Transcript Slide 1

Creating academic library futures
through “value”
Peter Sidorko
The University of Hong Kong
CALIS Agricultural Conference
September 18-22
Qingdao, China
Two aspects
• “Value” of libraries
• “Value” of librarians
Steve O'Connor Kuopio October, 2009
3
Extinction timeline 2019*
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Sit down breakfasts
Post offices
Direct marketing
Butchers
Free parking
WW1 survivors
Size 0
Libraries
Unfenced beaches
Static ads
* http://www.rossdawsonblog.com/extinction_timeline.pdf
Death of the Library?
• Like those about Twain,
the reports have been
exaggerated.
or
• The (academic) library is
dead! Long live the
(academic) library.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Mark_Twain.jpg
“The best way to predict the future
is to create it.”
Peter Drucker
Things to think about:
The Horizon Report 2010
Key trends: 2010
• The abundance of information
resources challenges the way
education must perform its business.
• People expect to be able to work,
learn, and study whenever and
wherever they want to.
• Work of students is increasingly
collaborative by nature, and there is
more cross campus collaboration
between departments.
http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2010-Horizon-Report.pdf
Critical challenges: 2010
• The role of the academy — and the way we
prepare students for their future lives — is
changing.
• New scholarly forms of authoring, publishing, and
researching - need new metrics.
• Digital media literacy continues its rise in
importance.
• Institutions focus more narrowly on key goals ($s)
Technologies to Watch
•
•
•
•
•
•
Mobile computing
Open content
Electronic books
Simple augmented reality
Gesture-based computing
Visual data analysis
Key trends for a 21st Century
Academic Library
Key trends for a 21st Century Academic
Library*
• Customization and personalization
• Delivering content, services anywhere,
anytime
• Demand for self-service
• Constant change, and innovative and hybrid
approaches and structures
• Successful graduates and productive faculty as
key measures of success (RoI)
• Expanding social environments
• Culture of assessment and accountability
• Need to market content and services and to
raise their awareness and availability
• Collaboration at all levels
• Competition for funding, for collections, for
staff, for donors, for political attention and for
visibility
* Neal, J. & Harboe-Ree, C. (2009) The University of Hong Kong External Review of the
University Libraries [Unpublished Manuscript].
The “value” of libraries
Emerging risks for research libraries (March
2010)
• Risks associated with
uncertain library “value”
– Weakened visibility
– Poorly communicated
• Staffing and human
resources
– Reduced pool
– Skills
– Change management
• Legacy technology
– Difficult to adjust to new
http://www.oclc.org/research/publications/library/2010/2010-03.pdf
Value?
• the quality that renders something desirable
or valuable;
• respect: regard highly; think much of;
• measure: evaluate or estimate the nature,
quality, ability, extent, or significance of;
– wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
It’s all about IMPACT
• If we have no impact, we have no purpose!
• What sort of impact?
– Changes in skills and competences
– Changes in attitudes and behaviour
– Changes in the structure of the library’s clientele
– Better social inclusion
– Higher success in research, study, or job
Difficulties in measuring “Impact”
•
•
•
•
Time-consuming methodologies
Access to data (privacy)
Difficulties in comparing data
A service can have different value and outcome
for different user groups
• Influences on an individual are diverse, and it is
rather difficult to prove that changes in
competences or behaviour are indeed due to the
influence of library services.
• Poll (2005) Measuring the Impact of New Library Services,
http://archive.ifla.org/IV/ifla71/papers/081e-Poll.pdf
Return on Investment (RoI):
A growing library necessity
A recent study
• Phase two study into
research library
contributions to grant
success.
1 Data collection
FACULTY DATA
• # Regular (tenure line) headcount
faculty
• # Principal Investigators/Regular
Researchers
GRANT AWARDS &
FUNDING
•
•
•
•
•
# Grant proposals
# Grants awarded
Amt. of grant income expended (acquitted)
Total # grants expended (acquitted)
Amt. average size grant
LIBRARY EXPENDITURES
• Amt. total Library budget
• Amt. Library materials budget
FACULTY PRODUCTIVITY
• # articles published (institutional records,
if available)
• # articles published (Scopus)
• # articles per PI/RR
• # articles per headcount faculty
• Total # grants expended (acquitted)
• # grants per PI/RR
• # grants per headcount faculty
2 Faculty Survey Questions
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
How many proposals (with you as PI) submitted?
How many grants funded (with you as PI)?
Total monetary value of your grants?
Importance of citations in proposals and reports?
How many citations in proposals, reports, articles?
What % of citations from the library e-collection?
For each cited, how many others do you read?
3 Interviews with Administrators
• Mission of the University and the Library’s role
• A further source of qualitative data that
illustrates the value of the library
The Formula
Combining Survey and Data elements
The RoI Results
Univer
sity
ROI
Value
1
2
3.44 15.54
3
1.9
4
5
13.16 0.75
6
7
8
UIUC
1.31
0.64
1.43
5.60
ROI Value
$
18
15.54
16
14
13.16
12
10
8
5.6
6
3.44
4
2
0.64
0.75
1.31
1.43
1.9
0
Univ. 7 Univ. 5 Univ. 6 Univ. 8 Univ. 3 Univ. 1 UIUC Univ. 4 Univ. 2
Why the differences?
• Remember – this is complex.
• Across continents and countries
• Differences in institutions
There are Variables
Big
and
Small
Organizational Mission
Discipline Emphasis
National Agenda and availability of
external funding sources
Unrepresentative faculty survey data
Difficulty in accessing grant data
•
•
•
•
•
# Grant proposals
# Grants awarded
Amt. of grant income expended (acquitted)
Total # grants expended (acquitted)
Amt. average size grant
Other problems (the small)
• Terminology, e.g. academic ranks and how
they equate
• Varied data collection periods
• Language
• Data management complexities
Other Findings from the study
Faculty Habits
• Faculty spend at least 3.5 hours per week
finding and accessing articles
• and at least 9.8 hours reading articles
E-resources
• Increase:
– research efficiency
– productivity
– interdisciplinary perspectives, and
– international perspectives
• More than 50% of items cited in grant
proposals etc are from the library’s eresources
Administrator needs
• Recruiting, retaining and evaluating
productive faculty, undergraduate, and
postgraduate students
• Institutional international reputation
and
• Libraries contribute to these.
Library resources and grant proposals
• 71%-98% (over 90% in 5) state it is
“important”, “very important” or “essential”
to cite articles or books in their grant
proposals
• Average # of citations in grant proposals:
Range of 20-46 (articles or books)
• % of citations from e-collections varies from
50-99%
• For every article/book cited, 18-40 more are
read
The “value” of librarians
From this…
To this…
Re-defining the librarian
• “ . . . the librarian of the future . . . will be
expected to be quite a versatile creature . . .
able to imagine futures and work towards
them.”
– Feret, B and Marcinek, M. (1999), The Future of the Academic Library
and the Academic Librarian: a Delphi study. Librarian Career
Development, 7(10), p91-107.
Key trends for a 21st Century Academic
Library*
• Customization and personalization
• Delivering content, services anywhere,
anytime
• Demand for self-service
• Constant change, and innovative and hybrid
approaches and structures
• Successful graduates and productive faculty as
key measures of success (RoI)
• Expanding social environments
• Culture of assessment and accountability
• Need to market content and services and to
raise their awareness and availability
• Collaboration at all levels
• Competition for funding, for collections, for
staff, for donors, for political attention and for
visibility
* Neal, J. & Harboe-Ree, C. (2009) The University of Hong Kong External Review of the
University Libraries [Unpublished Manuscript].
Scholarly Information Practices in the Online
Environment (US, 2009)
 Reports on “the state of
knowledge on scholarly
information behavior”
 “And how they differ among
disciplines”
 Identifies “directions and …
priorities for development of
digital information services”
www.oclc.org/programs/publications/reports/2009-02.pdf
The five core scholarly activities and their
primitives: A place for the library?
1. Searching
1.1 Direct searching
1.2 Chaining
1.3 Browsing
1.4 Probing
1.5 Accessing
2. Collecting
2.1 Gathering
2.2 Organizing
3. Reading
3.1 Scanning
3.2 Assessing
3.3 Rereading
4. Writing
4.1 Assembling
4.2 Co-authoring
4.3 Disseminating
5. Collaborating
5.1 Coordinating
5.2 Networking
5.3 Consulting
6. Cross-cutting Primitives
6.1 Monitoring
6.2 Notetaking
6.3 Translating
6.4 Data Practices
Researchers’ Use of Academic Libraries and their
Services (2007)
• See librarian as:
–
–
–
–
–
Custodian
Repository manager
Administrator
Subject expert
Teaching information
skills
– Manage datasets
– Technical specialist
http://www.rin.ac.uk/system/files/attachment
s/Researchers-libraries-services-report.pdf
The academic librarian must …
•
•
•
•
•
•
Meet new challenges
Step outside the existing framework
Step outside the building
Create new partnerships and collaborations
Not adopt a “one approach fits all” attitude
Market and promote the “value” of the library
and the librarians
• Fight for funding and survival
• Make themselves indispensable.
Recent academic library
advertisements
• Graphic Designer &
Publishing Coordinator
• Coordinator, eReadings
• Business Development
Manager
• Community Engagement
Librarian
• Digital Services Officer
• Research Data Analyst
• Learning Skills Adviser
• Manager Virtual Services
• Copyright and Repository
Services Librarian
• Academic Planning
Librarian
• Broadcast Media Librarian
• Emerging Technologies
Specialist
• Policy and Standards
Manager
• Manager Learning
Technologies
Re-defining the profession
Skills
Characteristics
• Interpersonal
• Communication (listening,
writing, presenting)
• Financial management
• Spatial design
• Team working
• Team building
• Negotiating
• Customer orientation
• Cultural awareness
• Political awareness, etc
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Initiative
Empathy,
Adaptability
Persuasive
Personable
Creative
Entrepreneurial
Passionate
Trustworthy
Intelligent (on multiple levels),
etc.
My interest is in the future because I
am going to spend the rest of my life
there.
(Charles F. Kettering, American engineer, inventor of the electric starter,
1876-1958)
Thank you!
谢谢!
Peter Sidorko
[email protected]