Knowledge, Universities, and Libraries: Some Social-Functional Aspects of Interinstitutional Rationalization in Canada.

Libraries are different things to different people as well as different things to the same people. In the university environment, the library has an important function as an articulating symbol, as the tangible reference point of the value system of the "examined life." Nothing else so well symbolizes the broad cultural aims of education and research. The exclusive focus on the production-control functions of libraries has obscured some of the important latent functions of the library as a monument. There is an urgent need for a new definition of archive publication if the integrity of the research process is to be preserved. In view of what is known of the scholarly process, and the reward system which supports the dedication of the scholar to research, it is unlikely that scholars will willingly surrender their demand for a tangible and even somewhat idiosyncratic mode of physical substantiation of their research output. (Author)