The network rewrites the library

Programs and Research

The network rewrites the library

Lorcan Dempsey

Phineas L. Windsor Lectureship

GSLIS, UIUC

Feb 23 2007

Programs and Research 2


Photo: Robin Alston


… a hive-like dome …

Louis MacNeice


Private and social

Space and place

Collection and catalogue


Some environmental factors

Workflow Attention

Gravitational hubs


~18 months oldNo FaceBook, MySpaceLibrary?


University of Minnesotahttp://www.lib.umn.edu/about/mellon/KM%20JStor%20Presentation.pps


Database > website > workflow

Prefabricated (e.g. CMS)

Self assembled digital identity

Netvibes, onfolio, my yahoo, myspace, RSS aggregator, …


Workflow

Then Users built workflow around the library

Now The library must build its services around user

workflow

Get into the flowDisclose into other environments


What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients.

Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.

Herbert Simon


Attention

Then Resources scarce, attention abundant

Now Attention scarce, resources abundant

Competition for attention



Then: vertically integrated around collection

Now: moving apart in network environment

Space Expertise

Collections

Systems and services


Place Space infused with value How has the value

changed over time? Engagement with

resources?

Space Opportunity costs Valuable real estate Growing pressure in many

environments

New spaces

Place


Exhibitions Access to scarce resources – people, equipment,

… Social and learning encounter

Place


Collections

high low

low

high

stewardship

uni

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ssBooksJournals•Newspapers•Gov. docs•CD, DVD•Maps•Scores

Special collections•Rare books•Local/Historical newspapers•Local history materials•Archives & Manuscripts, theses & dissertations

Research and learning materials •ePrints/tech reports•Learning objects•Courseware•E-portfolios•Research data

Freely-accessible web resources•Open source software•Newsgroup archives


Collections

Ingest into local collections•Print collections

•Storage, digitization, …•ERM•Knowledge bases

Focus of much digitallibrary activity.

New behaviors and support for research and learning

Digital ‘record’ more important(prospectus, course catalog, student records)


Collections

Industrialized practices in upper left quadrant. Elsewhere expensive

More digital everywhere

Collection development:all quadrants?

Rebalancing system focus ERM/resolver/knowledge

base ILS/catalog Repository

Digital asset management Archival perspective

(provenance, versions, context, integrity, …)

Situational and relational (rights, …)

[Shift of expertise]


Workflow Attention

The website is not the sole focus of a user’s attention

Get into the flow

Engagement

Examples The catalog: discovery

and disclosure Research and learning

support

Services &systems


Chris Beckett http://www.scholinfo.com/presentations/2006/8/10/the-new-world-order-in-collection-development-the-commercial-perspective.html


Discovery: focus on catalog with some related …

Local Discovery Environments Shared Discovery Environments Syndicated Discovery Environments Leveraged Discovery Environments


Local Discovery environment

Some (not necessarily aligned) motivations Make data work harder Integrate access to locally managed resources Escape from ILS limitations

NCSU Rochester SOLR Worldcat 2.0 Primo Encore …












Shared discovery environment

Increase impact Create gravitational pull Aggregate demand and supply

Reduce costs




Some comments

Integration of discovery to delivery becoming essential

A move to shared environments seems more likely with increased ability to ‘view’ different levels

Increased gravitational pull: greater use of collections Growing evidence


Syndicated discovery experience

Syndicate data or service or links







Syndicating services

RSS Portlets APIs, Protocol-based

Projects Sakailibrary …

Not as rapid as one might expect?





Some remarks

Syndication of data now common among data providers

Routing issue for non-unique materials Resolution services Worldcat and other union catalogs

Libraries exposing licensed content holdings interesting Google Scholar


Service disclosure of growing importance APIs Web services Portlets HTML fragments – ‘search boxes’ Toolbars Widgets, extensions, …


The Leveraged discovery experience

In some ways the most interesting Use another discovery service to connect back to

your resources Compare to the situation with article databases

and resolvers




Some remarks

Some of these are toy-like now, but indicate a direction

Increased capacity to ‘sense’ structure (microformats) will improve ability.


Focus more clearly moving from collection to supporting research, learning and personal development in a network environment?

Developing network services

Supporting research and learning environments (see Minnesota study)

Educational role in relation to scholarly communication, assessment of sources, …

Developing high value social spaces

Separation of information role from local collection?

Expertise


Web scaleNetwork level

Space

Expertise

Collections



Network environment

Small: everybody is a publisher Big: Gravitational hubs are characteristic of the

network environment


Greg Papadopouloshttp://blogs.sun.com/Gregp/date/20061110

The world only needs five computers


“Let's see, the Google grid is one. Microsoft's live.com is two. Yahoo!, Amazon.com, eBay, Salesforce.com are three, four, five and six. (Well, that's O(5) ;)) Of course there are many, many more service providers but they will almost all go the way of YouTube; they'll get eaten by one of the majors. And, I'm not placing any wagers that any of these six will be one of the Five Computers (nor that, per the above examples, they are all U.S. West Coast based --- I'll bet at least one, maybe the largest, will be the Great Computer of China).”


Long tail information providers

Impact?

Systemwide efficiences

Aggregation of supply•Unified discovery•Low transaction costs

Aggregation of demand


Libraries and the long tail dynamic

Aggregate supply?

1.7% of circulations are ILLs (60% of aggregate G5

collection owned by one library only)

Aggregate demand?

20% of collection accounted for 90% of use

(2 research libraries over ~4 years)

Each reader his/her book

Each book its reader


The Library Long Tail(using holdings as measure of popularity)

Note: All statistics arepreliminary and subjectto change. Final reportforthcoming soon.

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Items ranked by system-wide popularity

“Head”

“Long Tail”

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

Figure not drawn to scale;for illustration purposes only


ILL and the Long Tail(FY 2005 OCLC ILL transactions)

Note: All statistics arepreliminary and subjectto change. Final reportforthcoming soon.

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Items ranked by system-wide popularity

~75% of ILL requests weredirected at the “Head”

~25% of ILL requests weredirected at the “Long Tail”

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?


Multilevel approach to …

Collections Shared offsite storage Aggregate and analyse

digital collections Institutional repository Digital storage and

preservation

Social and consumer environments Social networking

services: tagging, reviews, recommendations

Virtual reference

D2D Consolidated discovery Knowledge base Resolution - Service

routing – fulfilment

Business intelligence Synthesize and mobilize

shared usage data Recommendation,

management decisions Digitization and offsite

storage


A new resource sharing …

Uncertainty The collective collection Service development

Concentrate expertise and share outputs

Share everything … a pattern for more efficiently allocating resources within bigger units


Space Expertise

Collections



Expertise

CollectionsSystems and services

Documents

The network rewrites the library