On National Teacher Day, meet the 2024-25 Kenan Fellows
Reorganizing the Research Library: a system-wide perspective
1. Reorganizing the Research Library:
University of Pittsburgh
26 January 2011 a system-wide perspective
Constance Malpas
Program Officer, OCLC Research
2. Roadmap
• OCLC Research
• (Re) organization of the research library
• Boundaries and service bundles
• Reconfiguring academic collections
• System-wide trends: from outside-in to inside-out
• The view from here: Pennsylvania in perspective
3. OCLC Research: what we do
Supports global cooperative by providing internal data
and process analyses to inform enterprise service
development (R&D) and deploying collective research
capacity to deepen public understanding of the evolving
library system
Special focus on libraries in research institutions:
in US, libraries supporting doctoral-level education account for
<20% of academic libraries;>70% of library spending
changes in this sector impact library system as a whole;
collective preservation and access goals, shared infrastructure, &c.
4. OCLC Research: who we are
• ~45 FTE with offices in Ohio, California and the UK
• Sponsored by OCLC and a partnership of research libraries
around the world that share:
• A strong motivation to effect system-wide change
• A commitment to collaboration as a means of achieving collective gains
• A desire to engage internationally
• Senior management ready to provide leadership within the transnational
research library community
• Deep and rich collections and a mandate to make them accessible
• The capacity and the will to contribute
5. Our collaborators
Then: Now:
• ARL set the tone; size • Nimble
matters and this is filler institutions, unburdened
to adjust spacing by legacy print mandate
• Collections of distinction • Distinctive purpose
• Doing the same, better • Transforming the portfolio
• Change is possible • Change is imperative
A new coalition is needed
to advance the research library agenda
7. System-wide organization
Research theme addresses “big picture” questions about the
future of libraries in the network environment; implications
for collections, services, institutions embedded in complex
networks of collaboration, cooperation and exchange
• Characterization of the aggregate library resource
Collections, services, user behaviors, institutional profiles
• Re-organization of individual libraries in network context
Institutions adapting to changes in system-wide organization
• Re-organization of the library system in network context
„Multi-institutional‟ library framework, collective adaptation
8. Defining characteristics of SO activities
• Emphasis on analytic frameworks and heuristic models
that characterize (academic) library service environment
as a whole
• Identifying and interpreting patterns in
distribution, character, use and value of library resource;
implications for future organization of collections and
services
• Provides context for decision-making, not prescriptive
judgments about a single, best course of action
• Shared understanding of how network environment is
transforming library organization on micro and macro level
9. Exemplar:
Re-organization of the (individual) library
• Boundaries of the Academic Library
• Application of economic „theory of the firm‟ (Coase)
• Transaction costs determine how services are sourced
• Framework for thinking about future re-organization of
libraries and library services
• Organization of economic activity within the library
• „Unbundling‟ the library (Singer, Hagel)
• A shift in focus from back-office processes, routine workflows
to customer relationship management, innovation
10. Boundaries of the Library (Lavoie, Dempsey)
“An academic library is a bundle of information-related
resources and services that a university has chosen to provide
internally, rather than transact for with external parties. A
crucial factor in determining which resources and services to
provide internally, and which to transact for externally, is the
prevailing pattern of transaction costs. . . In this way, the
boundaries of the library are established: the demarcation
between the information-related services the university chooses to
provide internally, and those that it transacts for externally.
As the pattern of transaction costs change, so too will the
...
boundaries of the library as the optimal mix between internalized
and externalized services shifts accordingly.”
OCLC NextSpace issue 17 (January 2011)
11. Boundary work at Pitt
Externalization of ‘core business’ operations:
From infrastructure to customer relationship management:
A new emphasis on innovation and moving ‘into the flow’:
Excerpts from C. Gill “Library of the Future” Pitt (Winter 2007)
12. Exemplar:
Re-organization of library system
• Externalization of print repository function facilitates
redirection of institutional resources; new scholarly record
• Cloud Library analysis (OCLC, Hathi, NYU, ReCAP)
• Case study in de-composition of library service bundle: “cloud
sourcing” research collections
• Data-mining Hathi and WorldCat to determine where cost-
effective reductions in print inventory can be achieved for
individual libraries (micro economic context)
• Characterizing optimal service profile for shared print/digital
service providers; collective market for service (macro
economic context)
• Exploring social and economic infrastructure requirements;
technical infrastructure a separate, secondary challenge
13. Prediction
Within the next 5-10 years, focus of shared print archiving
and service provision will shift to monographic collections
• large scale service hubs will provide low-cost print
management on a subscription basis;
• reducing local expenditure on print operations, releasing
space for new uses and facilitating a redirection of library
resources;
• enabling rationalization of aggregate print collection and
renovation of library service portfolio
Mass digitization of retrospective print collections
will drive this transition
14. A global change in the library environment
60%
Academic print book collection already substantially
50% duplicated in mass digitized book corpus
% of Titles in Local Collection
June 2010
40% Median duplication: 31%
30%
20%
10% June 2009
Median duplication: 19%
0%
0 20 40 60 80 100 120
Rank in 2008 ARL Investment Index
15. Mass-digitized books in print repositories
~3.5M titles
3,500,000
~75% of mass digitized corpus is ‘backed up’ in
3,000,000
one or more shared print repositories
~2.5M
2,500,000
Unique Titles
2,000,000
1,500,000
1,000,000
500,000
0
Sep-09 Oct-09 Nov-09 Dec-09 Jan-10 Feb-10 Mar-10 Apr-10 May-10 Jun-10
Mass digitized books in Hathi digital repository Mass digitized books in shared print repositories
16. A third of titles held in Pitt Libraries are
duplicated in the HathiTrust Digital Library
~2.67 million Pitt ULS (PIT) holdings in WorldCat
93,275 titles
Full View
778,187 Limited View
titles
~870K duplicated in HathiTrust Digital Library
OCLC Research. Analysis based on HathiTrust and WorldCat snapshots. Data current as of December 2010.
17. Subject distribution of Pitt ULS-owned titles
duplicated in HathiTrust Digital Library
Communicable Diseases & Misc.
Unknown Classification
Medicine By Body System
Health Facilities, Nursing
Physical Education & Recreation
Agriculture
Preclinical Sciences
Chemistry
Medicine
Medicine By Discipline
Psychology
Health Professions & Public Health
Anthropology
Computer Science
Public domain
Geography & Earth Sciences
Mathematics
In copyright
Biological Sciences
Performing Arts
Physical Sciences
Law
Music
Education Represents approximately
Engineering & Technology
Library Science, Reference
Sociology
10 miles of library shelf space
Political Science
Art & Architecture
Philosophy & Religion
Government Documents
Business & Economics
History & Auxiliary Sciences
Language, Linguistics & Literature
0 50,000 100,000 150,000 200,000 250,000
Titles / Editions
OCLC Research. Analysis based on HathiTrust and WorldCat snapshots. Data current as of December 2010.
18. System-wide print distribution of Pitt ULS titles
duplicated in HathiTrust Digital Library
Market for shared print provision increases
Value of Hathi preservation increases
OCLC Research. Analysis based on HathiTrust and WorldCat snapshot data. Data current as of December 2010.
19. Stewardship and sustainability:
a pragmatic view
Using recent life-cycle adjusted cost model* for library print collections,
$4.25 per volume per year --- on campus
$ .86 per volume per year -– in high-density storage
the University of Pittsburgh is spending between
[870K titles * $.86 =] $750K to $3.7M [= 870K titles * $4.25 ] annually
to retain local copies of content preserved in the HathiTrust Digital Library
The library is not financially accountable for these costs
but it is responsible for managing them
Paul Courant and M. “Buzzy” Nielson, “On the Cost of Keeping a Book” in The Idea of Order (CLIR, 2010)
20. Collections Grid
In many Open Web
Purchased materials
Licensed E-Resources collections Resources
Licensed
Purchased
High Low
Stewardship Stewardship
Special Collections In few Research & Learning
Materials
Local Digitization collections
Credit: Dempsey, Childress (OCLC Research. 2003)
21. Library attention and investment are shifting
In many
collections
Licensed
Less attention
Purchased
High attention Occasional
High Low
Stewardship Stewardship
Limited
Limited Aspirational
Intentional
In few
collections
22. Academic institutions are driving this change
In Many
Collections
Licensed Redirection of library
resource
Purchased
High +5 yrs Low
today
Stewardship Stewardship
Univ. library spend on e-resources in 2008:
Total US ARL = $627M US (41% total library exp.)
In Few
Collections
23. Change in Academic Collections
• Shift to licensed electronic content is accelerating
Research journals – a well established trend
Scholarly monographs – in progress
• Print collections delivering less (and less) value at great (and
growing) cost
Est. $4.25 US per volume per year for on-site collections
Library purchasing power decreasing as per-unit cost rises
• Special collections marginal to educational mandate at many
institutions
Costly to manage, not (always) integral to teaching, learning
24. An Equal and Opposite Reaction
As and increasing share of library spending is directed
toward licensed content . . .
Pressure on print management costs increases
Fewer institutions to uphold preservation mandate
Stewardship roles must be reassessed
Shared service requirements will change
25. What factors are driving this change?
• Erosion of library value proposition in academic sector
institutional reputation no longer determined (or even
substantially influenced) by scope, scale of local print collection
• Changing nature of scholarly record
research, teaching and learning embedded in larger social and
technological networks; new set of curation challenges for
libraries
• Format transition; mass digitization of legacy print
Web-scale discoverability has fundamentally changed research
practices; local collections no longer the center of attention
26. A long term, system-wide trend
US Academic Library Expenditures
vs. Total Spending on Post-Secondary Education
$400,000,000 3.00%
$350,000,000
2.50%
$300,000,000
2.00%
$250,000,000
$200,000,000 1.50%
$150,000,000
$6.8 billion in 2008 1.00%
$100,000,000
0.50%
$50,000,000
$0 0.00%
Aggregate US Spending on Post-Secondary Education US Library Operating Exp. as % of Ed. Spending
OCLC Research. Derived from data reported in NCES Digest of Education Statistics: 2008.
27. Shift in provision of higher education
Distribution of Post-Secondary Educational Institutions
Distribution in Post-Secondary Educational Institutions
of the United States by Source of Funding
(derived from NCES data)
in the United States by Source of Funding
3,000
No. of Institutions
2,500
2,000 For P
1,500 Public
1,000 Privat
Distribution of Post-Secondary Educational Institutions
500 in the United States by Source of Funding
(derived from NCES data)
0
3,000
No. of Institutions
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
2,500
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
-2
-2
-2
-2
-2
-2
-2
-2
2,000 For Profit
00
1
02
03
04
05
06
07
0
1,500 Public
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
1,000 Private Not-for-Profit
OCLC Research. Derived from data reported in NCES Digest of Education Statistics: 2008.
500
0
28. A limited population, growing economic pressure
US Academic Libraries & Operating Expenditures
1977-2008
Operating Expenditures Libraries
$8,000,000 4,500
$7,000,000 4,000
3,500
$6,000,000
3,000
$5,000,000
2,500
x 1000
$4,000,000
2,000
$3,000,000
1,500
$2,000,000
1,000
$1,000,000 500
$0 0
OCLC Research. Derived from data reported in NCES Digest of Education Statistics: 2008.
29. In US research libraries, a tipping point …
100
Majority of research libraries shifting toward
90
e-centric acquisitions, service model
Licensed Content as % of Library Materials $
80
70 Center of gravity
60
50
40
30
Harvard
20
Yale
Shrinking pool of libraries with mission and resources
10
to sustain print preservation as ‘core’ operation
0
$- $5,000,000 $10,000,000 $15,000,000 $20,000,000 $25,000,000 $30,000,000 $35,000,000 $40,000,000
Library Materials Expenditures (2007-2008)
OCLC Research. Derived from ARL Annual Statistics, 2007-2008
30. … the books have left the building
140,000,000
In North America, +70M volumes off-site (2007)
120,000,000 ~30-50% of print inventory at many major universities
Built Capacity in Volume Equivalents (2007)
100,000,000
~25% of Pitt ULS holdings
managed in LRF . . .
80,000,000
60,000,000
40,000,000
20,000,000
Growth in library storage infrastructure
0
1982 1986 1987 1992 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008
Derived from L. Payne (OCLC, 2007)
31. It‟s not about space, but priorities
• If the physical proximity of print collections had a
demonstrable impact on researcher productivity, no
university would hesitate to allocate prime real estate to
library stacks
• In a world where print was the primary medium of
scholarly communication, a large local inventory was a
hallmark of academic reputation
We no longer live in that world.
32. Pennsylvania
• 6th largest economy in the US; 18th in the world
• GSP $553 billion in 2008
• 194 academic libraries in 2008
• 5% of all academic libraries in the US
• 4 AAU members (PSU, Penn, Pitt, CMU)
• Total academic library spending in 2000: $245 million;
est. $343 million in 2008, or %.06 of GSP
33. Shrinking public purse
Academic Libraries in Pennsylvania by Control & Funding
Public Private
250
200
150
71% 81%
100
50
29%
19%
0
2000 2008
OCLC Research. Derived from NCES Academic Libraries Surveys, 2000 and 2008 .
34. Diversity of educational mandates
Academic Libraries in Pennsylvania
Less than 4-year 73
Highest level of degree
Bachelor's 24
Master's 49
Doctor's 48
0 10 20
30
40
50
60
70
80
OCLC Research. Derived from NCES Academic Libraries Survey, 2008 .
35. Declining use of print by academic sector
Community Colleges Highest degree: Baccalaureate Highest degree: Master's
Highest degree: Doctoral All academic libraries
35
Keep your eyes on the base . . .
30
25
20
Axis Title
15
10
5
0
1992 1994 1996 1998 2000
OCLC Research. Derived from NCES Academic Libraries Surveys, 1992-2000.
36. Academic libraries in the Keystone State:
a common trajectory, different timelines
The next few years are critical
Jul „11 Nov „11 Aug ‟12 Aug ‟13
* * * *
OCLC Research. Projection based on HathiTrust and WorldCat snapshot data, Jun 2009 – Dec 2010.
37. Academic print: it‟s not the end . . .
but it’s no longer the means
Ongoing redefinition of scholarly
function and value of print
will entail some loss
and some gain in library relevance
“Archive of the available past” photograph by Joguldi.
Abandoned books at the Detroit Central
School Book Depository (6 May 2009) Flickr
38. Thanks for your attention.
Comments, Questions?
Constance Malpas
malpasc@oclc.org
With that as background, I’d like to offer a prediction about the future of shared print, and that’s our attention will begin to shift to pooled management of the retrospective print book collection. With this shift, I think we will see the emergence of a relatively small number of larger service hubs providing just-in-time delivery and longterm preservation services on a subscription basis. Individual academic libraries will contract with those service providers because they offer a cost efficient alternative to local operations and more importantly because they allow the library to redirect its attention and resources to renovating its service portfolio. As a result, I think we will see a progressive rationalization of the systemwide print book collection.I belive mass digitization of retrospective print collections will be a primary driver in this transition, preceding a broader shift to commercial provisioning of e-books.
How big is this shift likely to be and on what timeline? Over the last year we have studied the mass digitized book corpus in the context of systemwide print holdings and have found that a substantial part of the average academic library is already substantially duplicated. This scatter chart provide a simple but effective visualization of an important pattern that this project has revealed: that is, that the risks and opportunities associated with moving collection management ‘into the cloud’ are uniformly distributed across the research library community as a whole. [CLICK] This is a picture of the ARL membership (a microcosm of the larger research library community) that shows the level of duplication between individual library collections and the mass digitized book collection in Hathi. Over the course of this project, we have seen the rate of duplication between locally held print and mass digitized books increase steadily and significantly. In June of last year, an average of 20% of monographic titles in an academic library were duplicated in the Hathi repository; today that figure is about 30% (up to 40% for some institutions). [CLICK] In real terms, this means that rate of digital replication is exceeding the pace of growth in monographic acquisitions in most academic institutions. We estimate that the rate of duplication has increased by about 8% per library in the past year. Monographic acquisitions typically grow at about 2% per year in research libraries.A very low standard deviation (variance of ~4%), and across the population very little movement outside this range: 2/3rds of ARL community falls within standard deviation. [CLICK] We project that in a year’s time, many academic libraries are liable to find themselves “underwater,” holding a massive inventory of over-valued assets.Library directors will be called to account and expected to respond to questions about how an increasingly redundant local print collection is serving the educational and research mission of theparent institution. We need to be preparing for a world in which just-in-time, print on demand delivery is an option for a large share of the retrospective book collection.
Another major finding of our study is that the mass digitized book corpus is substantially ‘backed up’ in one or more large-scale storage collections. As I mentioned earlier, we have a very incomplete picture of what’s currently in storage, so this figure may actually be quite a bit higher. The figures here are based on just 5 major repositories The important point is that we seem to have the beginnings of what I characterized earlier as a ‘strategic reserve’ of print that could significantly offset the costs of local operations. As you can see here, the proportion has remained relatively stable over the course the past year. As of this month, about 2.5 million of the 3.5 million digitized books in Hathi are also held in one or more of 5 large scale shared print repositories.
This is where the rubber meets the road. I mentioned that there has been increased attention to the long-term costs of acquiring and retaining low-use print materials. This is especially true for retrospective print collections that have been digitized. On recent study by the Dean of Libraries at the University of Michigan suggests that it costs about $4.25 per volume per year to store a book on campus, and less than a third as much to manage it off-site. This means that the Pennsylvania State University is currently spending between $750 thousand and $3.7 million dollars each year to retain copies of books that are preserved in the HathiTrust repository. Which Penn State is also paying for. The library is not accountable for these costs – they are not charged to the library budget – but is in some sense responsible for them.
This is a model we have used to frame some discussions about library collections and operations in the past. The horizontal axis is a measure of the stewardship or curation efforts that have traditionally been needed to manage these materials in libraries. The vertical axis is a measure of how widely held the materials are in the library system: at the top are resources that are abundant in the library community, at the bottom are materials that relatively rare.In the upper left quadrant are the materials that libraries traditionally purchased and increasingly are leasing. Below that are special collections, rare books and manuscripts. The bottom right includes research outputs and teaching materials. The upper right includes a wide variety of resources found on the Open Web – web sites, discussion lists, blogs etc.Libraries may be interested in all of these areas, but not equally. Traditionally, library acquisitions and operations have focused on the upper left quadrant: published materials in print. Licensed resources were a secondary focus. And, except for research and academic libraries, there was limited attention to managing rare books and manuscripts, instructional course materials, or Web archiving.Increasingly, [click] we have seen this attention shift to licensed electronic materials, which are now more ubiquitous and also require less local management effort.
Increasingly, [click] we have seen this attention shift to licensed electronic materials, which are now more ubiquitous and also require less local management effort. At the same time,
There are a number of important changes in the academic library environment that we should be paying attention to. First, the shift to reliance on externally sourced, licensed content is accelerating – this is no longer just about e-journals but e-books as well.Secondly, print collections aren’t delivering the value they once did. There is increasing attention to the long term cost burden of acquiring and retaining low-use print books.Finally, special collections are not universally perceived to be a key part of the library’s service mission in higher education. They may contain a few items regarded as treasures by the university, but the acquisition of rare books and manuscripts is rarely viewed, or funded, as a core library function.
Here, transition into a story about why academic libraries are beginning to reconfigure their collections and service portfolio.There are three main drivers I want to call out here, though one could certainly point to others. First, there is general agreement that the traditional library value proposition -- acquiring and amassing a comprehensive or substantially representative physical corpus of material for local use – is no longer perceived to be relevant.Second, the nature of the scholarly record has changed and is no longer adequately captured in traditional print and licensed collections. There is increased attention to the need for managing ‘upstream’ research outputs and traditional print operations are viewed as something of a distraction from this.Finally and most importantly for the purposes of our discussion to day is the impact of mass digitisation on the discoverability of and perceived ‘location’ of library collections. Digitized books are no longer regarded as the property of individual libraries but instead considered part of the network.
At Penn State, the university libraries have historically been underfunded compared to peers. I was interested to read (in Michael Bezilla’s history of PSU) that, in early 1960s, the library accounted for about 1.4% of the institutional budget. For many years, one could hold that figure up as evidence of the need for increased institutional support of the university libraries. Yet, when we look at aggregate spending on college and university libraries in the US, it would appear that an investment of less than 1.5% of total institutional spending is the norm today. This chart shows that while total institutional investment in higher education has increased dramatically in the past 30 years, proportional spending on academic libraries has been on a steady decline. If this trend continues, we can project that the university allocation to libraries will fall below 1% by about 2013. This has something to do with the increasing costs of educational infrastructure – spending on laboratories and technology has grown much more rapidly than spending on library infrastructure. So while library expenditures have increased each year, they represent a diminishing part of the university’s total spending in support of research, teaching and learning. This is a trend that is driving a certain amount of change in the academic library environment, encouraging a shift to collaborative sourcing of collections and services, increased attention to the return on library investment, and a stern focus on identifying and eliminating operational inefficiencies.Here at Penn State, there has been a tremendous effort to improve and expand the university libraries, supported in recent years by a stunningly effective development campaign and some exceptionally committed individual donors. At the same time, there has been a serious reassessment of traditional library operations – guided by a very thoughtful Strategic Plan – and a reallocation of effort and resources in support of a new vision of library excellence. All of this is very impressive. I want to emphasize, however that the trend toward diminished support for academic libraries is not a new phenomenon and it is not merely a knock-on effect of regional or institutional economic pressures. It is a reflection of much broader changes in the higher education environment, including funding mandates that create incentives for increased institutional attention to science and engineering, a decline in the number of students pursuing advanced degrees in the humanities, and new models of educational provisioning -- including distance learning – that are no longer reliant on locally-sourced collections or infrastructure.
In the US, the last five years have been marked by significant growth in for-profit education market, dominated by online universities. These institutions are not reliant on traditional physical infrastructure of the library. Their success is forcing traditional HE institutions to compete for students and to revitalize their institutional reputations. The core library operations associated with print based collections do not have much relevance here. We see the impact of this shift called out in the University’s strategic plan, which acknowledges increased competition for the hearts and minds of the next generation of Penn Staters.
Over the same 3 decade period, we’ve seen US academic library spending grow steadily, from just over a billion dollars in the mid ‘70s to about $7 bn in 2008. This is not a reflection of growing library infrastructure – or “new library starts” – since as you can see the total number of academic libraries has remained relatively stable. So, think about this for a moment: in an environment where total higher education spending is increasing both in absolute terms and as a proportion of the US GDP, total investment in academic libraries is declining, yet the academic library system as a whole looks almost unchanged.
In the US, a majority of research libraries are already spending more than half of the library materials budget on licensed resources. Print is no longer at the center.Pitt spending 65% of materials budget on e-resources
In fact, more and more of it is at the periphery.In the past 25 years, massive growth in off-site library storage infrastructure in the US.
So why is so much of the print inventory at major research institutions managed off-site? Why does a work as important and useful as Religion and the Decline of Magic live ‘outside the building’? It’s not a matter of space pressures in academic libraries – as we so often say – but of priorities. As Lorcan remarked yesterday, the time when a large mountain of books signified academic prowess is over. We no longer live in that world.
Cf CA, largest US state economy and 8th in the world.(GSP) is about $1.85 trillion, which is 13% of the US GDP
As we look to the future, it is clear that the academic library environment as a whole is changing. Here I have plotted projections for the duplication of academic print collections in the HathiTrust Digital Library for a range of academic libraries in the state of Pennsylvania. The blue and violet lines at the top of the stack represent smaller academic institutions . We predict that 50% of their library holdings will be duplicated within the coming year. At research intensive institutions, that watershed moment will occur somewhat later. At top tier institutions like Penn State, it may take another year or two before redundant print inventory begins to look less like an asset and more like a liability. But this change is coming, and we need to plan for it.