategic Plan for 2005-2010 (developed in consultation with scores of partners and stakeholders), updated and expanded into 2011 by a Business Plan that is not even a year old, provides no hint of a “significantly smaller” CISTI. Instead, these two documents highlight numerous recent achievements and new initiatives in CISTI’s ongoing efforts to build Canada’s scientific “infostructure”. It seems apprarent, then, that the abrupt recent announcement of a much-reduced CISTI is simply a hasty and ill-considered cost-cutting measure. Quite apart from the “penny-wise, pound-foolish” impact such cuts will have on Canada’s entire knowledge infrastructure, it must be noted that CISTI has led all of the NRC’s units, institutes, and research centres in consistently achieving external revenues equivalent to ca. 40% of its operating costs. In other words, permanent slashing of a large part of CISTI’s operations will effectively deprive the NRC of one of its most reliable revenue-generators.
In conclusion, I wish to emphasize that CISTI is the heart that circulates the informational life-blood of Canadian research and innovation: while changes and improvements are always necessary to keep such a vital organ healthy, radical and invasive surgery are insupportable, especially in such uncertain times. The resources and services that CISTI has spent decades developing into world-leading models of efficiency and cost-effectiveness have their roots in times of crises far greater than we face now: the NRC hired its first librarian three years into an apparently endless war (1917), and built its new Temple of Science research facility -- including 20 kilometers-worth of library shelving -- as the world reeled into the Great Depression (1930 - 1932). CISTI is a gift bought and nurtured for us all at great price through nearly a century of dedication and sacrifice: we should be taking steps to ensure that this gift is passed on to future generations bigger and better than ever, rather than slashing it beyond all recognition.
- Simon Lloyd, M.L.I.S.
University Archives and Special Collections Librarian, Robertson Library, University of Prince Edward Island
The opinions expressed herein are my own, and not necessarily those of my employer.