Programs and research

Changing users and changing technology: the network rewrites the library

Lorcan DempseyCSU Libraries Futures Summit meeting

6-8 June 2007

Santa Rosa, California

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Network user environment

institutional operating environment

Part 1:The network user environment

Getting thingsdone

Workflow

They found that Google is responsible for referring 56% of the users of HighWire journals, and our own study shows that over 70% of researchers use it routinely to find scholarly content. Moreover, web search engine referrals also appear to account for the vast majority of accesses to institutionalrepositories.

Van Orsdel L C and Born K

Researchers use of academic libraries and their services. Swan A and Brown S

Brand is the new real estate

The rich get

richer

~18 months oldNo FaceBook, MySpaceLibrary?

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

Libraries will need to plan for and buildservices that fit new researcher workhabits, with an emphasis on theflexibility and remixing of their contentand services. ….

… In this study we paid some attention to the new world of informal peer-to-peer communication withinthe research community. The findings are that researchers are adopting socialnetwork technologies very fast and so far they have done so on their own: thelibrary has effectively been bypassed.

Researchers use of academic libraries and their services. Swan A and Brown S

Usage of electronic resources

Note: the information above appeared in the Perceptions report in both chart and table formats.

Starting an information search

Only 2% of college students start their search at a library Web site.

Respondents were asked to indicate, from a list of 16 electronic resources, which they typically use to begin an information search.

Among total respondents, 84% of information searches begin with a search engine and 1% begin at a library Web site.

College Students

Trustworthiness of library sources vs. search engines

Over half (53%) of college students indicate a similar trust of search engines as with library resources.

Then: the user built their workflow around the library

Now: the library must build its service around the user workflow

Get in the flow

Then: resources were scarce and attention was abundant

Now: attention is scarce and resourcesare abundant

Compete for attention

Then: people consumed information resources

Now: people construct digital identities online:

gather, create, share

Website > workflow

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

Course management:a reductive comparison

Virtual learning environments : using, choosing and developing your VLE by Martin Weller

“The relationship between VLEs and library systems reflects the changes in practice and internal politics wrought by the advent of e-learning perhaps more than any of the other systems. There is a sense in which the very identity of libraries and their function in the educational process is at stake.” [p. 67]

Redundant

• "At one extreme the need for a library becomes superfluous - at its simplest this might be categorized as 'I've got Google, what do I need a library for?'" [p. 67]

• Necessary materials are loaded into the VLE, and it points to other resources out on the open web.

Central

• The library mediates access to content within the VLE, providing value in selection, purposing to particular tasks, metasearch and so on.

Susan Hollar - Inside the Course at Michigan Diane Dallis - Inside the Course at Indiana

Sakaibrary:Michigan

Indiana

Scholarly information flow?

peer-reviewed journals,

conferences, …

aggregators

Research & e-science

Repositories

Deposit,self archiving

data analysis,transformation,

mining,modeling

Publish,discovery

Data creation, capture and gathering:lab experiments, fieldwork, surveys, grids, media, …

Learning & teachingDeposit,

self archiving

learning objectcreation, re-use

Discovery,linking,embedding

Courses, modules, Learning management systems, learning portals, …

Discovery,linking,embedding

Harvesting

Discovery,harvesting

Validation

A&I services

Adapted with permission from Liz Lyons eBank UK: Building the links between research data,

scholarly communication and learning. Ariadne 36, 2003. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue36/lyon/

peer-reviewed journals,

conferences, …

aggregators

Research & e-science

Repositories

Deposit,self archiving

data analysis,transformation,

mining,modeling

Publish,discovery

Data creation, capture and gathering:lab experiments, fieldwork, surveys, grids, media, …

Learning & teachingDeposit,

self archiving

learning objectcreation, re-use

Discovery,linking,embedding

Courses, modules, Learning management systems, learning portals, …

Discovery,linking,embedding

Harvesting

Discovery,harvesting

Validation

A&I services

Adapted with permission from Liz Lyons eBank UK: Building the links between research data,

scholarly communication and learning. Ariadne 36, 2003. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue36/lyon/

peer-reviewed journals,

conferences, …

aggregators

Research & e-science

Repositories

Deposit,self archiving

data analysis,transformation,

mining,modeling

Publish,discovery

Data creation, capture and gathering:lab experiments, fieldwork, surveys, grids, media, …

Learning & teachingDeposit,

self archiving

learning objectcreation, re-use

Discovery,linking,embedding

Courses, modules, Learning management systems, learning portals, …

Discovery,linking,embedding

Harvesting

Discovery,harvesting

Validation

A&I services

Adapted with permission from Liz Lyons eBank UK: Building the links between research data,

scholarly communication and learning. Ariadne 36, 2003. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue36/lyon/

Now: Federated access to multi-institutional holdings with support for personal collection-building and sharing

Patterns of learning, research, information production and consumption changing

Disclosure into workflows Personal collections and data reproduction ‘Customer relation management’

Part 2:The library operational environment

Print Licensed Digital Research&

learningoutputs

…

Catalog MetasearchResolver

Repositories …

Repositories …ILS ERMKnowledgebase

…

Management environment

User environment

Switch: delivery, routing, resolution

libraryConsumer environmentsManagement environment

Licensed

Bought

Faculty&students

Digitized AggregationsResource sharing

…

Institutional WorkflowPortals, CMS, IR, …

PersonalWorkflowRSS, toolbars, ..

Network level workflowGoogle, …

Integratedlocal user environment?Library web presenceResource sharing, …

Library “Inventory”

20% head 80% long tail

Libraries aggregate supply at the local level…

“About the only places you could explore outside themainstream were the library and the comic book shop.”

Chris Anderson, “The Long Tail”

The long tail

Impact?

Systemwide efficiences

Aggregation of supply•Unified discovery•Low transaction costs

Aggregation of demand•Mobilize users•Brand

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?

Holdings: Local, Group, Global

Summit collections

Univ Washington collections

WorldCat

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

Share mobilizing approaches 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

Part 3:conclusion

Libraries optimized for a pre-network environment

User environment: libraries do not have web-scale: impact suffers

Operational environment: fragmentation and redundancy

Resources organized around value creation?

Find the appropriate level to act ….

Reduce unnecessary fragmentation and redundancies

Create systemwide efficiencies

Increase the impact of libraries

Make the network work for libraries

Put librariesat the point of need

Build the librarybrand on the network

Getting our strategic planning going:

Points to Ponder Libraries are optimized for a pre-network age, where the model was one

of distribution and local collection of physical materials. They areseriously sub-optimized for a network age, where there are twinpressures: consolidation of information resources into large networklevel hubs, and diffusion of services into 'networkflows'.

Libraries are off-message: people do not want to talk about managinginformation, they want to talk about improving their productivity andthe quality of research and learning outcomes. How do librariescommunicate their value in terms understood by faculty, students andadministrators?

Large print collections and library buildings are cement boots holdingback library services. Can they step out of these boots? Can theydivorce the sense of library as service from the sense of library as aplace with books in it.

There appears to be no place for libraries in the network identities andcommunities that students are constructing online.