Beitarie, "Toward Service-Oriented Librarianship"

Toward Service
Oriented Librarianship
Oren Beit-Arie. Ex Libris Group.
NISO Forum: Library Resource Management Systems
October 8, 2009 • Boston, MA

© Ex Libris, Ltd., 2009. Proprietary and confidential. 4
Cory’s Yellow Chair. Arthur Ganson | MIT Museum

Meet Kismet – the sociable robot
http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/humanoid-robotics-group/kismet/kismet.html

Talking points
• Some things we observe
• What does it mean?
• A few examples
• What does it mean?

I will not be talking about

http://www.exlibrisgroup.com/category/URM_ResourceCenter

An Interconnected Landscape
“The future of the research library cannot
be considered apart from the future of
the academy as a whole.”
(No Brief Candle, p. 2)

Trend 1: More Research, More Data
“Improvements in computing and network technologies, digital
data capture techniques, and powerful data mining techniques
enable research practices that are highly collaborative,
network-based, and data-intensive.”
Rethinking Scholarly Communication, 2004

Trend 2: More Interdisciplinary Activity
“…many contemporary projects require effective
federation of both distributed resources (data and
facilities) and distributed, multidisciplinary
expertise.”
“The Atkins Report”, 2003

Trend 3: Changes in Scholarly Communication
Models
“Future scholarly communication systems should
closely resemble—and be intertwined with—the
scholarly endeavor itself, rather than being its after-
thought or annex.”
Rethinking Scholarly Communication, 2004

15
Trend 4: technology, models
• Computing as a Service (Cloud
Computing)
• Open Interfaces (Openness)
• Service Oriented Architectures
(SOA)
• Semantic web /
Linked data

16
And, Moore’s Law still working…

17
Ex Libris interviews: What we heard
• Starting in March 2008 began interviews with libraries and
other stake holders globally. They told us:
• Meet users needs – provide a single interface for
discovery and delivery of all library/institutional assets
• Do more with less by consolidating workflows, uniting
traditional library functions with those of the “digital
library”
• Support collaboration to increase productivity, leverage
“network effect”,
• Support re-use of metadata
• Build future services with SOA-based interoperability,
Network-based (SaaS) deployment option
• Collect and incorporate user-provided data
• Enable new type of services. Expand the
reach

It does (will and should) impact
(almost) everything we do.
Change is mandatory.

What Does It Mean for Libraries?
“The changes that are occurring—in technology,
in research, teaching and learning—have created
a very different context for the missions of
academic and research libraries.”
Daphnée Rentfrow, No Brief Candle, 2008, p. 58

New form of scholarship 
New form of librarianship?

How To Get There…
“Collaboration can generate savings that the
library can allocate to other activities
supporting teaching and research.”
No Brief Candle, 2008, p. 10

Collaborations

Three notes on Collaboration
• Collaborations are key to free up resources
and re-direct them to do other (important)
things
• Collaborations are much more loosely and
dynamically defined and deployed –
sometimes ad-hoc…
• Collaborations: libraries-libraries, libraries-
users, users-libraries, libraries-institutions,
libraries-…

How to get there/ The ‘to-do’ list
1.Change the Framework
2.Leverage the Network
3.Expand the range of services

Technological Evolution in Global Library Market
Linking/Linking/
FederatedFederated
Search/ERMSearch/ERM
Electronic
Content
Management
IntegratedIntegrated
LibraryLibrary
System (ILS)System (ILS)
Physical
Content
Management
Evolution of Needs
Evolution in Libraries Focus Areas and Needs
Digital
Content
Management
DigitalDigital
RepositoriesRepositories
1990s 2000 2002
Millennium
Unicorn 360°
III-ERM
ContentDM
Fedora
DSpace
Aleph
Voyager
Dynix
Geac-Infor
SFX
Verde
WebBridge
Digitool
Metalib

Technological Evolution in Global Library Market
Linking/Linking/
FederatedFederated
Search/ERMSearch/ERM
Electronic
Content
Management
IntegratedIntegrated
LibraryLibrary
System (ILS)System (ILS)
Physical
Content
Management
Evolution of Needs
Evolution in Libraries Focus Areas and Needs
Digital
Content
Management
DigitalDigital
RepositoriesRepositories
User
Experience
DecoupledDecoupled
InterfaceInterface
1990s 2000 2002 2007
Millennium
Unicorn 360°
III-ERM
ContentDM
Fedora
DSpace
VUFind
Encore
Endeca
A’Browser
Aleph
Voyager
Dynix
Geac-Infor
SFX
Verde
WebBridge
Digitool
Metalib
Primo

How to get there/ The ‘to-do’ list
Turn content-based
verticals (slios) to
service-based horizontals

Integrated Library system
1. definition
2. deployment

Resources
Manage Serve
So, what do we actually do?

The new framework…
URD2
Search: Local, Remote, Deep
Linking UI Recommendations
E-ShelfUser Preferences
Data Services
Metadata
Management
KnowledgeBase
Vendor Info
Tags & Reviews
Usage Data
URM
Selection
Acquisition Fulfillment
Patron
Cataloging
Inventory Maintenance
Access
Rights
PublicationActivation
And Beyond…
Usage Metrics
…and more
Preservation
URD2
Decoupled Front-end
Single entry point for
discovery and delivery
of all material types
URM
Decoupled Back-end
All back-office functions
for the management of
all materials
Data Services
Value added
data used by
applications or
provided as
a service
e.g. CKB, MMS,
Primo Central,..
Across Services…
Open (Platform)

For us, URM in 5 bullet points…
 A Service (on the Net)
 All materials & ownership methods:
o Print
o Local/Remote Digital
o Preservation ready
 Workflows focused
 Open, modular, extensible:
o Integrated workflows, but can be deployed modularly
 Collaborations:
o Between libraries
o With users
o With external system (e.g. material vendors, ERP,..)

How To Get There/ The ‘to-do’ list
• New Standards?
• Best practices, guidelines,
… ?

http://www.diglib.org/architectures/ilsdi/DLF_ILS_Discovery_1.1.pdf
DLF ILS Discovery Interface Task Force

With the new framework, we will need new tools
• We will need to develop more methods of
interoperability b/w data services and
systems:
• Kind of like KBART, but extended beyond
published Journals & linking data
• The role of Linked Data

Areas of focus
1.Traditional
2.Transitional
3.Transformational
doing same things differently
doing new things in support of
traditional functions
doing entirely new and different
things

Traditional: Moving to the Network Level
• The Wisdom of Clouds:
• Move software to a centralized, hosted environment
• Local Deployment options
• New benefits to libraries:
• Lowers Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
• Allows technical staff to work on new projects
• Enables options for “data-as-a-service”
Network
Level
“Web-scale” Software-as-
a-Service
Cloud
Computing

Traditional:
New models of bibliographic control
• Rethinking: “On the Record: Report of the Library of
Congress Working Group On the Future of Bibliographic
Control” (2008)
• A lot about production and supply chain of
bibliographic metadata
• Lower costs; increase utility and productivity
• Community-based, network-borne services:
• New levels of services
• New/emerging: ‡bilbios.net, URM/MMS, Open
Library,..
• The potential/promise of Linked Data*:
• lcsh.org
• VIAF
*) “Linked Data = the Semantic Web done right" Tim Berners-L

To think/do:
• Need to go beyond the
traditional :
• More granular items (chapters, ..)
• Complex /distributed data (see OAI-
ORE)
• “New” types: research data, data sets
• Do we have the right standards ?
• Shared/Linked Data: Sustainability
and operational challenges:
• E.g.: deploy batch/bulk processes for
modify/delete notification ?
• “May we please share our records?”

39
Traditional - example of network-based services:
Aggregated indexes
• New discovery tools: many of them enable
indexing of article data
• With availability & affordability of computing
resources (e.g. cloud services) we can now
realize a really-large shared index
• E.g. DADS, Scholars Portal, Primo Central,
Summon, Ebsco Discovery Service, etc.

40
To think/do:
• Do we really think there
will be one, single index
that will do-it-all?
• (no)
• Architecture of federation
is still required
• Blend the locals the
shareds (and the
remotes…)

Areas of focus
1.Traditional
2.Transitional
3.Transformational
things

Transitional: New Support for Library Tasks
• Leverage the capabilities of a Network deployment to
improve support for traditional activities
• For example:
• Collaborative Collection Development
• Content Selection
• Integration with vendor systems
• Collaborative collection development within a
consortium or ad hoc groups
• Shared purchasing
• Usage-driven Collection Development

46
… The Library of Congress has
updated 3,266 records in the Prints
& Photographs Catalog, “based on
information provided by the Flickr
Commons project, 2008” with
more to come …
George Oates’ presentation: Into The Wild:
Breathing New Life Into Collections.
http://www.slideshare.net/george08/society-of-archivists-presentation

47
So, what does it mean?
This is exciting (users as catalogers!)
This is depressing (why don’t they use,
for e.g. Primo, for this?)
______________________________________________________________
We must meet the users where they are
(URM::DisseminationControl)
We must deploy back-end processes in
other than library contexts

Traditional and Transitional
• Create collaboration and partnership
opportunities without compromising the library’s
local needs and uniqueness
• Focus on the Unique (the institutional)
• …and integrate the Common (global
information)
• Collaboration as a means to an end…

Areas of focus
1.Traditional
2.Transitional
3.Transformational
things

Building a usage-based
evaluation of scholarly
communication

Changes in Scholarly Information Services
• Greater focus on content Users create and
choices & preferences they make
• User contribution increasingly important
• Explicit contribution
• Implicitly – usage data captured by the system
(user ‘clickstreams’)

Mining usage data to enhance library services
• Relevance Ranking of search results
• Web Analytics
• Recommender Services
• New metrics for scholarly evaluation

Recommender Services
• BibTip
• LibraryThing
• bX

Project MESUR
http://www.mesur.org

Map of Knowoledge

Long term
Digital Preservation

Sustaining the Digital
Investment
It’s about
…to enable perpetual
access & retrieval…

@ National Library of New Zealand
• Areas of focus:
• Web harvesting
• Special Collections
• Direct deposit from publishers
• Digital legal deposit
• and more…
• >1m objects, +7TB of content
• Focus shifts also to academic/research
institutions, beyond memory and
cultural contexts

Archives – Museums – Libraries
These intersecting communities seem
to have more in common than we
have accounted for in the past…

e-science/e-scholarship/e-research
Possible Roles?

“.. [data deluge] is forcing
historians to become
scientists, and scientists
to becomes archivists and
curators.. “
WSJ Aug 28, 2009: “Data Deluge Swamps Science Historians”

Data curation
management & use
“Librarian as a
Middleware” (Rick Luce)

New form of scholarship

New form of librarianship?

Possible New Roles and Processes
Bibliographer Acquisitions
Expert
Cataloger Reference
Librarian
Subject
Librarian
Biologist
Working on
DNA
Sequencing
Metadata
Consultant
Support
Services
Research
Process
IT Support
Computer
Scientist
Working on
DNA
Sequencing
Commercial
Interest
Working on
DNA
Sequencing
Fulfillment
Expert
Preservation
Expert
End-2-end
Services

Partnership and Services
Publishers
Researchers
The Library
Students
Commercial
Players

New paradigm of library services
Service Oriented Librarianship
(SOL)

Need for Experimentation
“The library will be a laboratory for
understanding how a new generation of
faculty and students do their work, and for
supporting experimentation and innovation
in processes that enhance e-research
across many communities.”
No Brief Candle, 2008, p. 8

(must) start todayTraditional
Transitional
Transformational
now
soon
later

How To Get There…
“Greater collaboration among librarians,
information technology specialists, and
faculty…should be strongly supported.”
and providers !

Thank You
oren@exlibrisgroup.com

Beitarie, "Toward Service-Oriented Librarianship"

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