Topic 5: Research Libraries: Reconfiguring Organizational Boundaries in a Network Environment第五讲：重构网络环境下研究图书馆的组织范畴

Lorcan Dempsey

THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY:reconfiguring organizational boundaries in a network environment

Lorcan Dempsey, OCLC

2

The libraryA simple definition

A bundle of functions a university internalises and shares to make information management efficient for university members.

Our libraries are a product of an earlier network era.

Institution scaleGoodness: A large collection in a central locations

Organization: Structured around collection

Makes it possible to see library as …

The network has reconfigured whole industries … TravelNewsBook retail

We have yet to work throughwhat systemwide reconfigurationmeans for libraries …

Transaction costsRonald Coase

Firms exist because of …

…. Transaction costs

Firm: Manufacturing R&D Human Resources Finance

Call center

Supply chain

Plants/grounds

Transaction costs help determine the boundaries of the firm:Delineation between activities that are conducted internally and those that are transacted for externally

Higher the transaction costs, more likely an activity will be internalized within the firm

Consolidation at scale“

The scalability of access: stronger gravitational attraction at network level

Context and community: rich analytics drive richer experiences

Network encourages efficiencies of scale

a Coasian view of the academic library

Universities find it useful and economical to internalize a bundle of library-related activities

As the pattern of transaction costs change, so too will the boundaries of the library.

Bangor University, Wales

“searching has been deskilled”

Boundaries

University: Library Teaching Research Administration Laboratories Sports facilities

Google

Bangor

Instititutional support for research and learning

Cataloging

A&I/E-journals

JSTOR/Portico

Resource sharing

Virtual ref

Shared storageJURA

Harvard Business Review (1999)

Core components of a firm

CustomerRelationshipManagement

Product Innovation

Infrastructure

Back office capacities thatsupport day-to-day operations“Routinized” workflowsEconomies of scale important

Develop new products andservices and bring them tomarketSpeed/flexibility important

Attracting and building relationships with customers“Service-oriented”, customizationEconomies of scope important

Shifting library boundaries

Libraries externalising infrastructureCollectionsSystems

Relationship management is central - engagement

BuildingsThe service turnPeople

Patterns of externalization varyCollaborativeCommercialThe emergence of the cloud

CollectionsManaging down print collections

We are moving to a situation where network-level management of the collective collection becomes the norm, but it will take some years for service, policy and infrastructure frameworks to be worked out and evolution will be uneven. The network may be at the level of a consortium, a state or region, or a country. At the moment, this trend is manifesting itself in a variety of local or group mass storage initiatives, as well as in several regional and national initiatives. [Emerging network level management of the collective print collection]Lorcan Dempsey

Peter Sidorko

SpaceShift from infrastructure to relationship management

Ad hoc rendezvousMeeting place

Social

Showcase

ExhibitionsSpecialist equipmentSpecialist staffGIS, Writing centre,

digital humanities, …

From Modernist to ModernInside Higher Ed, March 21, 2011Yet on many of those campuses, the Modernist structures had long since become viewed as liabilities -- visually (with many modern-era students considering them eyesores), and operationally, with the facilities often lacking the common spaces colleges often desire for collaborative learning and dedicating too much space to book stacks that are no longer necessary.

"Skillman Library served us well for the first 30 years of its life," Neil J. McElroy, dean of libraries & information technology services at Lafayette, said of its 1960s-era centerpiece. But by the mid-1990s, it was "no longer suitable," due to the librarian's changing role "from steward of collections to educator" and the advent of the World Wide Web and digitization, he said.

Find members of a group in the library ….

Expertise

People are entry points

Engagement with research andlearning

Marketing/assessment

U Mich

ServicesThe service turn

U Minnesota, ARL Institutional profile

In alignment with the University's strategic positioning, the University Libraries have re-conceived goals, shifting from a collection-centric focus to one that is engagement-based.

ServiceThe service turn

Defining distinctive services with the clarity with which we have defined distinctive collections allows us to acknowledge that the 21st century will be marked by different, but equally valid, definitions of excellence in academic libraries, and that the manner in which individual libraries demonstrate excellence will be distinctive to the service needs, and to the opportunities to address those needs, found on each campus.

Scott Walter. “Distinctive Signifiers ofExcellence”: Library Servicesand the Future of the AcademicLibrary. Coll. & res. libr. January 2011 72:6-8

... to serve the emerging needs of faculty, researchers and graduate students pursuing in-depth research and scholarly inquiry. Access to expertise, hardware and software.

First year initiatives: Bowling Green State Univ Libs

M Publishing, U Michigan

The Library First-Year Initiatives (F.Y.I.) Program strives to make meaningful connections with incoming students early in their academic career.

The University of Michigan Press, the Scholarly Publishing Office, Deep Blue (the University’s institutional repository service), the Copyright Office, and the Text Creation Partnership,

Libraries Assessment, U WashingtonThese triennial surveys focus on library use and

satisfaction as well as user needs and library priorities.

Scholarly Commons, U Illinois Urbana Champaign

SystemsEngagement, cloud and collaboration

Focus on engagementResource guides, integration with learning management, widgets, etc

Move to cloud for infrastructureILS, ERM, Discovery: move to cloud-based solutions

Deep collaborationShared systems infrastructure:Orbis Cascade Alliance, 2CUL

Specialization: what business are you really in?Specialise where can make an impactExternalise what is routine and can be done well collaboratively or by others

Library: what is distinctive

Cataloging

Resource sharing

A&Ie-Journals

Virtual reference

Preservation

Legacy print repositoriesDigital repository

Analytics: usage data

‘Syndication’Knowledge base

Collaborative data/patron driven acquisitionIdentifier infrastructure

Externalization

Sou

rcin

g

Scaling

Institution Group Web

Internalized

Collaborative

Public

Third-Party

1

Self-Sufficiency

2

CollaborativeExternalization

Cooperative catalogingResource sharing

4

Web-scaleExternalization

Google Books/ScholarMendeley

Institution WebGroup

Third-Party

Public

Collaborative DSpaceTripod:

(Tri-collegelibrary catalog)

RePEc

BibliographicStandards

(LC Classification,MESH, LCSH)

OhioLink(resource sharing &

negotiation of licensesand subscriptions)

JISC CollectionsVTLS Virtua(hosted ILS)

worldcat.org

PubMed

Sou

rcin

gScaling

Some directionsStrengthening engagement

Systems for engagement Relationship with campus partnersMarketing and assessmentThe service turn

Externalising infrastructure

Give things up?Deep collaborationCloudJust in case to just in timeInnovation and expertise

New skillsOrganizational innovation