csun april2013

Understanding the

Dark Side

Stephen Abram, MLSStephen.abram@gmail.comstephenslighthouse.com

California State University

1991-2013 Living on the Dark Side

SmellyYellowLiquid

OrSex

Appeal?

The Complex Value Proposition

Nouns

Quantitative Focus

Books, eBooks

Magazines

Websites

Buildings, Branches

Rooms

Desks

Programs

Nouns can be warehoused and ‘cut’

Qualitative Focus

Serve and Change

Answer and Decide

Engage and Discuss

Link and Learn

Entertain and Play

Tell a story

Do

Action verbs imply dynamism and impact

Verbs

Are you locked into an old library mindset?

A Verb . . . an Experience, enlivened for an Audience

A Noun . . . A foundation but not sufficient without professional animation

Grocery Stores

Cookbooks, Chefs . . .

Cookbooks, Chefs . . .

Meals

So What Should Our Library

Priorities Be?Remaining Relevant and Having a Positive

Impact

Some Insights into Publishing

and Vendors

Positives and Negatives Some of you will likely hear only one side

Employment in Vendor Land

Thomson Electronic Publishing

Thomson (TPP, etc.)

Micromedia

IHS

ProQuest

SirsiDynix

Gale

Cengage Learning

Librarians in Vendors

Sales

Marketing

Training

Product Development

Testing

Executive including CEO

Editorial

R&D

Etc.

Ownership in Vendor Land

Business Cycle

Business Models (free and fee)

Private Companies

Public Companies

Quasi-Public Companies

Going Public

Mergers & Acquisitions

Equity Capital

Venture Capital

Challenges in Vendor Land

Copyright

Ethics

Licenses and contracts

Case Law

Lawsuits NatGeo, Tasini, etc. vs. ALA JSTOR, HathiTrust, Georgia, Aaron

Swartz lawsuits Edward Mellen Press vs. Dale Askey,

Scholarly Kitchen, etc. Threats

Research in Vendor Land

Making the Wager:

Intense technology monitoring

User experience, usability by end user vs. librarian (e.g. scholars, lawyers, etc. vs. Librarians)

Focus groups, tracking data

Market analyses (demographics, Millennials, Boomers, etc.)

Trends and directions (Mobile, Cloud, etc.)

Financial tracking (e.g. tax bases, enrolment, population changes, global opportunities, …)

Are librarians different? YES Have to pay attention to cost in order to unfetter

information … issue of value

Pagination, known item retrieval, title counts, print/e-copies rationalization of serials moving to books)

More transactional than transformational

Book output vs. scrolling

Print vs. e-delivery

Less workflow orientation (e.g. e-learning, PURLs, stored search, citations, etc.)

Alignment (e.g. curriculum standards or readability) differs

Generationally (aging, poor uptake of new professionals)

Differences in the Private and Public Sector Approaches to Development

Private Sector

q Competitive advantage is the ideal but cooperate on structural issues like standards

q Innovation is key to long-term existence

q Focus on clients and marketshare

q Business strategies

q Responsibility to shareholders or owner/investors

q Increasing revenue

q Risk oriented

q Economic success is a prime personal motivator

q Competitors, partners and allies

q e-Business is the challenge

q Focus on “results”

Public Sector

q Collaborative advantage is the ideal but still compete

q Good service is the key to long-term existence

q Focus on citizens and social contract

q Political agendas and government imperatives

q Responsibility to funder and to citizens

q Wise use of tax dollars

q Risk averse

q Making a positive impact on society is a strong motivator

q Other departments, levels of government, unions

q e-Government is the challenge

q Focus on “process”

Vendor Culture Timelines and milestones

Agile and Scrum, staying on the curve for device, browser, mobile, expectations

Continuous learning and staff investment

15% time

Free vs. fee, competitive threats

Quality, experience, relationships

Volume, Quantity sometimes vs. comprehensiveness

Rights are everything, layering, exclusives

Quarterly and Annual results

Architecture

Agile and Scrum

SGML and XML

Big Databases (really big)

Big Data (Google and FB vs. library vendors)

SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, etc.

Standards Community

Licensing (consortia, state, local)

Ownership, Lease, Rental channels

User experience vs. usability

Professional Development

Myers-Briggs, Teambuilding

Executive testing (and health)

Crucial Conversations

Performance planning and contracting

Targeted technology training

Supportive self-learning

Town Halls (monthly)

Yammer style continuous conversations

Frustrations from Other Side

Poor evaluation procedures, group think

Poor trials (often singletons)

Too weak partnerships and sharing

Too little cooperation, consortia, (territoriality and competitiveness) RFP ridiculousness, combative negotiation

Little deep understanding of learning and knowledge acquisition

Often see themselves as target user

Often expect training to work

Imperfect of the shift that is happening and the clear threats to academic business models

Key Current Issues

“Be more like Google” LMAO, “Don’t change”, Change . . .

Discovery vs. Native search

Strategic budgeting, risk avoidance

Passive Aggressiveness

ROI, ROE, valuing staff time at zero$

Group Think

Example: dysfunctional view of privacy…

Taking Responsibility for Output (grads, published research, patents, commercialization, etc.)

Great Things

OCLC LinkedData

OCLC WorldShare

Open API and vendor APIs

DPLA

EveryLibrary PAC, LibraryRenewal

Repository mess, dark information

Discovery Services (Summon, EDS…)

Open Access and Open Source muting their religion and taking a better place

Are you on the ‘hits’ train?

Big Shifts

Journal runs to electronic

Series to article targets

Books to chapters and paragraphs

DVD/CD to streaming media

3D databases

Text search to audio/graphic search

Lists to visualization

Massive reinvention of the textbook

Course sites to e-learning objects & MOOCs

BIGDATA

Risk

QUALITATIVE INFORMATION

QUANTITATIVE DATA

versus

STATISTICS

MEASUREMENTS

versus

What do we do when

buyers are asking for data that does not align with

their goals?

Have Journal Prices Really Increased Much in the Digital Age? (Scholarly Kitchen blog) http://bit.ly/11b3hP2

Excellent Metaphor

“What if the only measurement of energy costs you followed was the price of oil, while everyone was shifting to cheaper and more efficient alternatives? And what if you completely ignored the fact that everything around you was using more and more power — your lights, your phone, your car, your heat, your media center? You might come to believe that energy is getting more expensive, when actually, it’s price is rising relatively slowly while your usage is what is skyrocketing.

The same thing might be happening with print journal prices and digital journal licenses…

Good Questions

What if prices of the predominant journal form have actually been falling?

What if we’ve been measuring the wrong things, or measuring insufficiently?

And what if the growth in expenses are not the result of price increases but a result of the growth in science?”

The Real Digital Story Print subscription prices are a misleading

and inaccurate method for tracking library serials spending

“. . . libraries’ spending on periodicals has increased three-fold while their collections have tripled in size”

“Spending three times as much to get three times as much tells a very different story from the “price increases” story. . . .”

Published article output has grown 3.5% to 4% per year since 1990

Growth in research spending has been increasing by 3-4% per year

In the US, spending on scientific research has more than doubled since 1990 (from $150.2 billion to $400.5 billion in 2010, in current dollars)

Numbers versus ROI

“In the midst of all this growth, prices have risen modestly. Gantz notes that while the economy in the US from 1990 to 2010 grew at a compounded rate of 66.8% due to inflation, the effective price of an average journal is only 9% higher over the same time period. In the UK, prices have actually gone down by 11% since 2004.”

“Price increases have been caused by more science, more papers, and more journals, not by price increases in licenses. In fact, per-journal prices seem to have peaked around 2000, and steadily declined from there, as shown by the black line in the chart below.”

What do we count and share?

Titles

Clicks

Downloads

Sessions

Session length

COUNTER, (Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources)

SUSHI, Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative

etc.

Or should we measure?

Was there improved customer satisfaction?

Do librarians or types of end users have different values and behaviours?

Did learning happen?

Was there an impact on research or strategic outcomes?

Did the patient live, improve, survive, thrive?

Was the decision improved?

Was the work product better. . .?

Algorithms

Search differentiator

Commercial algorithms versus those based on big data

Measuring end user success versus known item retrieval…

“Romeo and Juliet”

Problems with the unmonitored trial Wrong tests Poor sampling Mindset issues

Sharing Learning and Research

Usability versus User Experience

End users versus librarians

Known item retrieval (favourite test) versus immersion research

Lists versus Discovery

Scrolling versus pagination

Devices and browsers and agnosticism

Satisfaction and change

Individual research experience vs. impacts on e-courses, LibGuides, training materials, etc.

Real Analytics

Focus and Understand on the Whole Experience

Inside Lego™ Pieces

Foresee satisfaction and demographic data

Impact studies or Counting Opinions

Counter & Sushi data

Database usage (unique user, session, length of session, hits, downloads, etc.)

Google Analytics

Search Samples

ILS Data

Geo-IP data

What kind of librarian are you? Critical thinker or Criticizer?What is your library culture around change or innovation?

Being More Open to Change

Be the Change We Want to See

The Library as Sandbox

‘New’ Library CulturesSupport Your Team

Be the Change We Want to See

Being More Flexible

Be the Change We Want to See

Being More Open to Risk

Be the Change We Want to See

Being Open to a Mosaic of

Solutions

Be the Change We Want to See

Are you more like a laboratory or a museum? A retailer or a

carnival? A party of a morgue?What scale works?

Being Open to Ambiguity

Be the Change We Want to See

BeMoreOpen

to SocialTechnologies

and Unintended

Consequences

Be the Change We Want to See

Being Comfortable with Speed

Be the Change We Want to See

Being Open to New Ideas

Be the Change We Want to See

Let Go of Control

Be the Change We Want to See

Be Inspirational

Be the Change We Want to See

Know What Makes Us Different

Be the Change We Want to See

Tell Your Story: Until lions learn to write their own story,

the story will always be from the perspective of the hunter not the hunted.

Stephen Abram, MLS, FSLAConsultant, Dysart & Jones/Lighthouse Partners

Cel: 416-669-4855stephen.abram@gmail.comStephen’s Lighthouse Blog

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