Service Oriented Librarianship - Back to Basics?
Oren Beit-Arie
Ex Libris
The title is a riff on various catchphrases that pepper Oren's talk:
Software As A Service
Computing As A Service
Data As A Service
Trends in research and librarianship
1) More research, more data ("Rethinking Scholarly Communication", DLib, Van de Sompel, 2004)
2) More interdisciplinary activity (Atkins Report, 2003)
3) Changes in scholarly communication models, including publishing crises. Makes point that prior to 2000s, point of scholarly communication was the final product; now research are concerned with earlier products of research cycle - data gathering, lab work, etc, whether or not a final article is published. Scholarship is happening in nontraditional places like YouTube, blogs, etc.
4) Technology and models - open interfaces, Service Oriented Architecture, Computing as a Service (cloud computing)
Change is mandatory - it should impact everything we're doing. New forms of scholarship must mean new forms of librarianship. How do we get there?
Collaboration - generate savings that we can spend on new activities (the old argument, "we have to stop doing something"
Focus on both the local and the networked communities
Areas of collaboration - three categories:
1) Traditional - doing the same things differently
2) Transitional - doing new things in support of traditional functions
3) Transformational - doing entirely new and different things
[wishing I had my camera to take a pix of the framework image - much more helpful than a written description - hopefully these slides will be available later]
Traditional: moving to the network level
-"The network is the computer"
-Move software to a centralized, hosted environment
-Reduces total cost of ownership
-Allows technical staff to work on new projects
-Data as a service
(Above the clouds: A Berkeley view of Cloud Computing - eecs.berkeley.edu)
Software as a Service / Data as a Service - centralizes library data and allows taking advantage of the wisdom of aggregated data
Collaborative, community-based bib control, while retaining individuality of local information - a Library Zone and a Community Zone - called the Metadata Management S* (System? Service?). Major change from last year's URM announcement is that the model is now a hybrid - there's a community option and a local option, and one could use both. Allows libraries to balance the common and the unique.
[JBK commentary: the trouble right now is that libraries focus too much on the common - stuff everyone owns - and ignore or marginalize the unique - special collections, regional specialties.]
Oren shows screenshots from the URM - cataloging a record; descriptors are RDA, not MARC; displayed data is FRBRized. Showing capability to take advantage of community work that's already done (Community Zone). Current corollary is copy-cataloging from OCLC record, attaching local holdings to a specific record. The concept is the same - taking advantage of work that's been done already. Oren makes clear that there will be no policies on ownership and use of the record information - they are respecting libraries' and community ownership of the data. A real poke in the eye at OCLC.
Another sample screen, for Selection, this time. The process is laid out on the screen; information is clear and answers the questions you want answered before buying something: "Who else owns it?" "How much money is left in my fund?" "Is it a good resource?"
Transitional function of the community - ability to create and consult with a community of users - sort of like a Facebook/Twitter mashup just for catalogers. Goal is point-of-need collaboration.
Transformational stuff:
bX is one of them - using data mining to identify relationships between/among scholarly materials; putting that data to work giving recommendations to users. Saw a demo of bX during lunch - it's pretty awesome; based on the work of Johan Bollen and Herbert Van de Sompel at Los Alamos. Scroll back through the Conferences Blog entries to see Johan's name and his research that I've blogged from other conferences. More about bX in a separate post.
Oren's conclusion:
Data curation management & use - it's what we've always done; we just need to do it differently
"Library as middleware" - Rick Luce
Demonstrates traditional acq/cat workflow as an end-to-end process, and show how transforming that work includes those people in a larger end-to-end process - the research process.
Traditional/Transitional/Transformational is not intented as a timeline - now/soon/later - just procrastinates the necessary work. Trying to move the Transitional and Transformational work into the "now."
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