If the Library Is the Heart of the University, Then Treat It Like One

Few metaphors in higher education have more staying power than this one: the library is the heart of the university. It appears in campaign literature, convocation speeches, and strategic plans. University presidents invoke it with evident sincerity. Donors respond to it. Students, at some level, believe it. And the people who work in libraries have heard it so many times that it has become both a source of pride and, if we are being candid, a quiet source of unease.

Because here is what we know about hearts: you do not cut them. You protect them. You invest in them. You make sure they are strong enough to keep everything else functioning. And yet, in difficult fiscal times, academic libraries are sometimes among the first places administrators look to cut costs. Collections get canceled. Staff positions go unfilled. Hours are reduced. The metaphor, it turns out, does not always translate into policy.

This is not an accusation. The fiscal pressures facing colleges and universities right now are real and serious. Enrollment challenges tied to demographic shifts, declining public confidence in higher education, and a volatile political environment that has strained federal research funding have together created conditions in which every institutional leader is being asked to make hard choices. Libraries understand this. We live inside the same institution you are trying to sustain.

But this moment is also an invitation for a different kind of conversation: one about what it means to truly value the library, not just in times of crisis, but always, and especially during the good times when that support can make a lasting difference.

When Seamlessness Becomes Invisibility

One of the great achievements of academic libraries over the past two decades has been making access to information feel effortless. A scholar sitting at home at midnight can retrieve a journal article published last month, a digitized manuscript from the eighteenth century, or a dataset from a longitudinal study spanning thirty years, often with nothing more than a click or two. That seamlessness is not accidental. It is the product of carefully negotiated licenses, sustained financial investment, sophisticated infrastructure, and the expertise of skilled library professionals who work every day to make the complex invisible.

The challenge with seamlessness, though, is that it can shade into invisibility. When the library is working perfectly, you may not think about the library at all. You think about your research. You think about your deadline. You think about the idea forming in your mind. This is, in a sense, exactly what we want. We want the library to be so well integrated into the scholarly workflow that it simply works.

But invisibility has consequences. When people do not see the library, they may not think to speak up for it. And when budget conversations happen, as they inevitably do, the loudest voices in the room tend to belong to those who have most recently felt a loss, not those who have been benefiting all along without quite noticing.

What Loss Reveals

Ask any librarian, and they will tell you: the phone starts ringing the moment access goes away. A journal package is canceled, and within days, faculty are writing to their deans. A database subscription lapses, and graduate students discover mid-dissertation that the resources they have been counting on are no longer there. A branch library closes, and the community that depended on it suddenly finds its voice.

The support that emerges in these moments is genuine, and it matters. Letters to administrators, faculty senate resolutions, student petitions, these are real expressions of solidarity, and libraries are grateful for them. But they are also, by definition, reactive. They arise in response to a problem that has already occurred, and the work of reversing a budget decision, once made, is considerably harder than preventing it.

What if that same energy, that same recognition of the library's essential role, were present not just in moments of crisis, but as a steady, visible part of how the university community talks about and invests in its scholarly infrastructure?

What Scholars Can Do

Faculty, researchers, and graduate students are among the library's most important advocates, and they do not always know it. Here are some concrete ways that scholars can help ensure the library remains strong, not just when it is under threat, but as a matter of ongoing practice.

Tell your story. When a library resource supports your research, say so. Include an acknowledgment in your publications. Mention the library in grant applications and reports. These small gestures do two things: they help document the library's contribution to scholarship, and they remind administrators and funders that the library is not a cost center but a research enabler.

Engage with library staff. Subject librarians and research specialists are partners in the scholarly enterprise, not just custodians of collections. Building a relationship with your library liaison means you have a knowledgeable ally who can help you navigate an increasingly complex information landscape, and it also means the library has a better understanding of what your research community needs.

Speak up in governance. Faculty senates and academic councils regularly discuss budget priorities. If the library is not on the agenda, consider raising it. Ask questions about collection funding levels, staffing, and long-term investment plans. These questions send a signal that the faculty are paying attention, and that signal matters.

Advocate proactively, not just reactively. The most powerful advocacy happens before a crisis, not after one. If you value the library's collections and services, say so in annual reviews, in conversations with department chairs, in letters to deans. Make it part of the ongoing record of what your scholarly life depends on.

What University Leaders Can Do

University administrators carry enormous responsibility in a difficult environment, and the decisions they face are rarely simple. Libraries are not asking for immunity from institutional fiscal realities. We are asking to be understood as infrastructure.

Consider the analogy of a university's physical plant. No institution would allow its buildings to deteriorate because maintenance is treated as an indirect cost. The buildings house the work. The library, similarly, houses the knowledge infrastructure that makes the work possible. Cuts to collections, staffing, or technology are not cuts to a service department. They are cuts to the university's capacity to produce and share knowledge.

Invite the library into strategic conversations early. Libraries are often consulted most about operational matters, when what we can offer is much broader: deep expertise in data management, digital preservation, open access, research impact, and the evolving scholarly communication landscape. When university leaders consider institutional reputation, research competitiveness, and student success, the library should be at the table from the outset.

Invest in the library during good fiscal years. This may seem obvious, but it is genuinely rare. The pattern at many institutions is to hold library budgets flat during good times and cut them during bad ones. A more sustainable approach is to treat good years as opportunities to build the endowment and reserve capacity that allow the library to weather difficult periods without sacrificing core services. Many libraries have seen firsthand how strategic investment compounds over time. The reverse is also true: deferred investment accumulates as deferred harm.

What Libraries Can Do

Libraries have responsibilities in this relationship, too, and it would be unfair to speak only about what others should do differently.

We must tell our story better and tell it more often. The data we have about usage, research impact, instructional support, and return on investment should be shared widely, translated into language that resonates with different audiences, and made part of the regular conversation about institutional priorities. We cannot assume that the value of the library is self-evident. We must make it visible.

We must also be genuine partners in institutional problem-solving. When the university faces difficult decisions, libraries should enter those conversations not simply as stakeholders seeking protection but as colleagues with something to offer. Our expertise in knowledge organization, information fluency, scholarly communication, and digital infrastructure is useful to institutions navigating a complex landscape.

And we should keep building relationships with faculty, students, and administrators that make advocacy possible before a crisis arrives. The library that is known and trusted across the institution is far better positioned to weather difficult moments than one that has operated in relative isolation.

A Shared Stake

The metaphor of the heart is a good one, not because it is flattering to libraries, but because it captures something true about interdependence. Hearts do not exist for their own sake. They exist to keep the whole body functioning. And the whole body, in turn, has a profound interest in keeping the heart strong.

The library's health and the university's scholarly vitality are not separate concerns. They are the same concern. Faculty research depends on collections and expertise that libraries provide. Student learning depends on resources and services that libraries sustain. Institutional reputation depends in part on the strength of the knowledge infrastructure that libraries maintain.

The case for supporting the library is not a sentimental one. It is a strategic one. And the best time to make it is not when the cuts are already on the table. It is now, in the ongoing life of the institution, in the everyday conversations about what kind of university we want to be.

If the library is the heart of the university, let us act accordingly: with the constancy, the care, and the long-term investment that a vital organ deserves.