Transcript Programs and Research Thinking about collections Lorcan Dempsey Fiesole retreat The University of Hong Kong 13 April 2007

Programs and Research
Thinking about
collections
Lorcan Dempsey
Fiesole retreat
The University of Hong
Kong
13 April 2007
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Diversion
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Back to business
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Some topics
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Reflections on collection directions
Systems support
Rareness is common
The long tail and library logistics
Access to scale: moving to the network level
Aggregate collections
Conclusions
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1.Reflections on collection
directions …
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A simplistic and reductive
model
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stewardship
high
low
Books
Journals
low
Open source software
Newsgroup archives
Research and learning
materials
high
Special
collections
uniqueness
Newspapers
Gov. docs
CD, DVD
Maps
Scores
Freely-accessible
web resources
•ePrints/tech reports
•Learning objects
•Courseware
•E-portfolios
•Research data
Rare books
Local/Historical
newspapers
Local history materials
Archives & Manuscripts,
Theses & dissertations
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•Bought?
•Opportunity costs
•Digitization and offsite storage
•Sharable > licensable
•Licensed?
•The ‘end of publishing’
- through the gates?
Ingest into
local collections
New behaviors and
support for research
and learning
Focus of much digital
library activity.
Why?
Distinctiveness.
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Digital ‘record’
more important
(prospectus, course
catalog, student records)
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Special: primary materials?
Curatorial
responsibility for
more unique materials?
Institutional
Capacities?
Collaborative sourcing?
Examples
•Thematic research collection
•Curated databases
•Institutional ‘identity’
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Managing digital?
An archival perspective?
Provenance
Evidential integrity
Versioning
Institutional capacities?
Collaborative sourcing?
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 Fine grained
 Task
oriented
 Provenance
 Context
 Versions
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University of Minnesota
http://www.lib.umn.edu/about/mellon/KM%20JStor%20Presentation.pps
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Securing the scholarly record
The scholarly
record ain’t
what it used to
be?
Community?
Institution?
•Intervention required
•Preserving print?
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Mature?
Institutional maturity – an industry and cooperative structures
•Structures under pressure
•Libraries organized around this quadrant (‘owned’)
•Emerging techniques for licensed
•New systems framework for licensed
Institutional immaturity
Organizational models for collective
activity, reducing costs, etc,
in development.
Commodity systems not available
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2. Changing systems support
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Catalog
Metasearch
Resolver
Print
Licensed
ILS
Repositories …
Digital
Repositories …
ERM
Knowledgebase
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Research
&
learning
outputs
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…
User environment
Switch: delivery, routing, resolution
…
Management environment
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Personal
Workflow
RSS,
toolbars, ..
Network level
workflow
Google, …
Institutional
Workflow
Portals,
CMS, IR, …
Consumer environments
Management environment
Bought
Licensed
Faculty&
students
Digitized
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Integrated
local user
environment?
Library web
presence
Resource
sharing, …
library
…
Aggregations
Resource sharing
3. Rareness is common
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Rareness is common … in the G5
G5 aggregate collection:
• 10.5 million books
• ~60 percent represent unique
contribution by one or another
of the G5 libraries
10%
Held by 3
6%
Held by 4
20%
Held by 2
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3%
Held by 5
61%
Held by 1
… and beyond
System-wide print book collection
(as of January 2005)
• ~32 million print books
5%
Held by > 100
3%
Held by 51 - 100
5%
Held by 26 - 50
37%
Held by 1
20%
Held by 6 - 25
30%
Held by 2 - 5
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Language distribution
Language
English
German
French
Spanish
Chinese
Russian
Italian
Japanese
Hebrew
Arabic
Portuguese
Polish
Dutch
Latin
Korean
Swedish
All others
Programs and research
Google 5
0.49
0.10
0.08
0.05
0.04
0.04
0.03
0.02
0.02
0.01
0.01
0.01
0.01
0.01
0.01
0.01
0.07
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System-wide
0.52
0.08
0.08
0.06
0.04
More than 430
0.03
languages in
0.03
Google 5
0.04
collection
0.01
0.01
0.01
0.01
0.01
0.01
0.01
< 0.01
0.08
Proportion Published During or Prior To
Current Year
Cumulative age distribution of G5
holdings
1
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
00
20
90
19 0
8
19 0
7
19
60
19 0
5
19
40
19 0
3
19
20
19 0
1
19
00
19 0
9
18
80
18 0
7
18 0
6
18
50
18 0
4
18
30
18 0
2
18
10
18 01
18
<
Years
> 80 percent of Google 5
collection post 1923
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TRLN collection analysis
http://www.trln.org/TaskGroups/CollectionAnalysis/TRLN_CollAnalysis_June2Report.pdf
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 Implications for preservation, storage, mass
digitization
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4. The long tail and
library logistics
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Library “Inventory”
20% head
80% long tail
Libraries aggregate supply at the local level…
“About the only places you could explore outside the
mainstream were the library and the comic book shop.”
Chris Anderson, “The Long Tail”
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The long tail
Systemwide
efficiences
Aggregation of supply
•Unified discovery
•Low transaction costs
Aggregation of demand
•Mobilize users
•Brand
Impact?
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Libraries and the long tail dynamic
Each book
its reader
Each reader
his/her book


Aggregate supply?
 1.7% of circulations are ILLs
 (60% of aggregate G5
collection owned by one
library only)
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Aggregate demand?
 20% of collection accounted
for 90% of use
 (2 research libraries over ~4
years)
Note: All statistics are
preliminary and subject
to change. Final report
forthcoming soon.
The Library Long Tail
Number of Holdings
(using holdings as measure of popularity)
“Head”
Figure not drawn to scale;
for illustration purposes only
“Long Tail”
Items ranked by system-wide popularity
Head:
Top 10% of WorldCat records (ranked by holdings)
account for 80% of total WorldCat holdings
Long Tail:
Bottom 90% of WorldCat records (ranked by holdings)
account for 20% of total WorldCat holdings
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Note: All statistics are
preliminary and subject
to change. Final report
forthcoming soon.
ILL and the Long Tail
(FY 2005 OCLC ILL transactions)
Number of Holdings
~75% of ILL requests were
directed at the “Head”
~25% of ILL requests were
directed at the “Long Tail”
Items ranked by system-wide popularity
By comparison, Chris Anderson (The Long Tail, 2006) reports:
Amazon: ~ 25% of sales from the “long tail”
Netflix: ~ 20% of sales from the “long tail”
* Question: are current ILL systems adequately supporting
demand for the library long tail?
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Conclusions
5. Access to scale:
moving to the network level
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Moving to the network level
Libraries
In the lone houses and very small villages
which are scattered about in so desert a
country as the Highlands of Scotland, every
farmer must be butcher, baker and brewer
for his/her own family.
Librarian
readers
Adam Smith
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Cataloguer,
repository,
collection,
…
Trajectory …
Then
 Cataloging & resource sharing
 A&I and e-Journals
 Collections
Now
 Growing realization that much more can be done
at the network level
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Multilevel approach to …
 Collections
 D2D
 Shared offsite storage
 Aggregate and analyse
digital collections
 Institutional repository
 Digital storage and
preservation
 Consolidated discovery
 Knowledge base
 Resolution - Service
routing – fulfilment
 Social and consumer
environments
 Business intelligence
 Social networking services:
tagging, reviews,
recommendations
 Virtual reference
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 Synthesize and mobilize
shared usage data
 Recommendation,
management decisions
 Digitization and offsite
storage
6. Aggregate collections
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Aggregate collections




 Thinking about collections
in aggregate or
systemwide terms
 Opportunity costs
Collection development
Mass digitization
Off site storage
Discovery to delivery
 Space
 Attention/value
 Find it – get it
 Preservation
 On demand
 Print on demand
 Buy on demand
 Digitize on demand
 Management data:
holdings, circulation, …
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 Best practices + organizational contexts for:




Off site storage (see NAST, UKRR)
Mass digitization
Preservation (see Portico, CLOCKSS, …)
D2D
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7. Conclusions
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 The scholarly record: what is it and how is
stewardship exercised?
 Recalibrate local and ‘collaboratively’ sourced
 Systemwide/network level
 Plural business and delivery models
 Develop a more instrumental view of
organizations at the network level?
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