Universities Research libraries (Collections) Boundaries Lorcan Dempsey U Washington Libraries 19 March 2010 With thanks to Brian Lavoie and Constance Malpas

Worldwide demand for cars will never exceed one million, primarily because of a limitation in the number of available chauffeurs. Daimler

A diversion: UW book collections

University of Washington in WorldCat Statistics current as of January 2010 Total number of UW holdings in WorldCat: 4,045,667 Number of UW-contributed records in WorldCat: 412,197 Number of holdings attached to UW-contributed records: 2,088,555 Number of items held by UW & 4 or fewer other institutions: 541,551 Scale Contribution Value of Contribution Rareness Diversity 378 languages (31% of titles non-English) 236 countries of publication (52% of titles non-US)

HathiTrust: 12 month growth trajectory Equal in size to median ARL collection (2008) Equal in scope to University of Washington (UW) Data current as of February 2010

Hathi Trust: Subject Distribution Data current as of February 2010 N=3.2 million titles ; 5.3 million volumes Humanities content (literature, history) dominates – presages shift in scholarly practice?

11 miles of recoverable shelf space = 27% of titles held by UW Data current as of February 2010 University of Washington ‘mirrored’ in Hathi

UW: Potential Redistribution of Print Resource Choices?

Overview

Education & research Collections Research libraries Crude Reductive Simplistic

The business of education Research and learning workflows Information products and services Library technology

The business of education Research and learning workflows Information products and services Library technology

Overview

a quick look at education

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Colleges have three basic business models for attracting and keeping students. Two will continue to work in the next decade, and one almost certainly will not. Chronicle of Higher Education

1.Research/elite (Strong brand, connected to international network of science and scholarship; educate many of the political and business elite; flagship), 2.Convenience (community colleges and for-profit providers, focused on preparation for further education or for a career) Education as a service. 3.The mixed middle (broad education. Not kept up with distance and convenience agendas, high overhead, limited research funding, value of 4 year immersive experience, …). (vocabulary adapted - LD)

Alignment with mission of parent institution … … in a network environment … … and focus on costs … … will continue to redraw the boundaries of the academic library … and force choices. Obvious?

Libs in ‘convenience’ sector An infrastructure cost ROI Make learning more effective Focus on ‘packaged digital’ and integration with learning process Organizational integration with learning and student support Focused on institutional goals not on ‘community of libraries’.

‘Middle’ academic Make research and learning more productive Selective local engagement around creation and curation of scholarly and learning materials with the exception of a small number of large research libraries, retrospective print collections will be managed as a pooled resource and physically consolidated in large regional stores 80+% of library materials spending in the academic sector will be directed toward licensed electronic content distributed by a small number of large aggregators Strong downward pressure on costs will push towards library consolidation, more ‘instrumental’ resource sharing, and a move to outsourced services.

Research libs Resources. Libraries that support doctoral education – <20% US academic libraries but account for.. – >50% library spending and … – >75% of expenditures on information resources. Digital infrastructure. Preservation mandate: the scholarly record. Comprehensive collections. Support for scholarly resources. Support for digital scholarship

research

“Emerging global model”

Many countries have initiatives which try to concentrate resources on research excellence, aiming to maintain or establish their presence in the Research/elite group. These include China, Germany, S Korea, Japan, Canada, Taiwan, France. Some countries/regions more consciously support ‘directed diversity’, looking at the balance between research excellence, broad-based education and vocational/convenience approaches: these include Australia, Norway, and Catalonia. (Several sources – LD)

Predictably, institutional attention and resources are directed at activities and local infrastructure that supports high-profile research activities, especially in the natural and social sciences, where federal funding can account for up to 70% of the institutional research portfolio. Scholarship in the humanities, by contrast, is much more dependent on institutional budget allocations and private grant funding. As a result, support for library-based research in the humanities is especially vulnerable to changes in academic priorities and the availability of endowment funds. The importance of STM

Scholarly work that used to depend on local research collections and infrastructure is increasingly reliant on content and services that are created and managed outside of individual academic institutions. Disciplinary resource (Arxiv, Repec, SSRN,..) Community, tools, … Tony Hey, Microsoft Eigenfactor project Around and above the institution …

collection trends

Volume of publications will continue to grow. Format will become less important than channel: Education (text books, learning materials), Consumer (Amazon/Google/Apple), professional publishing (Pearson, Reed-Elsevier, Thomson Reuters), … Growth in public and research materials but concerns about how to sustain in longer term. Research and learning materials as social objects. Social will become a major element of all publishing – content will be the basis for learning and social experiences. Move to digital raises major issues around ‘knowledge enclosure’ through licensing which create interesting service issues for (public) libraries.

Data from NCES. Analysis by Constance Malpas.

Forecasts – Digital Availability of books Current* Trade: Acad/Prof: Text books: H/S: Ten Years#Five Years* Front Back Segment 25% 10% 20% 1% 85% 75% 90% 20% 100% 50% 30% 10% 5% Memo: *Assumes top tier publishers – 1,000 active publishers # Assumes any active publisher selling on Amazon.com Impact of Google Book Search and Google Editions? OCLC work commissioned from Michael Cairns. Based on interviews with selection of industry experts. College:

Forecasts – Digital Revenues (books) Current* Trade: Acad/Prof: H/S: Ten Years#Five Years* Front Back Segment 3% 1% 5% 0% 25% 10% 50% 5% 60% 80% 90% 30% 5% 10% 5% Memo: *Assumes top tier publishers – 1,000 active publishers # Assumes any active publisher selling on Amazon.com Text books: College: OCLC work commissioned from Michael Cairns. Based on interviews with selection of industry experts.

For-ProfitNon-Profit Paid Access Free Access Models of Provision for Scholarly Communication/Journals Author Pages Social Networks (e.g., Nature Network) Open Access (e.g., BioMed Central) “trad” Publishing Open Access (e.g., PLoS) ArXiv.org RePEc.org PubMed Central NARCIS ICPSR American Economic Review JSTOR Often enhanced with new forms of value added: e.g., bundling articles with data; semantic enrichment Mostly experimental at this point Small but growing segment, aided by public policy support Long tradition of coexistence with commercial publishing

For-ProfitNon-Profit Paid Access Free Access Models of Provision for Scholarly Communication/Journals Author Pages Social Networks (e.g., Nature Network) Open Access (e.g., BioMed Central) “trad” Publishing Open Access (e.g., PLoS) ArXiv.org RePEc.org PubMed Central NARCIS ICPSR American Economic Review JSTOR Often enhanced with new forms of value added: e.g., bundling articles with data; semantic enrichment Mostly experimental at this point Small but growing segment, aided by public policy support Long tradition of coexistence with commercial publishing Research institutions: significant funder? Research institutions: major constituency? Research institutions: 75% of academic revenue?

For-ProfitNon-Profit Paid Access Free Access 5 years?

“In other words, throughout history, libraries have depended on destruction. And today, in an era of electronic abundance they still operate within an increasingly imaginary economy of scarcity – fragments, incunabula, manuscripts, rare books. ….Once, books were chained to the wall. Today, print is an afterthought: “Do you want a receipt with that?” Lisbet Rausing

COLLECTIONS GRID highlow high Stewardship/ scarcity Uniqueness Low-Low Freely-accessible web resources Open source software Newsgroup archives Low-High Books & Journals Newspapers Gov Documents CD & DVD Maps Scores High-Low Research & Learning Materials Institutional records ePrints/tech reports Learning objects Courseware E-portfolios Research data Prospectus Insitutional website High-High Special Collections Rare books Local/Historical Newspapers Local History Materials Archives & Manuscripts Theses & dissertations

You see the problem. What is the library, when the totality of experience approaches that which can be remembered? What is it when we no longer preserve only those fragments that time, fire, and barbarians have left us? When we are no longer able to safeguard only remnants of our discourses on thought, memory, and images, but the thoughts, memories, and images themselves – complete? What do we do when we have not only the Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, but also Vasari’s blog, wiki, twitter, texts, s, chatroom, Facebook, radio interviews, TV appearances, and electronic notebooks? Lisbet Rausing

COLLECTIONS GRID highlow high Stewardship Uniqueness All institutions: shift to licensed All institutions: manage transition from print? Licensed channel providers: consumer, education, scholarly,.. All institutions: How much investment? Research institutions: managing institutional assets Research institutions: new scholarly outputs All institutions: learning materials

library trends: boundaries, focus, scaling and sourcing

If this trend continues library allocations would fall below 0.5% by Growth in for-profit sector, concerns about infrastructure costs in the ‘middle’ and budget issues in the research sector all support this trend. Analysis based on NCES data: Constance Malpas

The scholarly record Legacy print Digitized print Licenced (books + J) New scholarly outputs Primary sources Data Archives/SpecColl Communications Research infrastructure Offsite storage Repositories Facilities Services (Arxiv, …) Management of institutional assets Records Reputation Resources – R&L

a Coasian view of the academic library Universities find it useful and economical to internalize a bundle of library-related activities As the pattern of transaction costs change, so too will the boundaries of the library. Researchers/learners have more options – network.

Unbundling the corporation Harvard Business Review (1999)

Core components of a firm Customer Relationship Management Product Innovation Infrastructure Back office capacities that support day-to-day operations “Routinized” workflows Economies of scale important Develop new products and services and bring them to market Speed/flexibility important Attracting and building relationships with customers “Service-oriented”, customization Economies of scope important

Libraries Customer Relationship Management Product Innovation Infrastructure Physical space, Physical inventory, Repository Systems infrastructure Online services, etc. Acquire/develop new information resources and services to support evolving research and learning workflows Provision of study & social spaces Interpret learning and research needs Personalized research assistance Marketing and assessment Customization/personalization

Customer relationship management Vital to maintain? Deeper engagement with the university mission Local customization Analytics: data driven engagement – Fragmented

Innovation Customer relationship management Shared services – Organizational?

Infrastructure challenge Print increasingly collaborative: – Collaborative arrangements for print – Collaborative arrangements for digital Licensed materials: – Reduce cost of management through private providers Institutional research and learning materials: – Selective investments; leave to others where appropriate – Search for collaborative solutions where possible – Relationship management Systems infrastructure – Consolidation of traditional management environment – Selective local investment in digital infrastructure – Collaborative and third party cloud offerings

InstitutionGroupWebscale Peer (collaborative) HathiTrust; DuraSpace Orbis CascadeRepec.org Public (state/national) Jisc; OhioLink Third party Locally procured systems and services Worldcat Cataloging Flickr Commons, Google Scholar Scale S ource

Obvious? No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious. George Bernard Shaw

Thank you Lorcan Dempsey