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

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

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 ‐ NELINET 2

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 Mackie, CI and the LAC 3

RIT “Original Synergy” (6/2009) 6/1/2009 Doing More with Less..., Mackie ‐ NELINET 4

RIT Software Usage 10‐30m users/daily; 300m+ users peak 6/1/2009 Doing More with Less..., Mackie ‐ NELINET 5

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 ‐ NELINET 6

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 6/1/2009 Doing More with Less..., Mackie ‐ NELINET 7

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 deploy 1 June 2009 Mackie, CI and the LAC 8

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 ‐ NELINET 9

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 ‐ NELINET 10

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

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