The document discusses the creation of an LSE Digital Library. It outlines why a digital library is needed to support the institution's collections and research mission. It describes conducting an audit of collections and risks, exploring options through research of other institutions, and developing a proposal. The proposal included an implementation plan with development of staff skills, technical infrastructure, and a phased approach starting with preservation and moving to management and access over time. Roles and responsibilities were defined for different teams to work collaboratively on the digital library's development.

1. Creating LSE Digital Library
Ed Fay
Digital Library Manager
e.fay@lse.ac.uk
@digitalfay

2. Creating LSE Digital Library
Why
Collections
Mission and strategy
Making the case
Collections audit
Options appraisal
Proposal
Implementation
Development programme
Roles and responsibilities
Questions

4. BORN-DIGITAL ARCHIVES DIGITISATION
RESEARCH OUTPUTS
WEB HARVESTING
PUBLIC LECTURES OFFICIAL PUBS FUTURE…
?

5. LSE Library Collections
Local £
• Research outputs (publications, data) • Journals
• Digitisation • Books
• Public lectures • Newspapers
Digital • Web harvesting (websites, blogs, tweets) • Statistics / data
• Archives (institutional, personal)
• Theses
• Official publications
• Archives (institutional, personal) • Monographs
• Theses • Journals
• Official publications • Pamphlets
Physical
• Newspapers
• Statistics
• Microfilm

6. Preservation responsibility
Local £
• Consortia
Digital • LSE Digital Library • LOCKSS
• Portico
• Archives Services • Print Collections
Physical • Consortium
• Print Collections
• UKRR

7. Research outputs repository
* New additions per month

8. Digital archives
* New hybrid or digital collections per year

9. Library space
* Metres added per year

10. Mission | Strategy
“Build and preserve distinctive collections to support
research and learning, and represent a record of
thought in the social sciences”
“Develop our digital library so that we are able to acquire,
preserve and provide access to digital collections which
match the strength of our print collections”
“…information repository services to support new forms of
scholarly communication and enable the School to manage,
disseminate and preserve these intellectual assets”

11. Making the case
• Collections audit
• Format diversity, volume/growth
• Risk assessment (threats to our strategic objectives)
• User and functional requirements (ingest, preservation, access)
• Options appraisal (‘market survey’)
• Community best practice
• Repository architectures
• Proposal
• Articulating value
• Solution: working practices, skills, infrastructure
• Development roadmap

12. Collections audit

13. Collections audit
• Known knowns
o Existing collections (legacy digitisation, research pubs)
o Known capacity requirements
• Known unknowns
o Future collections (archive deposits, official publications)
o Projected capacity requirements
• Unknown unknowns
o Possible collections (new digitisation projects, institutional
digital assets, research data)
o Unpredictable capacity planning

14. Risk assessment
Digital Repository Audit Method Based on Risk
Assessment (DRAMBORA)
http://repositoryaudit.eu/
Risk categories:
• Collection degradation or loss
• Reduced availability of content to users
• Loss of trust or reputation
Risk causes, lack of:
• Unified collection management/preservation activity
• Staff time and skills
• Technical infrastructure, investment in development

15. Risk assessment
Activity
overlooked or
under
resourced
Inadequate
staff skills
Media Failure of
degradation or authenticity,
obsolescence integrity,
Loss of provenance
essential Loss of trust
characteristics or reputation
Insufficient Cannot
backups implement
preservation
Infrastructure
plans
cannot
support
requirements

16. Risk assessment

17. Options appraisal
• Comparator analysis / best practice
o Site visits (4)
o Cambridge, Hull, Oxford, Wellcome
o Desk research/interviews (7)
o Exeter, SOAS, UCL, York, Kultur, MIDESS, Paradigm
• Functional requirements …
… tested open-source repository software
o 24 requirements in 7 categories, approximating to OAIS
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue64/fay

18. Proposal
• Approach
o Local implementation of skills, infrastructure for digital preservation
o Open-source technologies (repository and preservation tools)
• Resourcing
o Existing team: digital library manager, metadata technician, systems
administrator, collection representatives (academic services, archives)
o New posts: digital library developer, digital archivist, library assistant
• Implementation
o Phased development of staff skills, technical infrastructure
o Preservation first, then management, then access
o (this isn’t quite what happened…)

19. Proposal

20. What we planned…
Start with preservation.
Then think about management.
Then (maybe) access.
Even (perhaps) for actual users.

21. What we did…
Started with access.
Then (actually, now) preservation.
But, it worked…

22. The Iceberg Model of
Digital Libraries
interfaces
collections/objects
workflows
systems
storage
digital preservation

23. The Iceberg Model of
Digital Libraries
interfaces
collections/objects
workflows
systems
storage
digital preservation

24. Implementation

25. Implementation
Who? Bib Services, Archives
What? Existing systems/interfaces
How? Skills in place, resources in place

26. Implementation

27. Implementation
Who? Collection Preservation, Archives
What? Open source tools, new interface
How? Need training, resources in place

28. Implementation

29. Implementation
Who? Collection Preservation
What? Open source tools, new interface
How? Need training, resources in place

30. Implementation

31. Implementation
Who? Library IT
What? Storage, backups
How? Need training, resource priority

32. Implementation

33. Who? External consultants, DL team
Implementation What?
How?
IA/UX/design
Need skills, need resourcing

34. Implementation

35. Roles and responsibilities
• Innovation vs service development
o Core skills and focus
o Embedding operational capacity
• Communication
o Cross-library (collections vs techies)
o Confident in requirements…
o …interesting IT challenges
o Long process of engagement

36. Roles and responsibilities
Academic Services
Academic Services
Senior Management • Collection development
Collection development
• Strategy • Information skills training
Information skills training
• Resources
Digital Library Team
Digital Library Team
• Policy
Policy
• Skills expertise
Skills / / expertise
• Innovation / projects
Innovation / projects
Collection Services
Collection Services Archive Services
Archive Services
• Preservation
Preservation • Collection development
Collection development
• Description
Description • Description
Description
• Infrastructure
Infrastructure • Preservation
Preservation

37. Skills
Experts: policy, change management
Practitioners: workflows, quality assurance
Non-specialists: aware
Skills gap analysis
Activity Role Skills Resource Notes
(description) (job title) (y/n/training) (y/n/%)

38. SPRUCE
a project to inspire, guide, support and enable UK HEIs to
address preservation gaps; and to use the knowledge
gathered from that support work to articulate a
compelling business case for digital preservation
• Events: digital preservation solutions
• Embedding: grants to continue work
• Business case: benefits, skills gaps
http://dpconline.org/advocacy/spruce

39. DICE
Digital Communications Enhancement
Training materials to raise awareness of digital preservation
in researcher community and library training providers
Start Early | Explain It | Store It Safely | Share It
http://lsedice.wordpress.com

40. PhoneBooth
Delivering Library-owned
maps and manuscripts to
mobile devices
Charles Booth maps and
notebooks (1886-1903)
http://jiscphonebooth.wordpress.com

41. Questions?
me: twitter.com/digitalfay or e.fay@lse.ac.uk
LSE Digital Library: digital.library.lse.ac.uk
SPRUCE: dpconline.org/advocacy/spruce
PhoneBooth: lse.ac.uk/PhoneBooth
DICE: lsedice.wordpress.com

42. Image credits
Egosiliqua malusymphonicus Guts © Christopher Locke
(used with permission) http://heartlessmachine.com/
Iceberg (Public Domain) Wuzur
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Iceberg.svg
Simple Globe (CC-BY-SA) Tokyoship
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Simple_Globe.svg
8” floppy disk (Public Domain) Pamporoff
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:8%60%60_floppy_disk.jpg
Feed icon (GPL) Free Software Foundation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Feed-icon.svg
Twitter logo © Twitter
https://twitter.com/about/resources/logos
Crowned Portcullis © UK Parliament
http://www.parliament.uk/site-information/copyright/the-crowned-portcullis/
OAIS Functional Entities © CCSDS
http://public.ccsds.org/publications/archive/650x0b1.pdf
National Research Libraries logo © [unknown]
[Various Gnome icons] (GPL) Gnome icon artists
All other images (CC-BY-NC-SA) LSE Library