Jabes 2012 - Conférence inaugurale "La transformation des Bibliothèques Universitaires"

Leiden University. The university to discover.
Transformation of the Academic Library
Kurt De Belder
University Librarian
Director Leiden University Libraries & Leiden University Press
Journées ABES, Montpellier, 19-20 June 2012

You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.
Things that we had postponed for too long, that were long-term, are
now immediate and must be dealt with. This crisis provides the
opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before.
Rahm Emanuel
Chief of Staff, Barack Obama
Wall Street Journal, November 21st 2008

Urgency for university libraries
Disruptive elements:
 Google search
 Google books, e-books & e-readers
 Information = digital
 Mobile technology (smart phones, tablets & pads)
 Printing on demand & Espresso book machine
 Changes in science and scholarship: collaborative, programmatic, more data focussed,
use resources from outside institution, e-science/e-humanities/e-research

Science paradigms (Jim Gray)
The Fourth Paradigm: Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery, 2009, p. xx

 Google search
 Changes in scholarly publishing
 Changes at universities: focus on added value, making choices
 Technological advancement takes place in consumer market

Technological progress
Ray Kurzweil: The singularity is near: when humans transcend biology. 2005. p. 50
Intuitive linear vs historical exponential view

Technological progress
Ray Kurzweil: The singularity is near: when humans transcend biology. 2005. p. 25
Intuitive linear vs historical exponential view

 Google search
 Changes in scholarly publishing
 Changes at universities: focus on added value, making choices
 Technological advancement takes place in consumer market
 Major budget cuts
 Increase of cost of information keeps outpacing inflation

How do libraries deal with change?
 Libraries have changed tremendously, have innovated, have added digital services,
have generated more research/teaching time at the faculty level
 But to a great extent have not ended services and have kept within the existing
library paradigm
 Major driver for decisions about libaries within university administrations:
budgetary considerations
 Change is outpacing us.

Some traditional functions
 Selection/Acquisition
 Cataloging
 Archiving
 Reference desk
 Outreach
 Making available
 ‚Find it‛ business
 Special Collections
 Technology management

Selection and acquistion
Journals:
NOW: licensing, big deals (consortial)
<3 YRS: + flexible big deals based on usage and research profiles
<3 YRS: + backfiles from digital period will be OA?

Books:
NOW: title by title selection  approval plans
<3 YRS: big deals based on licensing?
<3 YRS: ordered directly by user at moment of need?
<5 YRS: books as a subscription stream (‚Spotify for books‛)?
<10 YRS: ordered (in)directly for user by smart personalized software
agents?

Institutional repository:
NOW: variety of formal and grey literature
<3 YRS: dissertations & theses
<3 YRS: grey literature
<3 YRS: teaching related (e.g. course on video)
<3 YRS: open access mandated publications by funding agency

Cataloging
NOW: record sharing and ‘item by item’ cat
NOW: real efficiency in and outsourcing of the back office
processes are at the top of our agendas.
<3 YRS: towards managing record/data flow
<3 YRS: 3rd party created records with added enrichment & user
created information
<5 YRS: focus on special collections & local information
<5 YRS: data flow is mainly managed at a national or international
level, with some local enrichment
What does this mean for our national information infrastructures?

Archiving
Paper collections:
NOW: in stacks locally, curated and managed
NOW: shift from open to closed stacks
<10 YRS: paper has been digitized (= mode of delivery)
<10 YRS: paper collections warehoused on a national/regional level or
national retention arrangements
<15 YRS: only special collections are locally curated and managed

Archiving
Electronic collections:
NOW: relatively vague agreements between libraries and publishers
about permanent access
<5 YRS: clear agreements and collaboration between publishers and
national libraries and/or transnational digital archives
<10 YRS: national digital archiving strategy

Archiving
Digital collections & data:
NOW: ad hoc local
<10 YRS: agreements and facilities at national and/or transnational
level

Reference desk
NOW: plenty of libraries still have reference desk staffed with highly
qualified staff in conjunction with virtual desk
<3 YRS: replaced by virtual desk (email, chat, telephone)
<3 YRS: and/or replaced by physical who/what/where
<3 YRS: and/or replaced by multi-organisation service desk

Outreach
NOW: away from collection specialists to faculty liaison and
development of ‘typical’ library services
<3 YRS: faculty liaison, services specialists & partners in research &
teaching
o data curation
o copyright
o text and datamining
o e-publishing & dissemination
o GIS
o datasets
o ...

Making available
NOW: we build traditional ‘just in case’ collections
<3 YRS: e-books / e-readers will become standard
<3 YRS: libraries offer printing on demand services (e.g. Espresso
book machine)
<5 YRS: paper books are delivered in digitized form upon request
<10 YRS: from ‘just in case’ collections to ‘just in time’ collections?
<10 YRS: general paper collections are housed in national/regional
warehouses

‘Find it’ business
NOW: libraries are still in the ‘find it’ business
<5 YRS: libraries have left to a great extent the ‘find it’ business as a
local service and subscribe to ‘find it’ cloud services
<5 YRS: libraries have moved into the ‘get it’ business and are
providing another array of services

Special collections
NOW: many libraries have special collections, but often as a
traditional prestige object and role in research and teaching is
not always substantial
<3 YRS: special collections at a university library need to have an
active role in research and teaching (more than just the study
of the book) and are focal point for fundraising and therefore
also for societal outreach
<10 YRS: special collections that have a purely museum or cultural
heritage function will be moved to specialized institutions
(museums)

Technology management
NOW: local management of a large number of library & information
systems
NOW: more systems / investments for our traditional processes will
increasingly become a hard sell.
<3 YRS: present library information systems are moved to the cloud
(discovery layer, catalog, acq/cat, circ, digital library, linking
server, repository)
<5 YRS: technology efforts focussed on connection between
information systems in the cloud and local application and
tools?
<5 YRS: some national information infrastructure will become
irrelevant
How do we act in a context of exponential change?

How do we act in a context of exponential change?
 Stop doing generic work that can easily be outsourced.
 Focus on specific needs for furthering education and research at
your own institution.
 Collaborate on a national or transnational level (Portico,
HathiTrust, …).

 Fullfill information needs of faculty, researchers, students, university.
 An attractive work, meeting and social space.
 Information manager for the university (CRIS, research data, research output, e-
learning objects).
 Expert centre digital information for research and teaching.
 Part of the research & teaching workflow.
 Support knowledge creation & dissemination.
 Integrate information literacy in regular curriculum.
 Bring information and tools in the environments our users are utilizing.
 Support e-research.
Larger organisations and collaboration with external parties.
The function of libraries?

Example: Research life cycle
Leo Waaijers: The DARE Chronicle: Open Access to Research Results and Teaching Material in the Netherlands, Ariadne, 53, October 30, 2007.
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue53/waaijers

RESEARCH
 Virtual Research Environments (VRE) for research groups
(planning, workflow, collaboration, bibliographic management,
versioning, library services, ...).
 Data Information Office (data management plans, data models,
…).
 DataLabs (data gathering, data storage, data use, …).
 New areas of expertise (text & data mining, geographical
information, …).

PUBLICATION
 Virtual Research Environments (VRE) for research groups (push
to repository, management of public website/blog/wiki).
 Institutional Repository.
 Support for enhanced/enriched publications.
 Set up or collaborate with University Press.
 Copyright Office.
 Publication advice services.

REGISTRATION
ARCHIVING
 Current Research Information System (CRIS) for registration of
publications and research projects.
 Library assigns Digital Author Identifier for uninversity’s
authors.
 Institutional Repository.
 Virtual Research Environments (VRE) & DataLabs (library
focuses on data management during research project).
 Digital Faculty Archives.

REVIEW
 No activities by library.
 Open peer review support.

CURATION
 Repository materials curated at a trusted digital archive (at
national library or international digital archive).
 DataLabs (data curated long term at national data archives).

DISSEMINATION
 Repository connected with general search engines (Google,
WorldCat, …), specialized search engines (NARCIS, DRIVER,
DART, …).
 Manage publication pages of faculty.
 VRE (public website, blog, wiki).
 University Press.
 Work with international initiatives such as OAPEN (Open Access
Publishing in European Networks – www.oapen.org).

IMPACT
 Monthly repository statistics per publication available to authors.
 Set up or work with bibliometric centre for impact measurement
of research impact.

FUNDING
 Collaborate with university’s Research and Innovation Services.
 Incorporate topics such patent information, IPR in information
literacy programmes.

Example : Library as space
 Extremely popular with students.
 Libraries are becoming well equipped, attractive learning centers for students.
 Social & educational role of libraries becomes more important.
 Books as stored paper objects will disappear from libraries.
 Quality of the learning center is an important selling point for the university.
 Invest in those areas where researchers still look at the library as a research and social
space.
 Special collections reading room and services.
 Support for prolonged visits of international researchers.
 Support for conferences, lectures, meetings, exhibitions.
 Take up societal role: cultural-scholarly programme.

But ... what holds us back?
 Transition is difficult to manage and takes years.
 Some of our users.

Pushing the paradigm’s envelope
 Monitor quiet study area
Creating variety of study areas (quiet, noise,
collaborative, lounge)
 More material in open stacks
Reduced size open stacks: creating learning
environment
 Limited need for group spaces
Creating variety group spaces
 Don’t close institute libraries
Closed down small libraries and transferring collections
to main library/closed stacks
2009 survey among humanities
students & faculty with regard
to library facilities in Leiden.
High on wish list:

But ... what holds us back?
 Transition is difficult to manage and takes years.
 Some of our users.
 Some of our librarians.
 Our framework, our tradition.
 Institutional territory.
 It’s risky.
 But also plenty of uncertainties:
o Are we indeed moving towards the end of the hybrid library?
o Will Google continue to invest in becoming the ‚world library.‛
o Will e-books become the norm?
o Will open access become a viable model?
o Will faculty support the transformation of the library into the university’s
information manager?
o Major publishers seem to pursue competitive strategies.
o Will libraries play a role in e-research and which ones?

Moving forward
 Start this discussion with library staff, the university administrators and
faculty.
 Personnel transition, new specification of skills, training & education.
 Collaborate with other libraries and other organisations.
 Starting with pilot project in close collaboration with faculty.
 Demonstrate the value and the impact of these new services.
 Be proud of and show your results.

Lets put the fundamental transformation of the library on the
agenda & create the roadmap.
Thank you for your attention!
k.f.k.de.belder@library.leidenuniv.nl
www.linkedin.com/in/kurtdebelder
@KurtDeBelder

Jabes 2012 - Conférence inaugurale "La transformation des Bibliothèques Universitaires"

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Jabes 2012 - Conférence inaugurale "La transformation des Bibliothèques Universitaires"