Transcript Transition of the Library

Transition of the Library
Kurt De Belder
University Librarian
Director Leiden University Libraries & Leiden University Press
Aarhus University, 31 August 2011
Leiden University. The university to discover.
Leiden University
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founded in 1575 by Prince William of Orange
Praesidium Libertatis (“bastion of freedom”)
oldest university in the Netherlands
broad research intensive university (Archeology,
Humanities, Law, Medicine, Sciences, Social &
Behavioral Sciences, Campus The Hague)
 belongs to top 20 European universities (Ranking
worldwide: 65 [ARWU 2011]; 71 [HEEACT 2010]; 82
[QS World UR 2010]; 83 [THES 2011] )
 founding member of League of European Research
Universities
Leiden University. The university to discover.
Leiden University (2010/2011)
 budget: € 494 mln.
 students: 19.000
 staff: 3.153 FTE (excl. Leiden University Medical Centre)
 50 BA and 100 MA programmes
 PhD promotions: 331
 Scholary publications: 5.111
Leiden University. The university to discover.
Leiden University Libraries
 University Library °1575 - basis was gift of
Prince William of Orange: “fundamentum
locans futurae aliquando bibliothecae”
 1595: Nomenclator, first printed catalogue of
an institutional library
 3.5 million volumes, 35.000 e-journals,
1.000.000 e-books, 500 databases
 maintains one of the top oriental (Middle
East & Asian) special collections in the
world
 holds largest photography collection in the
Netherlands
 holds university and scientific archives
 catalogues in 99 languages
Leiden University. The university to discover.
Leiden University Library
Its significance for European culture cannot be overestimated: it is a part of a small number of
cultural centres that gave direction to the development and spread of knowledge during the
Enlightenment. The importance of these centres lies in the simultaneous presence of a unique
collection of exceptional sources and scholars.
Christiane Berkvens-Stevelinck: Magna Commoditas, 2001
Leiden University. The university to discover.
Leiden University Libraries (2010)
 1 library organisation, 5 locations (University
Library, East Asian, Law, Social Sciences,
Sciences) and an organisationally separate
Medical Library
 expenditure: M€ 15.7
 expenditure information: M€ 4.8 (of which
M€ 3.7 digital information)
 personnel: 132 FTE
 library infrastructure: Primo, Aleph500,
MetaLib, SFX, Digitool, Dspace
 use of paper collections:
3.7M catalogue searches
233K loans (excl. renewals, holds, etc.)
(2009: +3.4% ; 2010: +8.6%)
Leiden University. The university to discover.
Leiden University Libraries (2010)
 use of digital library:
1.8M SFX requests
1.5M database searches
> 2.2M article downloads
 scientific repository:
>16.000 publications
> 935.000 downloads
 288 courses, 3.600 students
Leiden University. The university to discover.
Leiden University Library
An essential benchmark [...] not only for the teeming collection of extraordinary materials it has
scrupulously gathered and maintained over a sustained period of time, but most of all for being
the world's first scholarly library in a truly modern sense. The litany of 'firsts' recorded at Leiden
is dazzling - the first printed catalogue to be prepared by an institution of its holdings, the first
attempt to identify and maintain what today are known as 'special collections,' the first systematic
attempt to develop a corps of influential friends, patrons, and benefactors throughout the world,
the first 'universal' library, the list goes on and on - and underpinning it all is a humanistic
approach to education and discovery that has figured prominently throughout its history, along
with an unbending belief in the limitless potential of human inquiry.
Nicholas A. Basbanes
Leiden University. The university to discover.
You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.
Things that we had postponed for too long, that were long-term, are
now immediate and must be dealt with. This crisis provides the
opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before.
Rahm Emanuel
Chief of Staff, Barack Obama
Wall Street Journal, November 21st 2008
Leiden University. The university to discover.
Urgency for university libraries
Disruptive elements:
 Google search
 Google books, e-books & e-readers
 Information = digital
 Mobile technology (iPhone, iPad)
 Printing on demand & Espresso book machine
 Changes in science and scholarship: collaborative, programmatic, more data focussed,
use resources from outside institution, e-science/e-humanities/e-research
Leiden University. The university to discover.
Science paradigms (Jim Gray)
The Fourth Paradigm: Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery, 2009, p. xx
Leiden University. The university to discover.
Urgency for university libraries
Disruptive elements:
 Google search
 Google books, e-books & e-readers
 Information = digital
 Mobile technology (iPhone, iPad)
 Printing on demand & Espresso book machine
 Changes in science and scholarship: collaborative, programmatic, more data focussed,
use resources from outside institution, e-science/e-humanities/e-research
 Changes in scholarly publishing
 Changes at universities: focus on added value, making choices
 Technological advancement takes place in consumer market
Leiden University. The university to discover.
Technological progress
Intuitive linear vs historical exponential view
Ray Kurzweil: The singularity is near: when humans transcend biology. 2005. p. 50
Leiden University. The university to discover.
Technological progress
Intuitive linear vs historical exponential view
Ray Kurzweil: The singularity is near: when humans transcend biology. 2005. p. 25
Leiden University. The university to discover.
Urgency for university libraries
Disruptive elements:
 Google search
 Google books, e-books & e-readers
 Information = digital
 Mobile technology (iPhone, iPad)
 Printing on demand & Espresso book machine
 Changes in science and scholarship: collaborative, programmatic, more data focussed,
use resources from outside institution, e-science/e-humanities/e-research
 Changes in scholarly publishing
 Changes at universities: focus on added value, making choices
 Technological advancement takes place in consumer market
 Major budget cuts
 Increase of cost of information keeps outpacing inflation
Leiden University. The university to discover.
How do libraries deal with change?
 Libraries have changed tremendously, have innovated, have added digital services,
have generated more research/teaching time at the faculty level
 But to a great extent have not ended services and have kept within the existing
library paradigm
 Major driver for decisions about libaries within university administrations:
budgetary considerations
 Change is outpacing us.
Leiden University. The university to discover.
Some traditional functions
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Selection/Acquisition
Cataloging
Archiving
Reference desk
Outreach
Making available
“Find it” business
Special Collections
Technology management
Leiden University. The university to discover.
Selection and acquistion
Journals:
NOW:
<5 YRS:
<5 YRS:
licensing, big deals (consortial)
+ flexible big deals based on usage and research profiles
+ backfiles from digital period will be OA?
Leiden University. The university to discover.
Selection and acquistion
Books:
NOW:
<10 YRS:
<10 YRS:
<10 YRS:
title by title selection  approval plans
big deals based on licensing?
ordered directly by user at moment of need?
ordered (in)directly for user by smart personalized software
agents?
Leiden University. The university to discover.
Selection and acquistion
Institutional repository:
NOW:
variety of formal and grey literature
<5 YRS:
grey literature
<5 YRS:
‘small’ datasets
<5 YRS:
teaching related (e.g. course on video)
Leiden University. The university to discover.
Cataloging
NOW:
NOW:
<5 YRS:
<5 YRS:
<5 YRS:
<10 YRS:
record sharing and ‘item by item’ cat
real efficiency in and outsourcing of the back office
processes are at the top of our agendas.
towards managing record/data flow
3rd party created records with added enrichment & user
created information
focus on special collections & local information
data flow is mainly managed at a national or international
level, with some local enrichment
Leiden University. The university to discover.
Archiving
Paper collections:
NOW:
in stacks locally, curated and managed
NOW:
shift from open to closed stacks
<15 YRS:
paper has been digitized (= mode of delivery)
<15 YRS:
paper collections warehoused on a national/regional level
<15 YRS:
only special collections are locally curated and managed
Leiden University. The university to discover.
Archiving
Electronic collections:
NOW:
relatively vague agreements between libraries and publishers
about permanent access
<5 YRS:
clear agreements and collaboration between publishers and
national libraries and/or transnational digital archives
<10 YRS:
national digital archiving strategy
Leiden University. The university to discover.
Archiving
Digital collections:
NOW:
ad hoc local
<10 YRS:
agreements and facilities at national and/or transnational
level
Leiden University. The university to discover.
Reference desk
NOW:
<5 YRS:
<5 YRS:
<5 YRS:
plenty of libraries still have reference desk staffed with highly
qualified staff in conjunction with virtual desk
replaced by virtual desk (email, chat, telephone)
and/or replaced by physical who/what/where
and/or replaced by multi-organisation service desk
Leiden University. The university to discover.
Outreach
NOW:
<5 YRS:
away from collection specialists to faculty liaison and
development of ‘typical’ library services
faculty liaison, services specialists & partners in research &
teaching
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o
o
o
o
o
o
data curation
copyright
text and datamining
e-publishing & dissemination
GIS
datasets
...
Leiden University. The university to discover.
Making available
NOW:
<5 YRS:
<5 YRS:
<5 YRS:
<10 YRS:
<15 YRS:
we build traditional ‘just in case’ collections
e-books / e-readers will become standard
libraries offer printing on demand services (e.g. Espresso
book machine)
paper books are delivered in digitized form upon request
from ‘just in case’ collections to ‘just in time’ collections?
general paper collections are housed in national/regional
warehouses
Leiden University. The university to discover.
‘Find it’ business
NOW:
<7 YRS:
libraries are still in the ‘find it’ business
libraries have left to a great extent the ‘find it’ business as a
local service and have moved into the ‘get it’ business and
are providing another array of services
Leiden University. The university to discover.
Special collections
NOW:
<5 YRS:
<15 YRS:
many libraries have special collections, but often as a
traditional prestige object and role in research and teaching is
not always substantial
special collections at a university library need to have an
active role in research and teaching (more than just the study
of the book) and are focal point for fundraising and therefore
also for societal outreach
special collections that have a purely museum or cultural
heritage function will be moved to specialized institutions
(museums)
Leiden University. The university to discover.
Technology management
NOW:
local management of a large number of library & information
systems
NOW:
more systems / investments for our traditional processes will
increasingly become a hard sell.
<5 YRS:
present library information systems are moved to the cloud
(discovery layer, catalog, acq/cat, circ, digital library, linking
server, repository)
<7 YRS:
technology efforts focussed on connection between
information systems in the cloud and local application and
tools?
How do we act in a context of exponential change?
Leiden University. The university to discover.
The function of libraries?
 Fullfilling information needs of faculty, researchers, students, university
 Information manager for the university (CRIS, research data, research output, elearning objects, …)
 Supporting knowledge creation & dissemination
 Focus on digital information incl. services and expertise connected with digital
information
 Supporting teaching faculty on information literacy
 Bring information and tools in the environments our users are utilizing
 Learning environments
 Research environments
 Focus on specific needs
Leiden University. The university to discover.
Learning environment
Physical:
 Libraries are becoming well equipped, attractive learning centers for
students
 Social & educational role of libraries becomes more important
 Books as stored paper objects will disappear from libraries
 Quality of the learning center is an important selling point for the
university
Leiden University. The university to discover.
Learning environment
Digital:
 Use of VLE has not delivered what we had expected [notwithstanding
major investments].
 Involved faculty are elsewhere (YouTube, Flickr, Connotea, ...)
 Weblectures
 Will Open Course Ware take off?
Leiden University. The university to discover.
Research environment
Physical:
 Invest in those areas where researchers still look at the library as a
research and social space
 Special collections reading room and services
 Support for prolonged visits of international researchers
 Support for conferences, lectures, meetings, exhibitions
Leiden University. The university to discover.
Research environment
Digital:
 Implementation of Virtual Research Environment (based on Microsoft’s
SharePoint extended with the Research Information Centre Framework).
 As a pilot, Leiden University Libraries works together with 4 research
groups creating VRE’s tailored to their needs.
 Investigate library services within such an environment.
Leiden University. The university to discover.
Specific needs
Stop doing generic work that can easily be outsourced.
Focus on specific needs for futhering education and research at
your own institution.
Leiden University. The university to discover.
Function of libraries?
 Fullfilling information needs of faculty, researchers, students, university
 Information manager for the university (CRIS, research data, research output, elearning objects, …)
 Supporting knowledge creation & dissemination
 Focus on digital information incl. services and expertise connected with digital
information
 Supporting teaching faculty on information literacy
 Bring information and tools in the environments our users are utilizing
 Learning environments
 Research environments
 Focus on specific needs
 Support e-research
Leiden University. The university to discover.
E-research
E-research will require infrastructure on a national and (European)
international scale.
Play a role in these initiatives (examples The Netherlands):
 Early Dutch Books Online
 Libratory
 CLARIAH (Common Labs Research Infrastructure for the Arts and
Humanities)
The library is needed at the local institutional level to provide
services/support/know how
Leiden University. The university to discover.
Function of libraries?
 Fullfilling information needs of faculty, researchers, students, university
 Information manager for the university (CRIS, research data, research output, elearning objects, …)
 Supporting knowledge creation & dissemination
 Focus on digital information incl. services and expertise connected with digital
information
 Supporting teaching faculty on information literacy
 Bring information and tools in the environments our users are utilizing
 Learning environments
 Research environments
 Focus on specific needs
 Support e-research
 Larger organisational units
Leiden University. The university to discover.
But ... what holds us back?
 Transition is difficult to manage and takes years
 Some of our users
Leiden University. The university to discover.
Pushing the paradigm’s envelope
2009 survey among humanities
students & faculty with regard
to library facilities in Leiden.
 Monitor quiet study area
Creating variety of study areas (quiet, noise,
collaborative, lounge)
High on wish list:
 More material in open stacks
Reduced size open stacks: creating learning
environment
 Limited need for group spaces
Creating variety group spaces
 Don’t close institute libraries
Closed down small libraries and transferring collections
to main library/closed stacks
Leiden University. The university to discover.
But ... what holds us back?
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Transition is difficult to manage and takes years
Some of our users
Some of our librarians
Our framework, our tradition
Institutional territory
It’s risky
But also plenty of uncertainties:
o
o
o
o
o
Are we indeed moving towards the end of the hybrid library?
Will Google continue to invest in becoming the “world library”
Will e-books become the norm?
Will open access become a viable model?
Will faculty support the transformation of the library into the university’s
information manager?
o Major publishers seem to pursue competitive strategies.
o Will libraries play a role in e-research and which ones?
Leiden University. The university to discover.
Moving forward
 Start this discussion with the university administrators and faculty.
Leiden University. The university to discover.
Lets put the fundamental transformation of the library on the
agenda & create the roadmap.
Thank you for your attention!
E: [email protected]
W: kbelder.home.xs4all.nl/english.htm
W: www.linkedin.com/in/kurtdebelder
Leiden University. The university to discover.