Presentation from panel with Ross Housewright (Ithaka S+R) on opportunity for collaborative print storage in the CIC (Committee for Institutional Cooperation).

1. What‟s in Store?
Defining the Opportunity
Center for Library
Initiatives
for Collective Storage
23 May 2011
Constance Malpas
Program Officer, OCLC Research

2. Roadmap
• Shared print and the (re)organization of the library
• Presidential perspectives on the future of HE
• CIC: scoping the opportunity for cooperative print
• Sourcing and scaling: poly-cooperative organizations

3. Shared print: books and boundaries
• Cooperative print storage represents a strategic
externalization of library operations
• Enables a redefinition of the library ‘service bundle’
• Characterizing the value of cooperative print storage
exclusively in terms of library space savings or
institutional cost avoidance misses the point
Shared infrastructure can transform the academic
library, enabling a redirection of resource in support of a
more distinctive service portfolio that
maximizes institutional reputation and impact

4. Library „service bundle‟ (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 them with
external parties …Transaction costs help explain why
academic libraries look the way they do today… As the
pattern of transaction costs change, so too will the
boundaries of the library”
Brian Lavoie & Lorcan Dempsey “Rethinking the Boundaries of the Academic Library”
OCLC Next Space 17 (January 2011): 16-17.
[Shared print = a shift in the operational boundaries of the library]

5. As transaction costs fall, so do boundaries
Core library operations
are moving “outside”
institutional boundaries
cooperative cataloging
ILL, resource sharing
approval plans
licensed content
digital preservation
. . . print management
creating room for more
distinctive library services

6. Externalization is a strategic choice
In the opinion of university presidents,
outsourcing campus services ranks highest
among preferred strategies for cost reduction
Source: Presidential Perspectives: the 2011 Inside Higher Ed Survey of College & University Presidents

7. Reorganizing the library system
“Many academic libraries continue to maintain
redundant and inefficient library
operations, automating old workflows and resisting
new combinations and outsourcing strategies to
carry out the basic work. They are missing
opportunities to take advantage of scale and network
effects through aggregation and to move core
functions and services to the cloud.”
James G. Neal “Prospects for Systemic Change across Academic Libraries”
EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 46, no. 2 (March/April 2011)

8. Reconfiguring academic collections
Shared print is
not about “getting rid of books” or
devaluing scholarly interactions with legacy print
• Enabling a renewal and revitalization of the library‟s core
service mission to the University
• Redistributing the costs and benefits of stewardship across
research library sector
• Ensuring the long-term survivability of low-use, long-tail
content for future generations of scholars

9. Fractures emerging in HE system
• Among 956 university presidents surveyed, budget shortfalls
topped the list of current concerns
But the relative priority of funded activities
differs by segment and sector, e.g.
• Presidents of private research institutions are more concerned
about the decline of support for the humanities (66%) than
presidents of public research institutions (56%)
• Institutional support for traditional local library infrastructure
may become harder to justify at some public universities
• This could have important consequences for CIC and shared print
efforts in general
Source: Presidential Perspectives: the 2011 Inside Higher Ed Survey of College & University Presidents

10. Libraries as humanities laboratory
Sure, but…
• Infrastructure not supported by federal R&D dollars
• An institutional cost-center that must be managed
• Declining production of humanities PhDs means audience
for traditional collection-centric service portfolio is
smaller, less evenly distributed
• Institutional reputation increasingly driven by scholarly
productivity measures, success in sponsored research

11. In desperate times, desperate measures
UC libraries aim to
achieve $15M in cost
reductions in 2011-2012
In this climate, shared print must
deliver real impact
Source: University of California Systemwide Library and Scholarly Information Advisory Committee Library Planning
Task Force Interim Report, May, 2011 .

12. Zones of economic integration
CIC is the
HE/research
engine of this
economic
mega-region
http://www.creativeclass.com/whos_your_city/maps/#Mega-Regions_of_North_America

13. A Master Plan for a mega-region
“*Midwestern universities + work
together on both regional and national
agendas, merging library and research
resources, and sharing curricula and
instructional resources with faculty and
students. Aggregating these spires of
excellence by linking these institutions
gives the Midwest region many of the
world’s leading programs in a broad
range of key knowledge areas.” (p. 37)

14. A snapshot of CIC library resources
~2M holdings „unique‟ to CIC
~5% of institutional collection on average
~70% of CIC holdings are relatively
abundant in library system
Combined resources of 3 largest CIC libraries sufficient
to duplicate 2/3rds of individual member print coll‟ns
N = 17M titles; 47M CIC holdings
OCLC Research. Based on WorldCat snapshot. Data current as of April 2011.

15. CIC investment in library storage
~84M vols in CIC libraries
@ 4.25 / yr = $375M / yr?
~5M CIC vols in HathiTrust
[~$310 M / yr ?]
@.15 = $750K / yr
~11M vols in CIC library storage facilities
@.86 = $9.5M / yr
Aggregate CIC library storage = nearly $320M per year*
Some part of this represents redundant expenditure
*not accounted for in annual library operating budgets

16. Shared storage: what‟s it worth?
Courant & Nielson (2010): high-density off-site 1/3 the cost
of on-campus collections
• Assumes off-site collection remains low-use
• Erosion of aggregate print holdings may increase demand
on shared print (storage) collection
• Increased reliance on digital surrogates may held moderate
demand for print
• CIC can maximize value of shared print storage by
leveraging investments in HathiTrust

17. Defining terms: you say oyster…
• You say: ~84M volumes in CIC libraries [~10M in storage?]
We see: 17M discrete titles held by CIC libraries
• You say: ~5M CIC volumes (6%) digitized in HathiTrust
We see: 4M CIC titles (24%) digitized in HathiTrust
since many titles in the CIC aggregate collection are held by
multiple member libraries, those 4M titles represent
between 4M and 50M print volumes in CIC institutions:
I say…

18. Economy
of scale
“That’s a lot of oysters” [photo by Paul Miller]

19. Economies of scale in the CIC
What is the impact of 6M digitized books?
For open scholarship, research reputation, collaborative economies of scale?
Source: 2007-2010 CIC Strategic Priorities Impact Report Card

20. 33% or more of individual CIC library
collections are duplicated in HathiTrust
60%
50%
% of Titles Duplicated in HathiTrust
40%
30%
20%
10%
In context of shared print planning,
this overlap represents significant opportunity
0%
0 1,000,000 2,000,000 3,000,000 4,000,000 5,000,000 6,000,000 7,000,000
Titles in Library
OCLC Research. Analysis based on HathiTrust and WorldCat snapshots. Data current as of May 2011.

21. Sizing up the opportunity for CIC shared print
Online Availability of HathiTrust Titles
held in print by CIC libraries
Full-view Search-only
Collective asset defined as
aggregate digitized resource N = 4,090,405 titles
3,348,495 titles
82%
Shared print storage provides 741,910 titles
cost-effective alternative to 18%
local management of these
resources
OCLC Research. Analysis based on HathiTrust and WorldCat snapshots. Data current as of May 2011.

22. Reductio ad absurdum: common good is that
which every member holds
Online Availability of HathiTrust Titles
held in print by all 13 members of CIC
Full-view Search-only
N = 66,402 titles
63,291 titles
95%
3,111 titles
Represents at least 863K items in CIC libraries, 5%
as much as $3.6M in total library print storage costs and
54K linear feet of shelving across CIC
OCLC Research. Analysis based on HathiTrust and WorldCat snapshots. Data current as of May 2011.

23. Why all this emphasis on HathiTrust
in context of print storage?
• Affordances of online access -- even search-only access -–
can help moderate demand for print, facilitating transfer
to off-site storage
• Scale of HathiTrust as a digital preservation resource
fundamentally alters the balance between libraries and e-
content providers
• Scope of HathiTrust collection, expansive coverage of
monographic literature in the humanities, is a critical
component of emerging cyber-infrastructure

25. Shared print storage options in the CIC
• Leverage existing storage inventory in 10+ CIC facilities as shared
preservation collection
• Opportunity: low barrier to implementation; Challenge: inventory not
optimized for shared service provision; preservation/access value highly
variable
• Look to other regional partners (UC RLF, ReCAP, etc.) for
cooperative print provision
• Opportunity: maximize network effects – RLF alone provides coverage of
80% of CIC digitized titles Challenge: networks of trust not yet in place
• Hybrid solution – maximize reliance on existing infrastructure while
deliberately constructing new cooperative print resource
• Opportunity: maximizes participation Challenge: difficult to achieve
economies of scale

26. Universities are poly-cooperative organizations
Potential for many overlapping shared print networks
• Peer group: CIC, HathiTrust
• Regional: ASERL, CARLI, Minitex, PALCI, WEST etc
• Disciplinary: NN/LM, FDLP, Law
Who‟s to say which „group interest‟ will prevail for any given
institution?
In the near- to medium-term, library system(s) will need to
accommodate multiple shared print arrangements

27. Scaling up: shared storage & network disclosure
OCLC Print Archives pilot project (2010-2011)
• Leveraging existing bibliographic infrastructure to support
disclosure of print archiving commitments
• MARC 583 (Action Note) in local holdings record provides
item-level granularity
• New institution symbols used to distinguish print archives
• Group Access Catalogs (GAC) support discovery, resource
sharing
• Aggregated data = evidence base for decision support

28. Print Archives Pilot timeline
Recruit participants, assemble teams
(Oct – Nov 2010)
Assess gaps in current infrastructure
(Dec – Jan 2011)
Draft framework (Feb – Mar 2011)
Group review (April – May 2011)
Test implementation (Jun – Jul 2011)

29. Thanks for your attention.
Comments, Questions?
Constance Malpas
malpasc@oclc.org
@ConstanceM