Crying Wolf?Is there a business case for investing

in better resource discovery?

Presentation to RLUK Members David Kay

on behalf of the Discovery Management Project, Mimas

What resource discovery infrastructure would you build if you could start from scratch?

The Resource Discovery Task Force - 2009

Better search

Mash-ups and visualisations

In depth topic resources

Improved aggregations

Enrichment of metadata

Collection management

Shared cataloguinghttp://www.flickr.com/photos/sharman/4935276033/

No shortage ofaspirations

http://discovery.ac.uk

Our aim is that Discovery will help to mobilise and energise the community, engaging stakeholders to create a critical mass of open and reusable data, and explore what open data makes possible through real-world exemplars and case studies.

Andy McGregor – JISC Programme Manager

Discovery Launched - May 2011

http://discovery.ac.uk/businesscase/principles/

Discovery Principles

JISC Funded Projects – Phase 1

8 projects

Evenly spread across Libraries, Archives and Museums

Open reusable metadata

Synthesis findings >>> http://discovery.ac.uk/projects/

Discovery Phase 2 plans

Exemplars

Resources on specific topics to drive

engagement from content providers

A call for projects to develop or enhance services addressing specific use cases

More metadata

Fund further projects to release reusable

metadata

Advocacy engagement and

support

Continuing the work of the central Discovery

project and communications projects

Business Case

Develop understanding of the business case at all levels

Crying Wolf?Is there a business case for investing

in better resource discovery?

But …

Discovery? … Déjà vu!• It seems obvious that there would be a self-evident

business case for making learning, teaching and research resources discoverable.

• However, it is arguable that this is like ‘crying ‘wolf’’. • Library, archive and museum services have been at

this for time immemorial• The idea of a further push (better indexing, open

licensing) for a special reason (the evolving information ecosystem) may be somewhat unappealing – especially in a period of austerity.

• The new generation of discovery layer applications has been widely implemented– Ebsco Discovery Service, ExLibris Primo,

SS Summon• We have Copac (& Suncat & …)

• The bigger problem lies beyond the library threshold– Other curatorial domains (archives and

museums)– Teaching and learning assets

• And in the really big picture, it makes sense to trust Google– Discovery strongly recommends that we

make our resources discoverable by Google

Progress has been made

(with the historic OPAC problem)

The enquiry

• Not – ‘What is the Discovery initiative?’ – ‘What discovery solutions has my library put in place?’

• But first … ‘What are we seeking to achieve in our library services?

• And Subsequently …– What role does resource discovery and delivery / access play?

• How can my library address those requirements– Are my present discovery services part of the solution?– Is the Discovery initiative part of the solution?– Should RLUK be delivering any part of this?

Mylibrary

stuff

OurLibrary

stuff

Other library stuff

‘My’otherstuff

Consider the landscape

Mylibrary

stuff

OurLibrary

stuff

Other library stuff

‘My’otherstuff

Our otherstuff

OtherStuff

Mylibrary

stuff

OurLibrary

stuff

Other library stuff

‘My’otherstuff

Our otherstuff

OtherStuff

New Gen

OPAC

Copac

VariousJISC

Services

Worldcat

Google

Mylibrary

stuff

OurLibrary

stuff

Other library stuff

‘My’otherstuff

Our otherstuff

OtherStuff

New Gen

OPAC

Copac

VariousJISC

Services

Worldcat

GoogleLinked Data

‘What are we seeking to achieve in our library services?

• Effectiveness – for our clients in teaching, learning and research (and other partners)

• Economy – price, duplication, shared services, space• Efficiency – structures, processes, flexibility, integration

• To which we might add Expression – the expression of assets in the context of scholarship (not the same as any tag and expose process), taking account of both length (longevity) and breadth (asset types)

Resource Discovery is at the heart of each of these

What role does resource discovery play?

Let’s not dwell on things we all know well – but let’s recap and exemplify the obvious

• Economy – Avoiding duplication, Focusing on demand, Sharing services, Leveraging automation and co-creation– Shared cataloguing, Collection Management, UKRR, Knowledge Base+

• Efficiency – Student and Researcher Workflows– Print/Electronic, Cross Domain, One stop discovery, Common access points

(Name, place, subject), Open metadata • Effectiveness – Finding stuff at the right time

– No to OPAC, Yes to Summon et al AND to Google, possible role of Recommenders and ‘social’ interactions

• Expression – Barriers between resource types, hidden collections– RLUK/OCLC effort, Culture Grid, Archives Hub, Aim25– What about … Repositories, OER, VLE, Research datasets

Does anyone care about …

• Unified Resource Management - What does the ExLibris catchphrase really imply? What resources do we need to unify?– Pre-publication – VLE assets– OER publications– Lecture recordings– Activity data

• And for all of these, is this responsibility personal, institutional, shared or more generally ‘out there’

The boundaries of the library

• This brings us back to a crucial question in current times – defining the boundaries of our duty of care or ‘curatorial’ service– Because they are being eroded– Because others are failing the mission– Because there is opportunity

• Distinguish between– What you are responsible for– What you do yourselves

How can my library address those requirements?

Making the business case for the ‘Discovery’ principles

• Crying Wolf – Uncertain - All change / Shift happens / There be monsters– Unending - We always need to improve our metadata– Intangible - We need to surface ‘stuff’

• The early discovery projects suggest varied but nevertheless compelling business cases in four areas– The Institution– The service– Users generally– Research[We could add global, which was a given for the projects]

Where’s the business case? (1)

Institutional Level - Serving strategic institutional objectives, especially in support of a more effective learning and more efficient research infrastructure.

• Fulfilling institutional policy commitment to Open Data provides a strong basis for

this work• Contributing proactively to wider strategic directions such as personalization, user

co-creation and integrated resource discovery• Following such as Google, Twitter and Mendeley in opening data to serendipitous

development is low cost and may yield unknown benefits Practitioner Benefits (Librarians, Archivists, Curators) - More economic and effective

ways of ensuring the collection is well described. • Making better use of limited professional time by embedding records

improvement in core workflows and / or by automating separately • Providing more efficient mechanisms to generate more effective indexing and

access points, based on standard and shared authorities for such as names and places

Where’s the business case? (2)

General User Benefits - Making the collection being more discoverable, more accessible and linked to other relevant knowledge assets.

• Amplifying the impact of special collections by broadening the scope for

discovery, achieving greater utilisation and enabling downstream discovery of relevant ‘linked’ resources

• Using open metadata to provide a richer user experience and create opportunities for a variety of interfaces

Researcher Benefits - Contributing to the research ecosystem, within and beyond

the institution. • Cultivating the international research ecosystem by minimising duplication of

effort and avoiding knowledge silos• Evolving scholarship by enabling the participation of a wider community in

testing, refining and building on research results• Surfacing the connections (cross-boundary and unpredictable) required by

interdisciplinary research

Terms of use• Open licensing• Reasonable terms & conditions • Explicitly tiered access

Data• Accessible data models• Unique identifiers for entities• Reuse authoritative identifiers• Relationships captured natively

Interfaces• Open APIs• Well-documented APIs• Consumable data formats• Focus on use cases

Service• Sustainable data• Reliable infrastructure• Supported service• Self-adopted APIs• Measurement of use

Sounding more relevant?

If so …

What do senior managers

need to worry about?

Conclusion - Discovery the Project

• Discovery is about positioning and performance of resource description relative to the 4 Es

• Discovery has so far highlighted just a few of the things that you can do– See licensing and technical principles

• RLUK members have been trailblazing– AIM25 / M25, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Manchester,

Oxford, Southampton, Warwick, York, etc

• We are optimistic of valuable outcomes– But in the end it is just a project …

Conclusion - Discovery the initiative

• Exemplify business and use cases

• Move from manifesto to method

• Identify right-scale - National, Consortium

• Leverage community

• Enable practitioners

RLUK – the community• This is not about catalogues, nor metadata – it’s about mission • New models for suppliers, for JISC, for the academy as well as

for customers offer new opportunities• RLUK has critical capacity - Community, Skills, Relationships

• Possible priorities

1. Liberate Copac2. Animate Knowledge Base Plus3. Review scope of current initiatives, such as shared cataloguing and

special collections4. Assess the wider curatorial landscape, including learning assets and

research data5. Consider action on identifiers, authorities and access points6. ‘Understand’ e-books in this context