5. UCLRS 1992
“Which brings me to my final observation about
prerequisites for a better future information service…The
library community will have to give up some notions
which are given great credence; which are part of our
community’s cultural beliefs. I’ll limit myself to three:
– First, that we can shape the future ourselves.
– Second, that we can’t rely on others for the essentials
of the service we provide.
– Third, that the users require us to intervene in the
system on their behalf – for their own good.”
6. Nov. 1993
After making the case that innovation strategies at smaller,
more specialized institutions may be more achievable and
successful…
“This suggests that the university research library may have
to consciously establish a new role both with its peers
and with other libraries in order to maintain the overall
system of information provision. It may have to take on a
much more demanding and explicit role as provider
external to its campus constituency-to sustain its
repository role even as it adopts new mechanisms in
support of teaching and learning.”
7. Cooperate Collaborate
• Shared issues, practices, policies
– standards, ILL, etc.
• Network effects
– shared cataloging, lending, etc.
• Expensive or scarce resources
– storage facilities, automation, etc.
A topology of collaboration…
9. Topology of collaboration
• Local Solutions—Common Administration
• Group Solutions—Common Interest
• Global Solutions—Common Values
10. Collaboration Contexts: Framing Local, Group and Global Solutions
Günter Waibel. 2010. Report produced by OCLC Research.
Published online at:
http://www.oclc.org/research/publications/library/2010/2010-09.pdf (.pdf: 84K/8 pp.).
"Think Globally, Act Locally: Library, Archive, and Museum Collaboration."
Erway, Ricky, and Günter Waibel. 2009.
Museum Management and Curatorship, 24,4: 323-335.
Beyond the Silos of the LAMs: Collaboration Among Libraries, Archives and Museums.
Zorich, Diane, Günter Waibel, and Ricky Erway. 2008.
Report produced by OCLC Programs and Research.
Available online at:
http://www.oclc.org/research/publications/library/2008/2008-05.pdf (.pdf: 334K/59 pp.).
11. Why is collaboration so hard?
• Culture of the academy and the library
• Dynamic of the US research library
community
• Lack of national leadership and structures
• Special problems of building infrastructure
12. Culture obstacles
• assumption of uniqueness
• distorted economics of university
– checkbook, rhetoric
• shrinking library share of budget
22. Reverse salients – critical unsolved problems
Path dependence – ‘lock-in’ effect of choices
Gateways – ‘plugs and sockets’ joining
new systems to existing frameworks
Service v. Commodity v. Device
23. Where are the opportunities, the
imperatives for collaboration and
new infrastructure?
27. Herbert Van de Sompel
OCLC ESR, Evanston, IL, March 23 2015
28. arXiv, SSRN, RePEc, PubMed Central (disciplinary
repositories that have become important discovery
hubs);
Google Scholar, Google Books, Amazon (ubiquitous
discovery and fulfillment hubs);
Mendeley, ResearchGate (services for social discovery
and scholarly reputation management);
Goodreads, LibraryThing (social description/reading
sites);
Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers, Khan Academy (hubs for
open research, reference, and teaching materials).
GalaxyZoo, FigShare, OpenRefine (data storage and
manipulation tools)
Github (software management)
Tools of the new scholarly record
30. Recording versus Archiving
Recording Archiving
Short-term Longer-term
No guarantees provided Attempt to provide guarantees
Write many/read many Write once/Read many
Scholarly process Scholarly record
31. Herbert Van de Sompel
OCLC ESR, Evanston, IL, March 23 2015
Library
Service
Opportunity?
Provided by ?
Library
Involvement?L
Library
Relationships?
32. Equilibrium & Opportunism:
information strategies and the new environment
Keynote Address
eLib Conference 2-4 December 1998
“Now however we are faced with the new electronic environment.
That environment represents precisely the kind of interference and catastrophic
change that would normally eliminate the climactic ecosystem species. And in this
scenario the library and all of its roles in the information ecosystem would be
overtaken by other species – we’re the forest going to meadow again after the
catastrophic fire.
Another application of the ecological succession principle yields a different
scenario. Perhaps the library is not and has not been the climax state of the
information provision environment. Perhaps we’re just one of the species that
makes up the climax state. The library is part of the change, just one of the actual
participants in the movement towards a climax state whose particulars we don’t
know or understand. In this scenario all the energy expended in changing and
adapting ensures the library a successful place in the new system that will
eventually emerge.”
