Changing library services…and some views on digital repositories.
I have just read the Ithaka report on Key Stakeholders in the Digital Transformation in Higher Education 2006, Housewright & Schonfeld, published August 25, 2008. I hadn’t intended to spend Sunday morning reading this but a colleague, Dicky Maidment-Otlet, sent me an email about it and it seemed well worth a read.
It sets out an analysis of the most significant findings from some surveys of academic librarians and academics (faculty) mainly focused on scholarly communication and library services. The US based surveys were carried out in 2000, 2003 and 2006 and the changes are reported. Although I would say there are not many surprises in the report, it does help reveal some trends and issues that libraries and those interested in serving learning and research need to get to grips with. The library functions are categorised as 1) purchaser 2) archive 3) gateway and the perceptions of librarians and academics toward these are set out, it tends to focus a little more on the academics views. Some of the main findings and conclusions are:
* The library is generally becoming less visible and the perceived dependency on the library reduced (humanities academics having more dependency than scientists). The report summarises this as ” although librarians may still be providing significant value to their constituency, the value of the brand is decreasing”;
* Academics see the role of the library as a gateway as less important but librarians still think this is a core function; although this is coloured by users accessing resources from other places (e.g. search engines/remotely) so they may not always realise they are accessing a library resource.
* The report says ” Libraries are providing these high growth fields [information provision to scientists] value in the acquisition of resources - for example licensing costly journal collections - but otherwise have been relatively absent from the workflow…”;
* Increased importance on electronic materials for academics and librarians and readiness to cancel print subscriptions or depose of print materials (although again there is a disciplinary difference between humanities, social scientists and scientists, with the scientists being furthest towards the electronic trend and using resources remotely);
* Librarians seeing value in e-books but academics being far less enthusiastic;
* Visibility of research being more important to scholars than open access publishing;
* The case for shared preservation initiatives for journals being made;
* In order to support cross disciplinary and cross institutional research and learning there is a need for “system-wide approaches” and shared standards and protocols.
Overall the report makes the case for the need to better understand user requirements so that relevant services can be provided, and for the ability to change where appropriate to be taken seriously. It also makes the point that: “Deep consideration of how the library community can best serve scientists and preserve scholarly values in the face of a rapidly changing and increasingly commercial ecosystem is needed, both on a local and the system level.” These all appear to be sensible and helpful conclusions that libraries (and organisations like JISC) need to respond to.
I think the changes implied by the report require work at various levels for example these changes might include any of the following: marketing, a different strategic approach to service delivery for different disciplines, tackling changes by working across a range of stakeholders not just libraries and academics, but management and funders too, providing change at a local level but also being prepared to provide what the report calls “system wide” services.
The issues raised in the report are all relevant to the UK academic library sector (the data being from the US will mean some differences) and the Information Environment programmes and other JISC activity. I think the findings mainly support work we’re doing, examples being the LOCKSS pilot, the e-journal archiving registry, work that will follow on from the JISC/SCONUL Library Management Systems study, further user requirements analysis etc. But defining how best to deliver information services is a real challenge and one we need to put a lot of effort into if we are to provide a relevant infrastructure for research and learning. Sometimes aspects of this are about significant longterm change and not about immediate benefits. We need to take a long view with regards to change and impact, whilst also dealing with the here and now and quick wins. Perhaps the report could’ve dealt with these different aspects a little more (although that probably wasn’t the purpose of the report), and it does cover them, in particular it points out that some disciplinary groups are early adopters.
Since a lot of our programme activity has centred on digital repositories over the past five years I thought I’d end on the digital repository section (pages 24-26 in the report). The following statements from the report do in some respects challenge some of ways in which digital repositories are sometimes viewed. Whilst I think none of this is cut and dried and digital repositories can both support the stewardship of resources and more effective scholarly communication (indeed I think repositories are definitely helping improve access to research) I think these points are worth raising and I’d be interested in people’s reactions to them.
“Although a popular topic of discussion is the possibility of repositories to transform scholarly communications, this objective is not widely held by librarians.”
“Faculty interest in objectives for repositories basically matches those of librarians, being interested principally in using them to organise and preserve local material.”
“…we do not foresee institutional repositories yielding a transformative influence on the business side of journal publishing. Other types of digital repositories, especially those for storing images and special collections, are much more likely to continue to grow in importance at all types of institutions.”
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Rachel,
Here’s another white paper of interest - not on repositories, but on scholarly research in STM http://www.scopeknowledge.com/downloadsemantic.aspx
Yet another report, mentioned on page 1 of IWR this month, states “A three-year study into how users navigate scholarly content reported that nearly 60% of respondents recognised library technology played a role in ther navigation 95% of the time….libraries’ online catalogues and web pages are growing in importance as the start for navigation.”