Curating Collective Collections: Adapting Library Services to Evolving User Needs

1. Curating the Collective Collection Ricky Erway RLG Programs OCLC Programs and Research Western Digital Forum 9 August 2007

2. OVERVIEW • The context in which we find ourselves • User perspective – changed information seeking behaviors • Library perspective – increasing demands + decreasing budgets = need to be more efficient in order to remain relevant • Thoughts about effecting change

3. The 200 most successful web sites

4. Information consumer environment • Network-level aggregation of supply and demand • Patterns of learning, research, information production and consumption • Personal collections and data reproduction • Customer relation management

6. Social networking – explosion

7. Gather, create and share.... • Personal collections • Photos • Books • Research • Jokes • Opinions • News • Music

8. ELGG Personal Learning Landscape

12. Institutional environment – Current impacts • Agile, rich new competitors • Library budget pressure • Service fragmentation • Redundant effort

13. Institutional environment – Barriers to progress • Process standardization • Resistance to outsourcing • One-dimensional client relations • Resistance toward change

14. Then: Resources were scarce, attention was abundant Now: Attention is scarce, resources are abundant Then: The user built workflow around the library’s services Now: The library must build its services around user workflow

15. Something’s gotta give • New initiatives are absorbed into existing budgets • Many duplicative efforts • In selection • In acquisitions • In cataloging • In disclosure and access • In storage • In digital projects • In digital repositories • Expensive legacy systems maintained locally • And our users are often not discovering our information!

17. Possibilities • Catalog records for commonly held content • Digitized books in a single index • Remote storage • Vocabularies • User contributed content

18. More possibilities • Social networking • Advanced functionality • Disclosure and exposure • Other behind-the-scenes operational possibilities • Authentication • service registries • metadata maps • identifier services • institutional profiling services • terminology services

19. If we free up some resources…. • ILS refocused on local operations • Redeploy staff • New opportunities • Offering new user-centric services • Support for education and scholarly communication • The library as place • Information commons • Group and individual study spaces • Classroom support • Computer lab with media production support • Writing lab • Project space • Coffee shop

20. What will it mean to curate the collective collection? • Shared print storage • Effective lending practices • Coordinated digitization • Collaborative selection • Making our data work harder

21. Focus on special collections • Material that • is unique or rare • is in a variety of formats • will only be acquired once • need only be cataloged once • supports our local users • we are best suited to maintain • will be accessed by remote users • requires preservation • Basis for assessment • Scale up digitization to avoid marginalization

22. The role of metadata in the collective collection • Blaming the victim • Improved systems that: • Make use of existing metadata, without unnecessary modifications • Have improved handling of vocabularies • Encourage shortcuts • Take advantage of Web 2.0 possibilities • Increase our reach

23. Approaches to Metadata Creation Survey says…

24. The great thing about Standards is…. …that there are so many to choose from

25. But it’s not even that simple… Various interfaces

26. Moving in a positive direction

27. Moving in a positive direction

28. Moving in a positive direction

30. Library 2.0?

33. Contact • Ricky Erway • (650) 691-2228 • erwayr@oclc.org

36. Recommending in the Catalog

37. Recommending in the Catalog