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OCLC Online Computer Library CenterCollections, networks, places

Presentation to New York University Libraries Faculty, April 25 2003

Lorcan Dempsey, VP Research, OCLChttp://www.oclc.org/research/

Overview

!!

When, early in this century, Virginia Woolf needed to find out the truth about women, she headed to the Round Reading Room of the British Museum, for ''if truth is not to be found on the shelves of the British Museum, where,'' she asked, ''is truth?'' Truth, it pains me to report, decamped last month to a new library near St. Pancras Station, loosed from its moorings in the British Museum after an intermittently happy marriage of nearly two and a half centuries. …

Among divorces, it was perhaps one of the more easily predictable, but nonetheless painful to those of us whose inner landscape has been irreversibly redrawn.

Angeline Goreau. New York Times, Nov 9 1997

© R. Alston

Libraries in the space of places have …

…been vertically organised around the management of places – multiple redundant repositories– Information hubs.

… facilitated particular economies of presence and patterns of experience – ‘inner landscape’– Agora, archive and service.

… manifested the institutional role of libraries– authoritative, well-understood and persistent agency.

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OCLC Online Computer Library Center

Organization and architecture

user environmentsresource environment

lab books

exhibitions

PDAs

learning management systems

campus portal

course materialtext book

new scholarly resources

readinglists

Institutional repository

Digital collections

E-reserveCatalog Licensed

collections

Aggregations

Virtual reference

CatalogingILL

Library serviceLibrary serviceenvironmentenvironmentLibrary serviceLibrary serviceenvironmentenvironment

Collections grid

high low

low

high

stewardship

uni

que

ne

ssBooksJournalsNewspapersGov. docsCD, DVDMapsScores

Special collectionsRare booksLocal/Historical newspapersLocal history materialsArchives & Manuscripts, Theses & dissertations

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

Freely-accessible web resourcesOpen source softwareNewsgroup archives

uni

que

ne

ss

The Archival Research Center is a direct outgrowth of the belief that primary resource materials should be a major focal point of instruction and research. …. However, traditional access to these materials is cumbersome and labor-intensive and most institutions do not allow copying. …Digitizing these materials keeps them alive and relevent for modern users … (ARL report)

Knowledge bank – OSU – in planning

April 26 2002. A proposal for the development of an OSU knowledge bank

Biomedical informaticsSource: http://medicine.osu.edu/informatics/

Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD) Motion Capture LabSource: http://www.accad.ohio-state.edu/mocap/mocap_info.htm

Below the line

There is growing appreciation among libraries that unique or rare materials – are valuable research and

learning resources– have been underutilized.

There is a growing interest in digitizing cultural heritage materials – as it offers opportunities for

releasing their value in new ways

– as a way of disclosing the memory and identity of communities.

Research and learning behavior is increasingly entering the network space– Library resources need to be

available at the appropriate stage within the learning or research environment

– New forms of engagement and support.

– Research and learning outputs will present major management and curatorial issues

– Institutions and faculty are interested in ‘disclosing’ research and learning materials as part of the scholarly enterprise (OAI)

Manage commodity materials and services - cost.

Streamline discovery to delivery for print (bought) and digital (licensed) materials

Portalization and resource sharing

Management intelligence – collection management and analysis (print collections)

Incentive to preserve?

Institutional digital content management

Immature (diverse metadata creation practice -- hierarchical description, multiple standards and practices, diverse content management approaches)

Disclose metadata for harvest?

Extend knowledge organization approaches?

Incentive to preserve

high low

low

high

stewardship

uniq

ue

“Special collections”

Disclosure, Licensing

high low

low

high

stewardship

uniq

ue

Scholarly communication

high low

low

high

stewardship

uniq

ue

The google factor

Trends

Centralization and decentralization

Cataloging/metadata

Archiving– web pages, third party

content, insitutional content

Harvesting

Virtual reference

At what level should services be secured?

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OCLC Online Computer Library Center

The economy of presence

Presence

We will, I believe, plot our actions and allocate ourresources within the framework of a new economyof presence. In conducting our daily transactionswe will find ourselves constantly consulting the benefits of the different grades of presence thatare now available to us, and weighing these againstthe costs.

William J Mitchell. E-topia. 2000.

Hubs

All networks produced privileged places at theirjunctions and access points.

William J Mitchell. e-topia. 2000.

… the web pages to which we prefer to link are not ordinary nodes. They are hubs. The better known they are, the more links point to them. … We prefer hubs.

Alberto-Laszlo Barabasi. Linked. 2002.

lab books

exhibitions

PDAs

learning management systems

campus portal

course materialtext book

new scholarly resources

readinglists

Hub

Create hub?

Project services into other hubs

Reconfigureservices –fine-grained

“Creative knowledge you can put in your pocket”

Presence

The dialecticof place and network

Analysis, linking, comparing, manipulation, ..

AgoraAgora

ServicesServices

ArchiveArchive

Supporting scholarly behavior in humanities

…contextual mass. (not the canon and top scholarly journals)

Iterative reading?

– personal, full-text collections

Wide reading and chaining?

– federated collections anchored by bibliographies

Collaborating?

– collection communities

Searching and browsing?

– “rich” finding aids that cross institutions and fields of study

Tracking of reading, searching, and writing

Carole Palmer, various

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OCLC Online Computer Library Center

So ..

The end

Organization: The recombinant library – collections and services are building blocks.

Economy of presence: A new economy of presence drives a reconfiguration of services.

Institutions: Institutional value bound up with a reengagement with research and learning.