doing more with less:the crisis, cooperation, and the library

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Doing More with Less: The Crisis, Cooperation, and the Library Christopher J. Mackie NELINET Annual Conference Devens, MA, 1 June 2009

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The current financial situation has forced many libraries to pay unprecedented attention to how they are organized to achieve their missions. One common thread emerging in the responses is cooperation: those needing to cut costs sharply are finding that they cannot do so incrementally but must instead transform their activities in ways that spread cost and diffuse risk among many partners. The talk will cover some of the opportunities available for transformative institutional collaboration among libraries, including collaborative, open source software development as well as the challenges facing those attempting to collaborate. It will pay particular attention to the question of how to collaborate strategically: that is, how to ensure that collaboration retains or increases a library’s ability to pursue mission, enhance agility, increase sovereignty, and improve sustainability.

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Page 1: Doing More with Less:The Crisis, Cooperation, and the Library

Doing More with Less: The Crisis, Cooperation, and the 

LibraryChristopher J. Mackie

NELINET Annual Conference

Devens, MA,  1 June 2009

Page 2: Doing More with Less:The Crisis, Cooperation, and the Library

Keep in mind…

• The views presented here are my own, not necessarily  those of my colleagues or of The Andrew W. Mellon 

Foundation• The conclusions reached here reflect my own 

knowledge and educated guesses based on  information gleaned from the public press and 

conversations with your peers and colleagues: others  might reach different conclusions on the same data

• All of the projects and approaches described here  succeed or fail based on the wisdom and effort of their 

participants: “Your Mileage May Vary”

6/1/2009 Doing More with Less..., Mackie ‐

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Page 3: Doing More with Less:The Crisis, Cooperation, and the Library

Mellon’s RIT Program

• 50+ OSS/CSS Projects since 2000• Scholarly Tools: 

– Sophie, VUE, Zotero, Decapod• Museum, Performing Arts Projects: 

– FluidEngage, ProjectAudience, CollectionSpace• Administrative Cyberinfrastructure: 

– Kuali Financials, Kuali Coeus, Kuali Student, etc., etc. • Scholarly Cyberinfrastructure: 

– Bamboo, Open Annotation, OLE, OpenCast, Sakai, SEASR• Middleware for Cyberinfrastructure:

– Fluid, ESB, uPortal

1 June 2009 3Mackie, CI and the LAC

Page 4: Doing More with Less:The Crisis, Cooperation, and the Library

RIT “Original Synergy”

(6/2009)

6/1/2009 4Doing More with Less..., Mackie ‐

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Page 5: Doing More with Less:The Crisis, Cooperation, and the Library

6/1/2009 55

RIT Software Usage

10‐30m users/daily; 300m+ users peak

Doing More with Less..., Mackie ‐

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Page 6: Doing More with Less:The Crisis, Cooperation, and the Library

Community Source Software

• Collaboration among institutions to design, build,  govern(, and operate) software addressing 

shared needs/concerns• Cost amortization; risk reduction; stability 

enhancement• Examples: Sakai, uPortal, Kuali, OpenCast, SEASR, 

Bamboo, others—and OLE (more about OLE  later)

• Healthy, competitive vendor market ensures  access by institutions lacking IT resources

– IBM, Sun, Oracle– rSmart, Unicon

6/1/2009 Doing More with Less..., Mackie ‐

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Page 7: Doing More with Less:The Crisis, Cooperation, and the Library

Sustainability

• Metrics:– Great: improves ROI, productivity, reduces risk, etc., for org and 

constituents

– Good: improves ROI, reduces risk, etc., for scope of project– Bad: Inflates direct or hidden costs, increases risk, destabilizes other 

sustaining activities

• Examples:– Great: Consortial

provision of ILS dramatically reduces TCO‐per‐

institution by leveraging open source vendor markets

– Good: Consortial

provision of ILS smoothes economic spikes, allows 

institutions to assure more consistent services despite budget 

volatility

– Bad: Consortial

provision of ILS mimics “vendor lock‐in”

model, 

creating same hidden costs as individual provision, plus costs of 

collaboration

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Page 8: Doing More with Less:The Crisis, Cooperation, and the Library

Project OLE (Open Library Env’t)• Objective: Next‐generation ILS & global CoP

for a Web 2+ world

• Eliminate traditional/digital library dichotomy; integral electronic 

resources, collaboration, consortial

support

• “Enterprise”

tech: extend library more deeply into teaching & 

research missions

• Weaving academic libraries together into a single, seamless Web of 

knowledge

• 120+ institutions participated in worldwide design effort, including 

many RUs, LACs, state, & national libraries

– Consortia well‐represented, including VALE, others• Build to begin 12/2009; first deliverables expected 12/2010

– Seeking build‐partners now, including consortial

partners

– No in‐house tech capacity required, to participate or deploy1 June 2009 Mackie, CI and the LAC 8

Page 9: Doing More with Less:The Crisis, Cooperation, and the Library

OLE and CriticalMASS• Mission

– Good: serves existing needs of libraries for ILS

– Great: Supports next‐gen

OPACs, finding aids to full extent of their capabilities

– Great: “Enterprise”

approach allows library to reach deeper into teaching/research 

missions

• Agility– Good: Open standards, open source means improved ability to respond

– Great: CoP

provides intel, best‐practices to perceive, prioritize, respond

• Sovereignty– Good: Healthy vendor ecosystem means fair value for money

– Great: IP ownership vested in Mission‐aligned entity

– Great: “You can fire the vendor without firing the software”

• Sustainability– Good/Great: Costs, risks amortized over all participants

– Good: Wider choice of business models means closer fit to needs

– Great: CSS should allow easier, smoother adaptation to economic changes

6/1/2009 Doing More with Less..., Mackie ‐

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Page 10: Doing More with Less:The Crisis, Cooperation, and the Library

For More Information…

• Project OLE: http://www.oleproject.org/• Other Community Source Projects

– www.kuali.org

(admin and financial services)– www.sakaiproject.org

(learning mgt & research collaboration)– www.ja‐sig.org/uportal

(portal software)– www.opencastproject.org

(campus audio/videocasting)– www.seasr.org

(rich‐media scholarly analysis)– www.projectbamboo.org

(Arts & Hum scholarly support)– http://www.openannotation.org/

(scholarly annotation)• Me

– c j m @ m e l l o n . o r g– http://rit.mellon.org– Christopher J. Mackie

Associate Program Officer, Research in IT

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

6/1/2009 Doing More with Less..., Mackie ‐

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