Conference Reports

Charleston Conference: Nov 5-7, 2009

The Charleston Conference (as expected!) brought out very interesting ideas and opinions about the state of libraries, publishing, and vendors. Below I address some highlights:

1. R. David Lankes (Keynote)

Lankes asked us to reassess some core assumptions about librarianship. He gave a spirited and hopeful presentation indicating that librarians have an increasingly important role in the information age and that we should reassess what it means to be librarians. He focused on themes of strategic assessment of our services and his ever-present theme of "library as conversation."

Several Charleston regulars indicated to the attendees that this was the best keynote that they had heard in 29 years. -- DEFINITELY worth a watch.

http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/presents.php
Slides: http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/Presentations/2009/Charleston.pdf
Audio: http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/pod/2009/charleston09.mp3

2. Michael Stephens (Tame the Web)

Stephens appealed to the audience to bring a human face back to library services and for libraries to "get out of the way" of patrons. His presentation is a call to librarians to open up (or maybe give way?) to social technologies which build community, help make information portable and relevant, and create opportunities to do our work better.

Presentation linked here: http://tametheweb.com/2009/11/07/thanks-charleston-conference-2009/

3. Jane Burke (Serials Solutions)

Burke presented on web scale searching solutions for libraries. The presentation was founded on some firsthand research by Serials Solutions into the research habits of students. This research basically showed that library pages were essentially impenetrable and unusable with their siloed databases and indexes, lingo, and high learning curve for users. The web scale solutions Burke proposed generally include full content indexing of library holdings (catalog, aggregated content, hosted content, IR, etcetera) and searching with a single box interface ala Google. Watch for these solutions which are hitting the market.

I'm interested to find out the potential of these tools to integrate consortial indexing. That would be powerful.

4. I saw presentations on how we use data in collections decisions, how to track electronic acquisitions better using ticketing systems, a new ILL overlay from SUNY Geneseo which allows for patron driven acquisitions decision making before the purchase OR loan of materials. I saw much more and had great conversations with librarians about the changes we are facing.

5. I presented with Ellen Urton and Regina Beard on the impact of our "just in time" collecting strategies on liason relationships with departmental faculty. That presentation went well and has a lot of potential to open up the eyes of acquisitions librarians (and liaisons!) to the complexities of needs assessment.

6. I presented on using supply chain modeling to understand the relationships between acquisitions and our suppliers. I'm planning on writing this up for the proceedings, and the slides will be on the Charleston web page: http://www.katina.info/conference/

Feel free to ask about any of the above. I'd be glad to share more.

Adam

Charleston Conference summary 2

"Making Life Easier: Automated Selecting and Ordering Systems from the Selector's Point of View"
    Linda Stewart from Cornell profiled the ITSO CUL software that Cornell developed for selecting. Its got a lot of potential... and I could see software like this eventually developing into something robust enough to take the firm and approval order tracking out of the ILS.  Wouldn't that be fun!?!
    James R. Mouw from University of Chicago profiled how they use YBP's Gobi system for firm ordering.  Their workflow is very similar to ours.  I think both could be improved.

"Web 2.0 What's in it for You?"
    Stephen Rhind-Tutt (President of Alexander Street Press) gave an impressive presentation about how Alexander Street Press is trying to integrate Web 2.0.  This includes developing scholarly communities around topics relevant to Alexander Street titles... like the "Second Wave" and Beyond scholarly community, which is centered around Women's studies.  Scholars can post projects, review, leave comments, communicate, and m(ost importantly) connect at these pages.  Intriguing!!

"STM in 2020: A Vision of the Future Business of Scholarly Communication" : David Worlock
    Worlock envisioned our profession in the future.  He envisioned it without librarians and with information professionals individually attached to every STM research project going to help navigate the ubiquitous information environment.  The shift to disintegrated library services and resources is coming.  We are all seeing it in the rising value of remote, on-the-go services and of individualized and personalized information.  Librarians as collectors is going to be less of a focus as resources become digitized and ubiquitous.

"Managing the Virtual Library" -- Jane Burke (Serials Solutions)
    Jane Burke had some forward thinking insights into library processes.  She admonished us to stop anticipating the digital revolution in libraries and accept that it is here already.  She hoped that we would integrate our segregated digital collecting (eBooks and digital journals) into our current workflows.  She insisted that the ERM be the center of the cataloging workflow.  She said that if we were still checking in periodicals that we should STOP and that if we were claiming we should STOP that too.  And she said that we should eliminate as many book processing steps as possible and reclaim that manpower for electronic resource management and the cataloging of unique collections. So, when are we going to follow this advice?!

Charleston Conference summary

I couldn't get a persistent wireless connection at the conference, or I would have posted more while I was there.  Here's a play by play summary of the highlights:

1.  "What Consultants Tell Publishers that Libraries Might be Interested to Learn"
One of the things that I liked most about this conference was that publishers, vendors, and librarians all participated together on a more level playing field.  It was interesting to hear publisher consultants discuss the direction that publishers are going.  One of the most interesting statements was that open access is NOT on the publishers' radar screens.  They aren't thinking about it or concerned about it.  As well, Peter Banks pointed to Freeculture.org's "Free Culture Manifesto" which articulates the movement of Web2.0 and the intention of Library2.0 fairly well.  Now just to overcome the barriers that make it impractical.

2.  "Can Cooperative Collection Development Work for Monographs?"
    The CARL libraries in Colorado embarked on a 1 year experiment to do cooperative collection development amongst many of their research institutions in a couple of areas.  Their intention was to assess the number of monographs they get in specific areas by potential usage and only get enough copies between the participating libraries that they will need.  So, instead of buying five copies between the libraries, they might buy two and rely on ILL for the times that other libraries might need them.  They have pilot projects with both YBP and Blackwell. 
    Interesting idea!!!  The relationship between these libraries set them up well to enter into a trusting relationship that might make this attempt at cooperative collection development feasible.  See more at the committee web page.

3.  "Views on Use Statistics and Value"
Charging for e-resources by use is at best a messy model.  We don't have a good indicator of what constitutes use, and the application of usage statistics can be dangerous without proper context.  These ideas were echoed in another session on usage later in the conference.  But, the most interesting side of this presentation was when Melanie Schaffner from Project Muse gave the provider side of creating appropriate pricing models.

4.  OCLC's Worldcat Selection Service Juried Product Development Forum
The ITSO CUL idea from Cornell is a good idea that's going in the right direction.  Create a one-stop shop for collection development librarians to receive notifications from vendors, sort through them, and submit orders to the acq staff.  OCLC is trying to run with this ball, but with only three vendors on board (Aux Amateurs de Livres International, Cassalini Libri, and Harrassowitz), the product has an uphill battle to convince libraries to buy in.  Without the backing of the companies that sell us most of our firm orders, I can't see it flying.  I like the idea of integrating our order records with the added value of OCLC records, but Library 2.0 is creating the potential for libraries to do record sharing outside of OCLC and to disintegrate the vendor interfaces in such a way that we may be able to collect their information in our own environments and route information just as effectively.  I'll keep my eyes open and keep thinking of ways to solve the multiple vendor/multiple interface problems.

5. Several Plenary sessions: 

• Greg Tananbaum (author of the "I Hear the Train A Comin’" column in "Against the Grain") moderated a panel presentation on the future.
  • Andrew Pace of NCSU spoke about the patron technology, e-books, the content ecosystem, and the ILS.  He said that libraries are generally just catching up in the realm of patron technology.  For example, he said that chat reference is NOT revolutionary, and it should be normal.  He argued that publishers have been holding up the development of e-books because of fears of losing revenue and control.  He also argued that the content "ecosystem" is shifting.  And, like other ecosystems which shift, not all of the organisms in that ecosystem will survive the shift.  Finally, he talked about the dis-integration of the ILS systems, the introduction and rise of open-source systems, and his hope that ILS systems will "vertically integrate," allowing customization and development from many angles.
  • Peter Banks of Banks Publishing discussed an idea to push publishing toward an "ITunes model" which would take advantage of the long-tail curve and allow publishers to lower prices to get return on the long tail articles (which is particularly relevant to research libraries).  He showed how high-interest did fit into a subscription model (the "short head" of the "long tail") and how there is a gap between the head and the tail which isn't sufficiently served by either the open-access or subscription models.  As well, he lamented that open-access is still a PASSIVE publishing model which doesn't fully tap the potential of the web.  We need a more active, empowering model to change the industry.
  • One of the points of Ann Okerson's (Yale) talk was to lament the need for dozens of platforms that are fighting for her attention.  She desired a simpler way to navigate through the complex world of academic information.
  • And Isabella Hinds of Blackboard outlined models of customized teaching and of disintegrating teaching services to create better, individualized online teaching environments for students.  It is a model that we should be looking to for library services.  One of her illustrating points was that e-books are NOT exciting.  They are the same paradigm and just a different publication medium.  E-content needs to integrate the possibilities of the web to be revolutionary.
• Matthew Bruccoli went on a 45 minute tirade against the movement away from paper books to web services, e-books, and the like.  He sang the praises of sniffing book gutters and of reading through volumes and volumes of information to learn.  I'm not sure he gets what the revolution of communal knowledge creation, dissemination, and consumption means to the world.
• I saw several of the speakers of a panel on open-access, including Anthony Watkinson, Mark Patterson of PLoS, and Astrid Wissenburg (I didn't get to hear Scott Plutchak).  The panel did a good job of answering Watkinson's concerns about the open access model, including questions about the impetus for open access despite its potentially faulty business model.  Patterson argued that open access is NOT a business model and does not concern itself with profitability.  By providing open access, PLoS tries to increase the potential for data mining and interaction between authors and readers.  Wissenburg argued that a moral imperative exists to push open access because we should be assisting the research structure and dissemination.

6. "eBooks and Libraries -- Near and future eBook Trends" was a panel discussion moderated by Sara Nelson of Publisher's Weekly which included Olaf Ernst (Springer), James Gray (CEO of Coutts), Richard Curtis (e-publisher), and Jeanne Pyle (director of UT Tyler) (see their biographies here).  The panel was VERY interesting.  While new pricing and dissemination models were deemed inevitable, the eBook discussion is still stuck in the idea that eBooks are just electronic books.  I believe that the eBook revolution hasn't happened in that authors, editors, and publishers of eBooks need to change the way they consider information to take advantage of the potential of digitally mounted information.  EBooks can be more and can take advantage of 2.0 technologies only if the book is written in a way that allows it to be used in the 2.0 environment. 

Charleston Conference 2006 morning session part B

Michael Pelikan challenged the audience with his presentation "After the Dinosaur Killer: Adaptation and Survival.  He chided libraries, publishers, and vendors on many levels.  We don't have a language that appropriately describes the vision that the corporate body of librarians have for future roles of libraries (some of which we are realizing).  This is evident in our use of language like "digital catalog" or "cellular phone" to describe new technologies that are surpassing their namsakes... much like "horseless carriage" described automobile in the early 20th century.   Our digital presence is still modeled after our physical presence... it is still rooted in the models that we are trying to leave behind.  And, we convert patrons to our worldview even though they are functioning within a worldview which isn't well developed in the academic library.  Patrons anticipate easy and fast access, and information delivery that exists in a mobile world.  We haven't gotten there.

Furthermore, there exists a fundamental clash between the corporate marketing world which drives search engines, product development, and the searching expectations of users, and the academic model which anticipates critical thinking, discovery, creativity, and individualized thought processes.  Librarians need to find a way to balance the needs of our users (generally students who have been raised within the corporate marketing world of information finding) and our desires to develop information literacy and to adequately navigate the information landscape to find quality relevant information in searching.

He pointed out trends in the world like AcaDemon.com which pays students royalties for selling their papers to other students and CiteSeer (a scientific literature library and search engine).
--------------------

The Next: The Next generation ILS

Andrew Pace demonstrated NCState's Endeca catalog interface and their E-Matrix ERM and some ideas behind them.  Stanley Wilder from the University of Rochester demonstrated their CUIPID ILS.  These ideas are good and hold a lot of potential for adapting our services to really integrate into users' lives instead of expecting them to work around us.

Paul Miller from Talis presented ideas about dismantling the library universe to bring Library 2.0 ideas into users' lives.  He profiled some innovations that are being developed by forward thinking libraries and librarians.

Charleston Conference 2006 morning session part A

Opening session at Charleston opened with interesting conversations. Ray English, Director of the Oberlin College Library http://www.oberlin.edu/library/ gave a presentation titled “Unintended Consequences of the Profit Motive: or Why the Open Access Genie is Out of the Bottle” in which he argued that because of the inelastic market of traditional academic journals and other social factors, the general trend in scholarly communication is pushing toward open access publishing, open access archiving, author archiving and author control of copyright. His arguments were strong and buy-in was easy.

One of the most interesting moments of the morning was when publisher representatives responded by nay-saying the model by discounting the data that English used and asking something like “To what criteria are libraries going to turn to spend their budgets if they aren’t going to look at how many times a publication is cited?” I don’t think that the journal rep understood the implications of essentially removing the publisher from the model. 

See an article from Paul Courant : http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_8/courant/index.html

See Open DOAR http://www.opendoar.org/ and 

See the directory of Open Access Journals http://www.doaj.org

 

Speaker#2 

R. David Lankes from Syracuse presented a talk on “Massive Scale Librarianship” in which he articulated some BIG ideas regarding how librarians and libraries will need to change to embrace the exploding information landscape that we are creating. He talked about the massive volumes of information being created by weather data gathering tools, road sensors, network operations, and more. Storage is getting to the point that it will probably exceed our need for making a choice about what to keep and what not to. We may find ourselves in a position to not have to make a choice between the data we want to keep and the data we want to discard (The W: drive will never fill up again). In this scenario, librarians need to shift from the non-scalable model of collections and artifacts (which become incidental to the data themselves) to a scalable model of creating “conversations” which facilitate knowledge creation through the connection of people, data, organizations, governments, etc.

Find more information about his ideas at http://www.DavidLankes.org. He said his slides are there, but I haven’t found them yet.