Library Collection Managers in Higher Grounds: Weighing the Odds

Marianita D. Dablio

Lecturer, Library and Information Science

Our lives have never been the same!

Facts that figure:

• It took two centuries for the Library of Congress to acquire today's analog collection—32 million printed volumes, 12.5 million photographs, 59.5 million manuscripts and other materials – a total of more than 134 million physical items. By contrast, with the explosion of digital information, it now takes only about 15 minutes for the world to produce an equivalent amount of information. Researchers at Cal-Berkeley produced estimates of the amount of information produced and circulated on the Internet in 2003 – it was equivalent to 37,000 times the content of one Library of Congress. Most of this information exists only in digital form: so-called born-digital items, many of which are already irretrievably lost.” Statement of Dr. James H. Billington The Librarian of Congress before the House Subcommittee on Legislative BranchU.S.House of RepresentativesMarch 20, 2007

Have you read some of these?

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The Wicked Problem of Too Many Books | From the Bell Tower

Michael Todd in the State of the Stacks: Academic Libraries in the Digital age “ Digital Tsunami”

Fr. Ambeth R. Ocampo

• “My greatest fear to my digital library is this: Technology moves to fast that my present PDF files may not be computer-readable in the future”

Ocampo , Ambeth. Old fashioned books in Looking Back. Philippine Daily Inquirer March 4, 2015

I suggest that we find answers to the following:

• In what ways have collection and collecting evolved in the changing digital landscape?

• What key issues confront collection development/acquisition librarians in digital environment?

• What strategies can library collection managers consider?

• What roles /competencies are necessary in managing digital resources?

IN WHAT WAYS HAVE COLLECTION AND COLLECTING EVOLVED IN THE CHANGING DIGITAL LANDSCAPE?

Some things “old”, yet constant:• Simply put, collection management is the systemic,

efficient and economic stewardship of library resources.1

• The goal of any collection development organization must be to provide the library with a collection that meets the appropriate needs of its client population within the limits of its fiscal and personnel resources. To reach this goal, each segment of the collection must be developed with an application of resources consistent with its relative importance to the mission of the library and the needs of its patrons.2

• Source: cited in Johnson

Traditional activities associated with collection management

• Selection & acquisition of materials;• Collection development policy;• Assessment of patron needs;• Collection analysis;• Budget management; • Space management including storage • Community outreach & liaison• Resource-sharing arrangements• De-selection/cancellation & preservation• Source: Horava

Do these concepts of collection still hold true today?• Ownership

• Control

• Tangibility (mostly on-site materials)

• Permanence

• Predictability (eg formats)

• Comprehensiveness

• Implicit pride and prestige for the institution

• Implicit value judgements -privileging/selecting sources

Something “new”

• New and non-traditional forms of knowledge, eg oral history, streaming audio and video, research datasets, blogs, tweets, etc..

• Collections have sense making function :translating information resources into knowledge to solve problems

content in the 21st century

• “The University of California Library Collection comprises all print and digital resources, archival collections, and shared purchases of the UC Libraries. It is an integrated, shareable user-centric collection that supports and enhances the mission of the University of California and whose strength is derived from the diverse nature of the individual campus library collections.”

On a higher ground, library collection managers will be transitioning

1. COLLECTION AS CONTENTS AND CONTAINER

Source: Polanka

If this is so,

And noting others,

Ebook as an example

2.The evolving scholarly record

• Shift from print centric record to digital format

• The boundaries are shifting and blurring

• The shift from static nature to dynamic features

Framing the Scholarly Record …

OCLC Research, 2014Figure: Evolving Scholarly Record framework.

2. Collection Grid

Low Stewardship

p

Institutional In few

collections

In many collections

Research & Learning Materials

Open Web Resources

‘Published’ materials

Special CollectionsLocal Digitization

Licensed

PurchasedHigh

Stewardship

Journals

1. Licensed materials are now the larger part of academic library budgets

2. Publishers looking to research workflow (Elsevier – Mendeley, Pure)

3. National science/research policy and open access

4. A part only of the scholarly record – data, etc.

Monographs

1. Emergence of ‘e’ (platform)2. Shift to demand driven acquisition3. Digital corpora4. Disciplinary differences5. Growing difference between market-

available and distinctive (e.g. area studies)6. Managing down print - shared print

Special collections, archives, …

1. Release more value through digitization, exhibitions, …

2. Streamlining processing, production, …3. Network level aggregation for scale and

utility – DPLA, Europeana, Pacific Rim Digital Library,

Research and learning material

1. Evolving scholarly record: research data, eprints, ..

2. IR – role and content?3. Research information management

(profiles, outputs, …)4. Support for digital scholarship5. Support for open access publishing

3.Collections as a service

The ‘owned’ collection

The ‘facilitated’ collection

The ‘licensed’ collection

The ‘borrowed’ collection

• Pointing people at Google Scholar

• Including freely available e-books in the catalog

• Creating resource guides for web resources

• Purchased and physically stored

A collections spectrum

The ‘demand-driven’ collection

The ‘shared print’ collection

OCLC Research, 2015.Figure: A collections spectrum.

Example:

• Provision of data services to support use of data(including geographic information systems and data visualization

• Duke University Libraries

4. Workflow is the new content

• arXiv, SSRN, RePEc, PubMed Central (disciplinary repositories that have become important discovery hubs);

• Google Scholar, Google Books, Amazon  (ubiquitous discovery and fulfillment hubs);

• Mendeley, ResearchGate (services for social discovery and scholarly reputation management);

• Goodreads, LibraryThing (social description/reading sites);

• Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers, Khan Academy (hubs for open research, reference, and teaching materials).

• GalaxyZoo, FigShare, OpenRefine (data storage and manipulation tools)

• Github (software management)

Workflow is the new content

• In a print world, researchers and learners organized their workflow around the library.

• The library had limited interaction with the full process.

• In a digital world, the library needs to organize itself around the workflows of research and learners.

• Workflows generate and consume information resources.

Sample workflow

 

https://innoscholcomm.silk.co/page/Modern

The inside out collection

In the paradigm shift• The dominant model is

outside in where the dominant model is buying and licensing material and make them accessible to the users

• In the inside out model, the university and the library support resources that may be unique to the institution and the audience is both local and external

• These unique collection may include archives and special collections and new generated learning materials

• E.g. e prints,

The outcomeIn the outside-in model , the librarian serves as

broker, his goal is to maximize efficiency and its intended outcome is discovery

• In the in-outside model, the librarian serves as provider, his goal is to maximize discoverability/

6. From curation to creation

Libraries as publisherUniversity of St. Andrews

The Library's journal hosting service offers support for academic staff and students who are interested in setting up their own online journals

https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/library/services/researchsupport/journalhosting/

Other activities• Publishing conference proceedings

• Supporting student publications

• Assisting researchers for funding grants

Beyond Information Literacy• Visual literacy• Quantitative literacy• Archival literacy

• New ways to explore dimension of information

• Opportunities for collaboration and curricular synergy

7. Towards the collective (print) collection

• The bubble of growth in twentieth-century printed collections has left … librarians with a tricky problem.

• Barbara FisterNew Roles for the Road Ahead:Essays commissioned for ACRL’s 75th Birthday

• The need to add print collections

• Space to use library collections in new ways that will support new pedagogies

• Consider the non-collection oriented uses of such collection

The future of academic libraries• Art gallery• This semester, Duke is proud

to host the Places & Spaces: Mapping Science exhibit, visiting from Indiana University. Places & Spaces is a 10-year effort by Dr. Katy Börner (director of the Cyberinfrastructure for Network Science Center) to bring focus to visualization as a medium of scholarly communication

Space for traveling exhibit• UI Libraries to host

Shakespeare's First Folio exhibition in 2016

• http://now.uiowa.edu/2015/02/ui-libraries-host-shakespeares-first-folio-exhibition-2016

As a performance center• https://www.google.com.ph/search

?q=academic+libraries+hosting+a+cultural+performance++image&client=firefox-beta&hs=qq3&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=np&biw=1366&bih=667&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=XzQzVd35KsSSuATYooGgDA&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAQ#imgrc=9p1FMx1MaQbG5M%253A%3BSxoI52j5AjAoNM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.lovett.rice.edu%252Fabout%252Fcultureimages%252Fshepherd.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.lovett.rice.edu%252Fabout%252Fculture.html%3B900%3B586

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Transformation of the academic libraryKurt de Belderhttp://www.oclc.org/content/dam/research/events/dss/ppt/dss_debelder.pptx

WHAT KEY ISSUES CONFRONT DIGITAL/ACQUISITION LIBRARIANS IN THE DIGITAL AGE?

Issue 1: Budget• How do we allocate budget to meet the

changing curriculum and research needs of our institution?

• What budget strategies are appropriate to the multiplicity of challenges?

Issue 2: Threats to digital information• Hybridity• Multiplicity• Fragility• Mutability

• “...these potential threats include media failure, hardware failure, software failure, communication errors, failure of network services, media and hardware obsolescence, software obsolescence, operator error, natural disaster, external attack, internal attack, economic failure, and organizational failure.”

Issue 3: Digital rights management

• Author’s rights

• Open access

• Institutional repositories

Issue 4: New collection metrics

• Standards

• Performance measurements

• Outcome-based

• Evidence-based

Issue 5: Core values• Access• Confidentiality/Privacy• Democracy• Diversity• Education and training• Intellectual freedom• Professionalism• Public Good• Service • Social Responsibility

• Can collection managers maintain the core values as collection management practices and scholarly communication practices are undergoing radical change?

WHAT THE STRATEGIES CAN COLLECTION MANAGERS CONSIDER?

Some suggestions

1. Focus on what is sustainable. Prioritize

2.Strategize on what format to support

3.Plan innovative ways of repurposing your physical collection and library space

4.Seek wider opportunities for collaboration: vendors, publishing industry, the learning ecosystem, research infrastructure

WHAT ROLES /COMPETENCIES ARE NECESSARY IN MANAGING DIGITAL RESOURCES?

Sample titles• Selectors• Bibliographers• Collections librarians• Subject specialists• Subject liaisons• Collection managers• Collection developers

• Copyright and licensing librarian

• Electronic resource and acquisition librarian

• Collection strategists

Electronic resource librarians• Nasig Core Competencies for Electronic

Resources Librarians. North American Serials Interest Group. 2013.

Rising expectations:• Collection librarians need to expand their

traditional skills and expertise• Developing a keen understanding of the

scholarly communications, publishing and technological landscapes• A passion for exploring new forms of

knowledge and new approaches to learning• Imagination, leadership and creativity in how

we acquire and deliver information resourcesSource : Horava

Evolving roles as collection managers

• curators• collaborators• teachers• publishers• knowledge managers• information policy guide

As a concluding note:• Crisis?

• Crossroads?

• Is the road ahead going to a evolving state:

NEW NORMAL?

Volume Velocity

Vibrance Valence /Relevance

Lee Rainee suggests that there is “New Normal”

And finally: • “ The challenges we face are both fundamental

and essential. We have moved from an era of equilibrium to a new normal, an era of constant disequilibrium. Our ways of working, ways of creating value and ways of innovating must be reframed”

•John Seely Brown

Sources cited• Bell, Steven. The wicked problem too many ebooks.• DeBelder., Kurt. Transformation of the Academic Library• Dempsey Lorcan and Constance Malpas Evolving collection directions

OCLC Jan 30 2015• Hillesund, Tirje. Will ebooks end the world.• Horava , Tony Collection management in the digital age• IFLA 2012• Imre,Andrea • Johnson, Peggy. Fundamentals of collection development and

management. 2nd ed.• Nasig Core Competencies for Electronic Resources Librarians. North

American Serials Interest Group. 2013. http://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1510&context=nasig

• Ocampo , Ambeth. Old fashioned books in Looking Back. Philippine Daily Inquirer March 4, 2015

• Polanka, Sue Purchasing ebooks for your library.www.slideshare.net/ALATechSource/2013-ala-purchasingwww.slideshare.net/ALATechSource/2013-ala-purchasing

• .” Statement of Dr. James H. Billington The Librarian of Congress before the House Subcommittee on Legislative Branch U.S. House of RepresentativesMarch 20, 2007

• The Googlelization of Everything.• The future of the Internet and how to stop it• Michael Todd in the State of the Stacks: Academic Libraries in the Digital age • The HKU Scholar’s Hub• University of St. Andrews Library https://www.st-

andrews.ac.uk/library/services/researchsupport/journalhosting

• The University of California Library Collection: Content for the 21st Century and Beyond UC Libraries’ Collection Development Committee1

• Presented during the PAARL National Summer Conference 2015, Cagayan de Oro City April 22-24, 2015