What Does It Mean to Have Collections?

What Does It Mean to Have Collections?Karen CalhounLibrary - University of CalgaryOctober 15, 2015

Ross Atkinson, 1946-2006Community, Collaboration, and Collections

Why have we built collections? Collection development means “to privilege particular objects as being more useful or reliable than others” How is privileging possible when the universe is accessible in 5 seconds? Do we know what the collection is?

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Photo: @Uphoto 2003. Used with permission.Atkinson, Ross. 2005. “Introduction for the Break-Out Sessions: Six Key Challenges for the Future of Collection Development.” In Janus Conference on Research Library Collections, October 9-11, 2005. Ithaca, NY. http://ecommons.cornell.edu/handle/1813/2608

http://ecommons.cornell.edu/handle/1813/2608

University of Calgary Foundational Commitments

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3Source: Thomas Hickerson, Vice Provost, Libraries and Cultural Resources, University of Calgary

• Enhanced student learning environment

Enrich Quality of LEARNING

• University partnerships in interdisciplinary research

• Dissemination of scholarly knowledge

• Research data stewardship

Sharpen Focus on

RESEARCH ANDSCHOLARSHIP

• Cultural enrichment of campus and community

Integrate the University and

the COMMUNITY

University-wide Commitments

LCR Next Strategic Directions 2015-2017

Source: Thomas Hickerson, Vice Provost, Libraries and Cultural Resources, University of Calgary

KAREN CALHOUN - UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY - LIBRARY

LCR NEXT

Enabling

Capacities

Agile Workforc

eReimagining spaces

Collaborative

leadership

Technological Advances

Fundraising and

Research Funding

Distinctive

Collections

LCR NEXT: Enabling Capacities

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Source: Thomas Hickerson, Vice Provost, Libraries and Cultural Resources, University of Calgary

Think about the role of the library collections, both physical and online, in the context of the university-wide commitments

To learning To research and scholarship To the community

To achieve this, we need to think about: Information-seeking behaviors and preferences (how and where do people look for information?) Library collections management (why, how and where do we build and manage collections?) Enabling technology (what infrastructure do we need?)


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This talk in context

Braced for change… embracing change? Information seeking

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An early earthquake89

20

102030405060708090

100

Search engine Library Web site

Perc

ent

Where Search Begins

Where do you begin an online search for information on a topic?

(2005) College Students’ Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources: a Report to the OCLC Membership: http://www.oclc.org/reports/perceptionscollege.htm


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http://www.oclc.org/reports/perceptionscollege.htm

Empowering connections and conversations in an entirely new way


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Photo: By Kris Krug. Untitled. Licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA. Flickr Commons. https://flic.kr/p/bsty4b

https://flic.kr/p/bsty4b


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Strong preference for full text and media, other Web content Some are familiar with bibliographic data/tools, many are not (and find what they want anyway?) Personal and professional networking are important aspects of information seeking

30 second review of what we know


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The larger context: knowledge managementKnowledge communities “interpret information about the environment in order to construct meaning … create new knowledge by converting and combiningthe expertise and know-how of their members …[and] analyze information in order to select and committo appropriate courses of action.”—Chun Wei Choo,professor of Information Studies, University of Toronto

The Knowing Organization: How Organizations Use Information to ConstructMeaning, Create Knowledge, and Make Decisions (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1998), xii.


Knowledge creation and social networks“Improving efficiency and effectiveness in knowledge-intensive work demands more than sophisticated technologies—it requiresattending to the often idiosyncratic ways that people seek out knowledge, learn from and solve problems with other people.”—Rob

Cross,University of Virginia

Rob Cross et al., “Knowing what we know” Organizational Dynamics 30, no. 2 (November 2001), 101.


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Implications Students and faculty engage in information network processes with or without libraries Libraries have the opportunity to engage more proactively with teachers and learners Libraries and librarians need to better understand how the social web and information seeking styles contribute to learning, teaching, and research

Being where their eyes are


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Users are discovering relevant resources outside library systems

Users expect discovery and delivery to coincide

Usage of portable devices is expanding

Discovery increasingly happens through recommending

Users increasingly rely on emerging nontraditional information objects

Trends“Discoverability” Report: University of Minnesota Libraries, February 2009http://conservancy.umn.edu/handle/48258

http://conservancy.umn.edu/handle/48258

Embedding collections in the web


?

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Wikipedia

Monthly Unique Visitors, Smithsonian Archives of

American Art vs. Wikipedia Smithsonia

AAAWikipedia

Wikipedia Loves Libraries 2013 - Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon with Smithsonian Staff. Washington DC. https://vimeo.com/78005986

Sraumsheim, Carl. 2015. “Wiki Worker Wanted.” Inside Higher Ed. July 17.

Kastrenakes, Jacob. 2014. “Harvard Wants to Hire a Wikipedia Editor to Be Its ‘Wikipedian in Residence.’” The Verge. March 12.

https://vimeo.com/78005986

Changing Collections


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Why have we built collections?


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Institutional asset

•Collections attract scholars, support, funding •Prestige•Implies separate, competitive collections …•While collections are becoming less institutionally based

Preservation

•Ensure long-term access•“Memory”•Aspect of research library mission least likely to change•But many materials now needing preservation are outside the boundaries of traditional libraries

“Privileging”•Collection development•Certain information objects are more worthy of attention than others•Information universe now immense – problems of scope and scale

Atkinson 2005, p. 2-4

Trending down, trending up

PrintE-

resources

Offsite storageMass digitization

New kinds of content on web

Special collections and archives

New models of collection management


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The print collections in academic research libraries

“The books had come to clutter thelibrary”

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Photo: "OSU William Oxley Thompson Memorial Library East Atrium" by Ibagli – Own work. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. Quote: Biemiller, Lawrence. 2007. “Library Renovation at Ohio State U. Promises More Space, but Fewer Books.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. July 10. http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Library-Renovation-at%20Ohio/4700.

http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Library-Renovation-at%20Ohio/4700

What If … … Libraries could more readily share the effort and costs of managing their legacy print collections?


Mass digitization Google 5 (2004) and the Google Library Project Harvard, University of Michigan, Stanford, University of Oxford, New York

Public Library 33% of the “system-wide book collection” at that time (Lavoie, Connaway,

Dempsey 2005) Europeana HathiTrust Open legal issues New possibilities for individual and collaborative library collection management


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What If…


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… Libraries could more collectively manage collection analysis, print storage facilities, choices of what to preserve, by whom, and how?

… Libraries could collectively create new collections or research tools?

What If… We could cooperate to move from isolated collections to interoperable ones? We shifted effort to discovery and integrated access?



Attracting use and users of digital collections

National Library of Australia, 2009-Free search engine http://trove.nla.gov.au/Massive amount of content: 435M items as of July 2015Over 1,000 Australian libraries, archives, museums contributeMany types of content

• Heavily used (70K people/day)• 327th most used website in Australia

(July 2015)• Social engagement/contribution a core

feature• “Collaboration with users is key”• Content widely discoverable in common

tools• “Getting our collection material into our

users’ online spaces”• “Free[ing] content from [its]

institutional backyard”

Where do Trove’s visitors come from?Trove is a popular destination site but …39.2% of searches come from mega-sites

Sources of information for this slide: Trove site; Holley, Rose. 2010. “Trove: Innovation in Access to Information in Australia.” Ariadne, no. 64. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue64/holley; Sweeney, Shahida. 2014. “National Library of Australia Invests in Digital Future.” CIO Australia, September 26. http://www.cio.com.au/article/556019/national-library-australia-invests-digital-future/; Data from Alexa.com on 7/17/2015 - http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/http%3A%2F%2Ftrove.nla.gov.au

http://trove.nla.gov.au/

http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue64/holley

http://www.cio.com.au/article/556019/national-library-australia-invests-digital-future/

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/http:/trove.nla.gov.au

Enabling technology


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Review to this point•Libraries, library collections, and the catalogs that represent them are competing for attention with disruptive new technologies – and losing•End users believe they have many choices for fulfilling their information needs•Libraries and their collections need to be visible in the places that their users inhabit on the Web•Libraries may no longer be able to rely on large collections of published materials to distinguish themselves from other services•Library special collections are likely to gain more weight, prestige and use, provided they can be surfaced on the Web•New kinds of information objects may offer opportunities10/15/2015

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Technological issues An overarching strategic framework for hybrid library technology does not exist

Interoperability is a key challenge (at the site level and at the network level)

Individual library collections data is generally not disclosed for crawling by search engines

A better, collaborative, network-level solution is needed to raise the discoverability of individual collections on high-traffic sites

Good progress in some areas, but adding to complexity of managing technological environment


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Institutionalrepository

Digital collections

CitationDBs

Full Text DBs E-books

A complex, demanding local environment to support

Online catalog – Integrated“discovery layer”for local holdings/licensed content(central index)

Library mgt. system Acquisitions dataCirc/status dataPrint holdings dataLicensed content data

Link resolver

Knowledgebases,registries

E-resource Management tools/system (ERM)

Off-campus access10/15/2015

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Library business processes


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Figure 5.3 in Exploring Digital Libraries, p. 124. ©2014. Used with permission.

http://www.alastore.ala.org/detail.aspx?ID=4247

A complex, decentralized patchwork An overarching strategic framework for library collections does not exist

Institutionally- or consortially-based integration (discovery layers) Mindset - libraries tend to think of themselves as destination sites In general, libraries are not engaged with the global network infrastructure Generally poor representation of library collections on the network (outside

library systems) E-resource management, remote access mechanisms Open access repositories and network-level holdings registries have potential

as a way forward Some web-scale digital library aggregations beginning to appear (Trove,

Europeana, DPLA?) Continuing legal battle over mass digitization of books?


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You gotta accentuate the positiveEliminate the negative an' latch on to the affirmative

Don't mess with Mister In Between

--Song by John Mercer and Arlen Harold

Longer term vision

•Switch users from where they find things to library-managed collections of all kinds•Local catalog/collections one link in a chain of services •More coherent and comprehensive scholarly information systems, perhaps by discipline•Infrastructure to permit global discovery and delivery of information among open, loosely-coupled systems•Critical mass of digitized publications and special collections online •Many starting points on the Web leading to many types of scholarly information objects


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“The library is a growing organism”—Ranganathan


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Europeana Network. 2014. “Europeana Strategy 2020: ‘We Transform the World with Culture’: Europeana Strategy 2015-2020.” http://strategy2020.europeana.eu/

See also: DPLA. 2015. “Digital Public Library of America: Strategic Plan, 2015 through 2017.” http://dp.la/info/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/DPLA-StrategicPlan_2015-2017-Jan7.pdf

From portal to platform …“People want to re-use and play with the material, to interact with others and participate in creating something new.”

Access“If we can make material available online … we’ll start to see the benefits for society and the economy.”

http://strategy2020.europeana.eu/

http://strategy2020.europeana.eu/

http://dp.la/info/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/DPLA-StrategicPlan_2015-2017-Jan7.pdf

http://dp.la/info/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/DPLA-StrategicPlan_2015-2017-Jan7.pdf