Feasibility of a Primarily Digital Research Library

1. Feasibility of a Primarily Digital Research Library Lisa Spiro & Geneva Henry, Rice University CNI Fall 2009 Membership Meeting December 14, 2009

2. CSU Monterey Bay’s All-Digital Library "You simply don't have to build a traditional library these days”

3. CSU Monterey Bay’s Library Today http://www.flickr.com/photos/pollyalida/3345869686/

4. CSU MB’s Emphasis on the Electronic CSU Monterey Bay’s Library Web Site, ca. 2001

5. If you were to open a new research library in a year…. • Would it be feasible to have a primarily-digital collection? • What would be the obstacles? • What are some strategies for overcoming those obstacles?

6. The Feasibility of a Primarily-Digital Research Library • CLIR-funded preliminary study • Inspired by question from new university in Bangladesh about how to plan the library, but context is now US • Two-pronged approach: • Examine challenges to a primarily-digital library • Study academic libraries opened since 2000 • Focuses more on feasibility than implications of primarily-digital library

7. Environment of Constant Change It’s difficult to make definitive statements because of ongoing changes in: • Content • Technologies • Policies http://www.flickr.com/photos/ferran-jorda/2168701818/ How do you make decisions given such flux?

8. Method • Synthesis of existing literature • See extensive Zotero collection at http://www.zotero.org/groups/library_in_transition • Interviews with experts on future of libraries and publishing • Interviews with leaders of new academic libraries

9. The Main Barrier http://www.flickr.com/photos/evergreenkamal/384258821/

10. The Library Ecosystem Socio-cultural Cyber-infrastruct Policy Economic

11. Most Library Purchases Are Not Yet Available as eBooks (2006-7) ~ 70% not available electronically Jason Price and John McDonald, “To supersede or supplement: profiling aggregator e-book collections vs. our print collections,” November 6, 2008

12. Approaching a Tipping Point? • Many university presses struggle in transition to digital publication, but collaborative efforts are underway • HOWEVER…Surge in • E-book market: 2009 e-book sales up 173.9% • Library e-book purchases: 69% of research libraries planning increased spending • Availability of content • Kindle: from 90,000 to 350,000+ e-books in 2 years • Google Books: 10 million+ • Use of e-books • JISC e-book study found 65% of students & teaching staff use e-books

13. Reading Digitally • Journal articles are short enough to be printed or read on screen • Preferences in reading books: • Electronic for access, searching & quick browsing • Print for immersive reading • 80% of respondents to Ebray’s 2007 Global Faculty E-book Survey preferred print for long-form reading • E-books complement rather than replace print (JISC E-books Observatory Report)

14. Difficulties Reading Long Form Works • E-book readers are emerging, but… • Not yet ubiquitous (expense, doubts about single-function device, preference for print, etc.) • Do not yet support scholarly needs, e.g. page references, easy annotation, copy & paste, color illustrations, etc. • In some cases, format does matter (e.g. for book studies)

15. Different Uses, Different Devices? enTourage eDGe iPhone Kindle Kindle 2 NetLibrary

16. Some Books Work Best in Print Spoon (Design Book) Contemplation Artists’ Book)

17. Print on Demand as an Interim Solution to Reading Books? Espresso Book Machine at University of Michigan

18. Digital Rights Management (DRM) Can Limit Research • DRM limits what people can do & thus their demand for e-books • Copying & pasting, printing, accessing on multiple devices, loaning, etc. • Concern about who owns e-books • Amazon’s Orwellian behavior

19. Licensing Concerns • There are few models for libraries loaning e-books for use with e-readers • First sale doctrine • Interlibrary loan of licensed e-books is still very murky • Long-term access to subscription material

20. Are Researchers Ready to Embrace E-Books? • Ithaka’s 2006 survey of faculty: • only 16% reported that they occasionally or often use e-books • of these, 14 % viewed e-books as being very important now, and 26% see them having a role in the future • But researchers’ attitudes can change quickly if their needs are served (cf. e-journals, e-mail, mobile phones)

21. Scholars’ Worries about the Transition to the Digital • Quality of digitization (metadata, scanning, text conversion) • Confusion about how to discover e-books—catalog, federated search? • “Lazy” or incomplete research • Citation practices • Need for the physical object • Ephemerality/ preservation concerns • Authoritativeness • Loss of serendipity in browsing shelves

22. Resistance to Off-Site Storage

23. Librarians’ Concerns about Transition to Digital • New roles, new skills required • Fear of change (job loss, organizational culture, etc.) • Preservation concerns • Insistence on the continued importance of print in fostering immersion, serious scholarship • Difficulty adapting to new workflows • But libraries are adapting, exploring new models such as patron-driven acquisition

24. The Difficulty of Integrating E-books into Library Workflows • “evolving” environment (ARL Survey) • 80% of librarians responding to 2007 eBrary survey found e-book acquisitions models confusing. • Heterogeneity of: • Business models (lease or buy?) • Licenses • Formats and standards • DRM schemes

25. Economics • Library’s role as a public good, serving as an intermediary in support of scholarship • Budget is generally one of the highest – if not the highest – on research university campuses • Median overall budget of ARL libraries in 2008: $24.8M • Median materials budget: $10.5M • Average number of staff: 260 • Median E-materials expenditure: $5.4M (53% of total materials expenditure)

26. Library $$ vs. Research $$ • Difficult to find research expenditures average for ARL institutions, but can look at total federally funded research • Total 2008 research: $54.7B • Trends • ARL materials expenditures average increase of 9% from 2007 to 2008 • Federal research funding decreased 2.5% during the same period

28. Publishing Industry • “Produce once, make available for all” works better in digital environment • Expensive print and distribution displaced with rapid replication/distribution • Publisher value-add services shifting • Editorial contributions not as valued in digital • Publishers controlling market by releasing digital 4 months after print • Open Access repositories serving scholarly needs (arXiv, PubMed Central, IRs) • Varied purchase/subscription models for e-books makes budgeting difficult

29. Cyberinfrastructure costs • hardware + software + services + research + education • Technology costs • Increased power to support computers, storage • High availability configurations to ensure reliability, availability • Support for e-readers and other viewers • Multimedia hardware and software • High-end cameras, audio equipment • Resources needed for digital preservation of content

30. Cyberinfrastructure costs (cont’d) • Digital content requires services to support text/data mining, visualization • Computer scientists vs. traditional library staff • Ongoing informatics research to support analysis • Science data curation expertise requires scientific background • Training to use tools with digital content

31. Virtual Considerations • Costs associated with high levels of staffing can shift • Many services can be provided virtually • Staffing profile will change: fewer staff, but higher salaries (programmers, computer scientists, informatics researchers, data curators) • Collaborative experiments already underway (2CUL, shared print, shared bibliographic services) • Collection development of e-resources may be better achieved by aggregators than local staff

32. Is an All-Digital Library Economically Feasible? • The economic considerations are still shifting dramatically, putting budget planning at risk • Greater risk in not budgeting for e-environment since trend clearly shows migration in this direction

34. Preservation Concerns • “The best preservation system ever invented was the old-fashioned, pre-modern book.” (Robert Darnton) • Technical Issues: • Hardware • File formats • Social Issues: • Who has responsibility for preservation? • Who will pay? • How can we trust custodians of information?

35. Digital Preservation Research • Solutions to digital preservation do not exist in a final form • Challenging research questions still addressing preservation of formats, media and information • Research projects leading to emerging standards and practices (e.g. PLANETS) • Libraries and funders need to acknowledge the necessary investment

36. Emerging Solutions to Preservation • Collaborative print storage facilities • Bringing e-books into digital preservation programs, e.g. (C)LOCKSS, Portico • National libraries as custodians of electronic resources • Emerging shared, distributed private networks (e.g. MetaArchive, DuraCloud) • Incorporation of emerging standards into repositories (e.g. OAI-ORE, PREMIS)

37. Case Studies of New Academic Libraries Broome Library, CSU-Channel Islands http://www.flickr.com/photos/rittenburg/2733973716/

38. Why Look at New Academic Libraries? • Post Internet-revolution • More freedom in defining mission and priorities • Not as encumbered by legacy collections or processes • Limited resources force creativity

39. What is the 21st Century Library? • “Should a twenty-first-century academic research library be organized along the lines of public services, technical services, special collections, and all the other traditional library divisions, or should its organization take some new form? Should the new research library have books or truly be an online operation? What form should the library building itself take? What kind and how many staff would be needed?” (Donald Barclay, “Creating an academic library for the twenty-first century”)

40. Libraries We Examined • UC Merced (2005) • CSU Channel Islands (2002) • Olin College of Engineering (2002) • Soka University (2001) • Arizona Health Sciences Library-Phoenix (2007) • A. T. Still Learning Resource Center (2002?) • NYU-Abu Dhabi (2010)

41. Define and support the core mission • Ask the right questions • Merced: Not “where is the reference desk going to be?” but “how are we going to provide reference services?” • Olin: “Does this work well electronically or do they need it in tactile form? What makes sense now?” • Match collections to priorities • Olin: Realia collection http://www.flickr.com/photos/oskay/265899784/

42. Be flexible in offering access to information • “Container-neutral” policy: get information to patrons in most appropriate format • Just-in-time rather than just-in-case collections • Adopting e-journals frees up space & staff time • Less processing, cataloging & acquisitions work • More space for collaborative areas

43. Collaborate with other institutions • if you’re starting up an academic library, “you better have a good consortium” (Steve Stratton, CSU-CI) • UC Merced holds about 80,000 print books (600,000 digital books), but it offers rapid access to 34+ million volumes in the UC system • Consortial licensing • Collection sharing • Shared responsibility for preservation • Knowledge sharing

44. Develop new service models • “Libraries will be services based organizations and not collections based any more” (Price & McDonald) • Design services to support institutional needs • A.T. Still: Evidence-based medicine • Plans for NYU-Abu Dhabi Library: • Support not only collections, but tools for analyzing & organizing information • Collaborate to publish scholarly work

45. Decide what can should be done locally and at the network level • UC Merced: • Purchases shelf-ready books that are already cataloged, labeled, and RFID-security-tagged • OCLC catalogs gift books • Outsources web site • “We still use library professionals to select and catalog books and mange databases, but they happen to be distributed everywhere, they’re not in our building… The product is what we care about.” (Bruce Miller, UC Merced)

46. Re-imagine librarian roles • CSU Channel Islands: all staff work at reference & circ desk, resulting in greater collaboration and common focus on service • UC Merced: “user communication and instruction librarian” rather than reference librarian; team collection-development model • Olin: small staff means everyone has multiple roles http://www.flickr.com/photos/bibliona/2462256119/in/pool-nancypearl

47. Build flexible facilities that support collaboration and interaction • Library as “third space” supporting collaboration & interaction • Flexible, configurable • Lots of technology support UC Merced Library

48. The Results? Service Matters • When people first enter the library, they may be surprised by its small size and lack of books, but “most people know that it’s much bigger than it looks.” (Jacque Doyle, Arizona Health Sciences Library-Phoenix) • “It’s all about service. I’ve not found anything on the downside to being digital.” (Steve Stratton, CSU-CI) • Researchers “don’t need to know how we do it, but whether they are getting what they need, and they are.” (Bruce Miller, UC-Merced)

49. What is the Feasibility of a Primarily-Digital Library? • Depends on the kind of library • Probably: special library (medical, law); teaching library; distance-ed library • Not yet: research library • Still some significant barriers: technical, cultural, economic, policy • But libraries should plan for digital future on the near horizon http://www.flickr.com/photos/eugenesong/2552984224/

50. Future Work • More systematic research on new libraries • More interviews, site visits, surveys (?) • Expand focus globally • Beyond feasibility: • Strategies for the transition to digital • What are the implications of the shift to digital for libraries & scholarship?