This document discusses the changing landscape of academic libraries and their role in stewardship of the scholarly record. It notes that collections are becoming more fragmented as they shift from local to group-scale management, and libraries are redirecting resources from commodity collections to distinctive services. Academic library consortia will need to collaborate more deeply on collection management and custodial responsibilities to adequately support the evolving scholarly record across its various formats. Questions are raised about whether existing consortia represent the right stakeholders and scale of cooperation needed for effective collaborative stewardship arrangements going forward.

1. Some reflections on libraries and stewardship of the scholarly record
Constance Malpas
Program Officer, OCLC Research
3 June 2014, Boston College
BLC Networking Day
Collection Directions
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2. Inside-out
Outside-in

3. 3
Collection Directions: Academic Libraries

4. Low
Stewardship
High
Stewardship
In few
collections
In many
collections
Collections Grid
Research & Learning
Materials
Open Web ResourcesPurchased Materials
Licensed E-Resources
Special Collections
Local Digitization
Licensed
Purchased
Outside-in
Inside-out
Dempsey & Childress, OCLC Research

5. Institutional Needs – Academic Libraries: Current situation vs. 5 years from now
Low
Stewardship
High
Stewardship
In few
collections
In many
collections
Licensed
Purchased
Key Trends:
• increased reliance on group provisioning of print and licensed content
• more integration of freely available web-based content
• special collections focus on institutional mission, reputation
• growing attention to teaching/learning materials; limited library capacity

6. Institutional Needs – Research Libraries: Current situation vs. 5 years from now
Low
Stewardship
High
Stewardship
In few
collections
In many
collections
Licensed
Purchased
Key Trends:
• strategic realignment around purchasing/licensing ‘collections as services’
• redirection of investment toward reputation management, research support
• emphasis on effective disclosure of distinctive assets: special collections,
research data, expertise

7. A landscape in transition
• Fragmentation in higher education sector (elite,
convenience, ‘squeezed middle’) will drive changes
in academic libraries – increased differentiation in
portfolio of collections and services
• Shared infrastructure enabling transition from local-
to group-scale management of purchased and
licensed content
• Institutional capacity to redirect resources from
commodity collections toward distinctive services
will depend on availability of appropriate
cooperative infrastructure
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8. 8
Collective collection: print books

9. 9
31%
90%
North American Print Book Landscape, January 2011
US libraries hold
90% of titles in
North American print
book collection

10. 10
North American Mega-regions
12 zones of highly integrated economic activity
• Does distribution of library resource align with
distribution of economic activity?
• What are the implications for stewardship of North
American print book collections?

11. 11
Relative size of regional print book collections (2011)
92% of North American print
book collection concentrated in
12 mega-regions

12. 12
Inventory
continues to
grow in all
regions
Median +3%
between 2011
and 2013
+4% growth in
Bos-Wash

13. 13
• Largest mega-regional print book resource
in North America
• 27.9M print book titles; 56% of North
American print book resource
• 199.6M library holdings; 22% of North
American print book inventory
• Avg. 7 in-region library holdings per title
• 75% of titles held by <5 libraries in region*
• 33% of titles are unique to region*
Bos-Wash print book collection (2013)
*based on 2011 data

14. 14
Bos-Wash Coverage of other Regional Collections (2011)
Bos-Wash regional resource
duplicates 65-95% of print book
titles in other regions …next largest regional collection can
duplicate just 50% of Bos-Wash collection

15. 15
Bos-Wash Institutional Infrastructure (2011)
• >4000 holding libraries
• Top 5 libraries account
for 15-34% of titles (each)
Academic libraries
account for >70% of
regional inventory

16. Group-scale: Boston Library Consortium
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17. 17
17 libraries
Liberal arts colleges, professional schools, research institutions,
state library . . .
• all affiliates of FCLD print journal archive
• many (all?) participating in Eastern Academic Scholars Trust
Right scale for
stewardship
is…small
consortium?
Large, loose
confederation?

18. 18
Largest
print book
collection
in BLC is
>100X
greater
than smallest
collection

19. 19
Median
BLC member
‘coverage’
of Bos-Wash
collection
is 2%
‘coverage
requires
cooperation’

20. 20
Median
NERL member
‘coverage’
of Bos-Wash
collection
is 5%
‘coverage
requires
cooperation’

21. At every scale…
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ChiPitts
58%
SoCal
47%
Charlanta 67%
coverage requires collaboration
regional coverage

22. >266M library holdings in WorldCat
Shared Print Collections
• Cooperative stewardship of
aggregate print resource
• Part of broader trend toward
‘group-scale’ library
operations
• >30 active shared print
groups in North America
• 9 major groups registering
shared print holdings in
WorldCat
22
Shared Print Titles in WorldCat
April 2014

23. 23
Boston College
Williams College
U Mass Amherst
Median
duplication
23% as of
May 2013

24. Stewardship of the Evolving Scholarly Record
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25. 25
Format transition:
Print-centric to digital, networked
Boundaries blurring:
Articles/monographs, but
also research data, computer
models, video, blogs,
visualizations, conference
posters & presentations,
pre-prints, etc.
Stakeholder roles reconfiguring:
New paths for the scholarly communication ‘supply chain’
Scholarly record

26. Stewardship of the scholarly record
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Create
Fix
Use
Collect
Factors impacting stewardship …
• Increasing volume of content
• Increasing diversity/complexity of content
• Increasing distribution of custodial responsibility
 ‘local copies’ of scholarly record are increasingly partial
 discovery and management are increasingly fragmented
 coherence of scholarly record is reduced

27. Questions for academic library consortia
• Is available cooperative infrastructure adequate to
support deeper collaboration around collections
management, custodial care of scholarly record?
• Do existing consortia represent the right mix of
stakeholders for collaborative stewardship
arrangements?
• How can consortial efforts ‘scale up’ to meet
system-wide stewardship needs? What mechanisms
are needed to federate group-scale approaches?
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28. Thanks for your attention.
©2014 OCLC. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Suggested attribution:
“This work uses content from [presentation title] © OCLC, used under a Creative Commons Attribution license:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/”
malpasc@oclc.org
@ConstanceM
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