Collection Directions: some reflections on the future of library stewardship
1. Some reflections on libraries and stewardship of the scholarly record
Constance Malpas
Program Officer, OCLC Research
3 June 2014, Boston College
BLC Networking Day
Collection Directions
1
5. Institutional Needs – Academic Libraries: Current situation vs. 5 years from now
Low
Stewardship
High
Stewardship
In few
collections
In many
collections
Licensed
Purchased
Key Trends:
• increased reliance on group provisioning of print and licensed content
• more integration of freely available web-based content
• special collections focus on institutional mission, reputation
• growing attention to teaching/learning materials; limited library capacity
6. Institutional Needs – Research Libraries: Current situation vs. 5 years from now
Low
Stewardship
High
Stewardship
In few
collections
In many
collections
Licensed
Purchased
Key Trends:
• strategic realignment around purchasing/licensing ‘collections as services’
• redirection of investment toward reputation management, research support
• emphasis on effective disclosure of distinctive assets: special collections,
research data, expertise
7. A landscape in transition
• Fragmentation in higher education sector (elite,
convenience, ‘squeezed middle’) will drive changes
in academic libraries – increased differentiation in
portfolio of collections and services
• Shared infrastructure enabling transition from local-
to group-scale management of purchased and
licensed content
• Institutional capacity to redirect resources from
commodity collections toward distinctive services
will depend on availability of appropriate
cooperative infrastructure
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9. 9
31%
90%
North American Print Book Landscape, January 2011
US libraries hold
90% of titles in
North American print
book collection
10. 10
North American Mega-regions
12 zones of highly integrated economic activity
• Does distribution of library resource align with
distribution of economic activity?
• What are the implications for stewardship of North
American print book collections?
11. 11
Relative size of regional print book collections (2011)
92% of North American print
book collection concentrated in
12 mega-regions
13. 13
• Largest mega-regional print book resource
in North America
• 27.9M print book titles; 56% of North
American print book resource
• 199.6M library holdings; 22% of North
American print book inventory
• Avg. 7 in-region library holdings per title
• 75% of titles held by <5 libraries in region*
• 33% of titles are unique to region*
Bos-Wash print book collection (2013)
*based on 2011 data
14. 14
Bos-Wash Coverage of other Regional Collections (2011)
Bos-Wash regional resource
duplicates 65-95% of print book
titles in other regions …next largest regional collection can
duplicate just 50% of Bos-Wash collection
15. 15
Bos-Wash Institutional Infrastructure (2011)
• >4000 holding libraries
• Top 5 libraries account
for 15-34% of titles (each)
Academic libraries
account for >70% of
regional inventory
17. 17
17 libraries
Liberal arts colleges, professional schools, research institutions,
state library . . .
• all affiliates of FCLD print journal archive
• many (all?) participating in Eastern Academic Scholars Trust
Right scale for
stewardship
is…small
consortium?
Large, loose
confederation?
22. >266M library holdings in WorldCat
Shared Print Collections
• Cooperative stewardship of
aggregate print resource
• Part of broader trend toward
‘group-scale’ library
operations
• >30 active shared print
groups in North America
• 9 major groups registering
shared print holdings in
WorldCat
22
Shared Print Titles in WorldCat
April 2014
25. 25
Format transition:
Print-centric to digital, networked
Boundaries blurring:
Articles/monographs, but
also research data, computer
models, video, blogs,
visualizations, conference
posters & presentations,
pre-prints, etc.
Stakeholder roles reconfiguring:
New paths for the scholarly communication ‘supply chain’
Scholarly record
26. Stewardship of the scholarly record
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Create
Fix
Use
Collect
Factors impacting stewardship …
• Increasing volume of content
• Increasing diversity/complexity of content
• Increasing distribution of custodial responsibility
‘local copies’ of scholarly record are increasingly partial
discovery and management are increasingly fragmented
coherence of scholarly record is reduced
27. Questions for academic library consortia
• Is available cooperative infrastructure adequate to
support deeper collaboration around collections
management, custodial care of scholarly record?
• Do existing consortia represent the right mix of
stakeholders for collaborative stewardship
arrangements?
• How can consortial efforts ‘scale up’ to meet
system-wide stewardship needs? What mechanisms
are needed to federate group-scale approaches?
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