The document discusses the evolution and strategies of building a digital library to support research and learning, emphasizing the shift from traditional physical collections to digital formats. It outlines the mission and operations needed to acquire, preserve, and provide access to both digital and print resources, while addressing challenges such as preservation responsibilities and the skills gap. Additionally, it highlights the importance of trust and collaboration within the library's infrastructure and services to successfully navigate the digital transition.

1. Building a Digital Library
Ed Fay
Digital Library Manager
e.fay@lse.ac.uk
@digitalfay

3. Building a Digital Library
Context
•Library collections and trends
•Digital/physical and local/£
What, Why, and How
•Mission | strategy | operation
•Business case
•Roles and responsibilities
•Skills
Conclusions
•Lessons learnt
Questions

4. Libraries are changing…

5. …and not

6. But, first:
Just to clear something up …
‘Digital’ vs ‘electronic’ is meaningless

7. LSE Library Collections
Local £
• Research outputs (publications, data) • Journals
• Digitisation • Books
• Public lectures • Newspapers
• Web harvesting (websites, blogs, tweets) • Statistics / data
Digital
• Archives (institutional, personal)
• Theses
• Official publications
• Archives (institutional, personal) • Monographs
• Theses • Journals
• Official publications
Physical • Pamphlets
• Newspapers
• Statistics
• Microfilm

8. Purchased / licensed collections
* Total acquisitions per year

9. Research outputs repository
* New additions per month

10. Digital archives
* New hybrid or digital collections per year

11. Library space
* Metres added per year

12. What do the figures tell us?
* (Varying or approximate scales)

13. What do the figures tell us?

14. What do the figures tell us?
Print is declining (not dead)
Digital is increasing (£ and local)
Workloads are changing
Team structures are changing
Digital is no longer a project-based
activity – it is an embedded activity

15. What does the digital shift mean
Digital preservation
• We need to do it
Surfacing content to the Web
• Wait, we’re publishers now?
• … and interaction designers?
• and …
Collaborative digital projects
• Supporting new research methods

16. Preservation responsibility
Local £
• Consortia
Digital • LSE Digital Library • LOCKSS
• Portico
• Archives Services • Print Collections
Physical • Consortium
• Print Collections
• UKRR

17. BORN-DIGITAL ARCHIVES DIGITISATION
RESEARCH OUTPUTS
WEB HARVESTING
PUBLIC LECTURES OFFICIAL PUBS FUTURE…
?

18. Mission | Strategy
“Build and preserve distinctive collections to support
research and learning, and represent a record of
thought in the social sciences”
“Develop our digital library so that we are able to acquire,
preserve and provide access to digital collections which
match the strength of our print collections”
“…information repository services to support new forms of
scholarly communication and enable the School to manage,
disseminate and preserve these intellectual assets”

19. Business Case
• Collections audit
• Formats, volume/growth
• User and functional requirements
• Preservation, access
• Options appraisal (‘market survey’)
• Best practice investigation, repository architectures
• Proposal
• Risk assessment: threats to our strategic objectives
• Solution: working practices, skills, infrastructure
• Development roadmap

20. Trust
That’s what it’s all about.
I mean everything.
Seriously.
Here’s why…

21. I [trust] LSE Digital Library
Activity
overlooked or
under
resourced
Inadequate
staff skills
Media Failure of
degradation or authenticity,
obsolescence integrity,
Loss of provenance
essential Loss of trust
characteristics or reputation
Insufficient Cannot
backups implement
preservation
Infrastructure
plans
cannot
support
requirements

22. Solution
Phased development of technical
infrastructure, staff skills

23. What we planned…
Start with preservation.
Then think about management.
Then (maybe) access.
Even (perhaps) for actual users.

24. What we did…
Started with access.
Then (actually, now) preservation.
But, it worked…

25. Why did it work?

26. The Iceberg Model of
Digital Libraries
interfaces
collections/objects
workflows
systems
storage
digital preservation

27. The Iceberg Model of
Digital Libraries
interfaces
collections/objects
workflows
systems
storage
digital preservation

28. Roles and responsibilities
Academic Services
Senior Management • Collection development
Collection development
• Strategy • Information skills training
Information skills training
• Resources
Digital Library Team
• Policy
Policy
• Skills expertise
Skills / / expertise
• Innovation / projects
Innovation / projects
Collection Services Archive Services
• Preservation
Preservation • Collection development
Collection development
• Description
Description • Description
Description
• Infrastructure
Infrastructure • Preservation
Preservation

29. Skills
Experts: policy, change management
Practitioners: workflows, quality assurance
Non-specialists: aware
Skills gap analysis
Role Description Skills Resource Target

30. SPRUCE
a project to inspire, guide, support and enable UK HEIs
to address preservation gaps; and to use the
knowledge gathered from that support work to
articulate a compelling business case for digital
preservation
• Events: digital preservation solutions
• Embedding: grants to continue work
• Business case: benefits, skills gaps
http://dpconline.org/advocacy/spruce

31. DICE
(Digital Communications Enhancement)
Training materials to raise awareness of
digital preservation in researchers and
library training providers
http://lsedice.wordpress.com

32. PhoneBooth
Delivering Library content
to mobile devices
Booth maps and
notebooks
http://jiscphonebooth.wordpress.com

33. Conclusions
Digital is changing the how of
libraries, not the what or why
Skills are fundamental, then working
practices and infrastructure
If we don’t do this, we fail …
… but, digital is also fun 

34. Questions?
me: twitter.com/digitalfay or e.fay@lse.ac.uk
LSE Digital Library: digital.library.lse.ac.uk
SPRUCE: dpconline.org/advocacy/spruce
PhoneBooth: jiscphonebooth.wordpress.com
DICE: lsedice.wordpress.com

35. Image credits
Egosiliqua malusymphonicus Guts © Christopher Locke
(used with permission) http://heartlessmachine.com/
Iceberg (Public Domain) Wuzur
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Iceberg.svg
Simple Globe (CC-BY-SA) Tokyoship
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Simple_Globe.svg
8” floppy disk (Public Domain) Pamporoff
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:8%60%60_floppy_disk.jpg
Feed icon (GPL) Free Software Foundation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Feed-icon.svg
Twitter logo © Twitter
https://twitter.com/about/resources/logos
Crowned Portcullis © UK Parliament
http://www.parliament.uk/site-information/copyright/the-crowned-portcullis/
OAIS Functional Entities © CCSDS
http://public.ccsds.org/publications/archive/650x0b1.pdf
National Research Libraries logo © [unknown]
[Still from Ghostbusters] © Columbia Pictures
[Various Gnome icons] (GPL) Gnome icon artists
All other images (CC-BY-NC-SA) LSE Library