1) Collecting institutions like libraries, museums and archives face strategic challenges in maintaining relevance in the digital age due to socio-technical changes and user expectations. 2) There is a need for common purpose and strategy across institutions to overcome fragmentation, place users at the heart of developments, and move beyond the traditional institutional paradigm with a single voice. 3) Institutions must understand the changing relationship between content suppliers and users in the digital space to meet evolving user needs around scale, convenience and learning. 4) Maintaining strategic fit will require balancing long-term collection value with rapid innovation and changing digital behaviors.

1. COLLECTING INSTITUTIONS
IN THE NETWORK SOCIETY
Chris Batt OBE PhD FRSA
Digital Strategist

2. Who was I?

3. Technology in Libraries Technology and public collections

4. Public museums, libraries and
archives and 21st century
socio-technical determinism

6. DESTINATIONS
Physical collections in fixed location
s
THE DIGITAL SPACE
Physical differences disappear

7. 1. The quest for common purpose
• Overcoming fragmentation
• Placing the user at the heart of strategic developments
• Moving beyond the institutional paradigm
• A single voice for a collective digital future
2. The boundary exchange: how digital services
align with user needs and expectations
• Scale, convenience and uniqueness to face off competition
• Confidence about the physical and the virtual
• Learning as leitmotif
3. The speed of innovation and change
• How can collecting institutions maintain strategic fit in the future?
• Balancing the long-term value of collections against
changing behaviours and expectations in digital use.
STRATEGICCHALLENGES
?
?
?

8. Multidisciplinary, mixed methods
Hermeneutic phenomenology
Documentary-based research
Balanced scorecard
Three horizons change model
Corpus linguistics
Theory of necessary cause
Open systems transformation model
Grounded theory

9. Research Mission

10. How to maintain strategic fit in the
face of dramatic and continuing
socio-technical change?

11. Online service offers that…
Are distinctive in form
Maximise public value
Align with changing user needs and
expectations
Maintaining strategic fit

12. The social fabric pre-2000
Shared social expectations
Incremental change
Access demanded travel
Slow diffusion of innovation
Multi-channel society

13. “Networks have become the
predominant organisational
form of every domain of
human activity... The space of
flows has taken over the logic
of the space of places…”
The Network Society

14. “The average UK citizen spends more time
each day using digital technologies and the
Internet than sleeping…
…like 8 hours and 16 minutes”
OFCOM. Annual Communications Review, 2014
The Network Society

15. In 2002
STREAMING VIDEO was rare, short and choppy.
WIRELESS HOTSPOTS were a novelty.
MOBILE PHONES were used primarily for (gasp) phone calls
A TUMBLER was a kind of drinking glass
A TWEET was a type of birdcall
In 2022
The internet will likely be different from the internet of 2012
Karpf, D. 2012. Social Science Research Methods in Internet Time. Information,
Communication and Society. Vol. 15, No. 5. June, pp639-661.
Endless change

16. The knowledge hunter/gatherer becomes
online harvester
Social revolution

17. LOSERS WINNERS
Recorded music industry Smartphones, MP3, iTunes,
Spotify
Traditional publishing Ebooks, ejournals, blogging,
streaming news services
Main street Amazon, eBay, Abe Books
Travel Expedia, TripAdvisor
Reference books, Libraries? Wikipedia, Google
Traditional telephony Skype, email, WhatsApp
Letter writing Social networking services
Terrestrial TV Netflix, Prime Video
Sector turbulence

18. COMPETITION
Attention
Time
Convenience

19. EMPIRICAL STUDY 2007
53 early teens in Connecticut and
South Carolina
11% considered the website a
hoax
EMPIRICAL STUDY 2017
27 early teens in the Netherlands
7% considered the website a
hoax
NEW LITERACIES

20. THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE
May 2018
“The Internet has always contained
the seeds of post-modern hell”
The collapse
of reality

21. Infopocalypse
 Chicanery, criminality
 Propaganda
 On the Internet nobody knows you’re a dog
 Impossible to regulate
 Stupidity
 Misdirection

22. 37 key issues synthesised from the
evidence
The essence of socio-technical
determinism as
Four Generic Drivers of Change
What is driving the revolution?

23. The internet as digital common carrier
Single channel
Internet protocol
Convergence
Instant two-way communication
The internet redefines space and time
Global interconnectivity
Internet time is dog time (human time x7)
User impact - multi-tasking, meshing and mashing
Transaction costs are independent of time and distance
The internet possesses its own gravitational forces
Scale
Growth
Impacts on supplier and user
The internet redefines the relationship between
the supplier and the user
Innovation and risk – low entry costs mean innovation with low risks
Science of user engagement
The user can be part of the supply stream
Four generic drivers of change

24. Collecting Institutions Pre-2000
 Long, evolutionary histories
 Destinations, sustaining fragmentation
 Technical rationality, not strategic thinking
 Skills and values: curation and public service
 Core focus on learning and education
 Monopolistic merit goods

25. Pre-2000 organisational ecosystem

26. Institutional
Paradigm

27. Since 2000 in the UK
Institutional paradigm rules OK
Lack of collective digital strategy or shared policy
frameworks
Industry-friendly innovation, sustaining, not
transforming
Fragmentation continues: +2000 websites, wide choice
of aggregators

30. Organisational ecosystem 2.0

31. SYNTHESIS OF RESEARCH
EVIDENCE AND OUTCOMES

32. Institutional paradigm v digital harvester

33. Online service offers that…
Are distinctive in form
Maximise public value
Align with changing user needs and
expectations
Maintaining strategic fit

34. CONVERGENCE
Commonalities across museums, libraries and archives?
READINESS POTENTIAL
Are practitioners prepared for uncertain futures in the digital space?
STRATEGIC OPPORTUNITIES
Common to all collecting institutions?
STRATEGIC CHALLENGES
What barriers to progress? How to deal with them?

35. The digital artifact ✔
Convergence
Shared tradition of openness, education
and learning ✔
The Institutional Paradigm ✔✗
Financial famine ✔✗
Govt policy on digital integration ✔

36. To maintain strategic fit there must be a
clear statement of mission
A shared mission statement?
Close to 1000 websites searched
Less than 40% provide public mission statements
25,000 words analysed and categorised
Organisation’s raison d’etre:
Why do we exist?
What is our real purpose?
What are we trying to accomplish?

37. “The purpose of museums, libraries and
archives is to maintain and promote collections
and services to encourage people’s learning
and enjoyment and to develop communities”
Similar stories, different voices

38. Readiness potential
Professional practice
Duty of care for collections ✔
Status quo 2.0 – organisation-friendly innovation ✗
Education and practice are grounded in technical
rationality rather than reflective thinking ✗
Institutional Paradigm
Risks of strategic change ✗
Constraints of vertical integration ✗
Limits on freedom for action ✗
Sustaining existing service propositions ✔✗

39. Comparative analysis
What are the opportunities offered by the
Generic Drivers of Change?
What are the constraints imposed on those
opportunities by the the Institutional Paradigm
Opportunities of the Generic Drivers Constraints of the Institutional Paradigm

40. THESIS
OPPORTUNITIES
ANTITHESIS
CONSTRAINTS
Potential of the Internet to increase social
value of collecting institutions
Institutional Paradigm and lack of strategic
planning
New relationship between supplier and user,
new business models
Importance of the status quo; long
established service patterns
The importance of presence in the digital
space to meet emergent behaviours and build
wider audiences
The value of the institution as physical
destination
Rapid innovation and diffusion The risks of radical change
Implications of strategic change Constraints of structure and resources
Digital channel convergence Organisational fragmentation
Globalisation from gravitational forces Localism and vertical integration
Need for one voice and one message to
promote collective value nationally
Absence of of explicit shared mission across
collecting institutions
2. User relations and the
boundary exchange
3. Speed of innovation
and change
1. Common purpose and shared
strategy in the digital space
The dialectic of change
The key challenges for a collective future

41. 1. The quest for common purpose
• Overcoming fragmentation
• Placing the user at the heart of strategic developments
• Moving beyond the institutional paradigm
• A single voice for a collective digital future
2. The boundary exchange: from hunter/gatherer to
harvester
• Scale, convenience and uniqueness to face off competition
• Confidence about the physical and the virtual
• Learning as leitmotif
STRATEGICCHALLENGES

42. Emergent learning theory

43. 1. The quest for common purpose
• Overcoming fragmentation
• Placing the user at the heart of strategic developments
• Moving beyond the institutional paradigm
• A single voice for a collective digital future
2. The boundary exchange: from hunter/gatherer to
harvester
• Scale, convenience and uniqueness to face off competition
• Confidence about the physical and the virtual
• Learning as leitmotif
3. The speed of innovation and change
• How can collecting institutions maintain strategic fit in the future?
• Balancing the long-term value of collections against
changing behaviours and expectations in digital use.
STRATEGICCHALLENGES

44. Commitment to a shared digital
future by all practitioner groups
Develop a single voice for advocacy
and the power to influence policy
New approaches to strategy development
replacing technical rationality with
reflective thinking
TOWARDS A DIGITAL KNOWLEDGE
ECOLOGY
Potential benefits from resolving
the Strategic Challenges

45. Finding the means to create a collective
approach to a successful digital future
for the benefit of all citizens
Do it once, do it right

46. A user-friendly route to trustworthy knowledge ✔
New learning relationships with individuals and
communities ✔
Agile innovation ✔
Power and influence from strong advocacy ✔
Rethink professional education & practice ✔
Collecting Institutions and the Collapse of Reality
Redefine the concept of collection for the 21st
century ✔

47. http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/full/10.1108/S0732-067120160000035020

48. Thanks for listening
cbatt@mac.com
www.digital-futures.org
“The dogmas of the quiet past…
we must think anew and act
anew.”