Monday, November 23, 2009

Live: Lorcan Dempsey--Discussion and Questions

  • the presence of social networking and possible fruitful conversations that we might have with those in the marketing world, e.g. Best Buy, Pancheros, who are using social networking as part of their marketing plan
  • it is good to be on the landscape, to have a good tone with those in the social network
  • the importance of community stewardship, e.g. things that are pushed to Flickr
  • the resident/visitor scenario. more data about what people are doing will help to improve services. the trade-off between privacy and convenience.
  • transaction costs. learning requires the expenditure of work:) don't want to get caught in the quality and convenience trap
  • experiences of newspapers, travel agents, bookstores. alignment of revenue models and use models. libraries will depend more on shared consolidation services
Next speaker on Dec. 17th

Live: Lorcan Dempsey--Tentative Conclusions

Current will move to emerging pattern

Books: a new balance?
Journals: move to consolidation?
Discovery layer: need one?
Institutional materials: disclose through discovery layer, but also...
Analytics: let traffic influence design of website

Disclose and syndicate
  • institutional collections: is someone responsible for search engine optimization?
  • holdings: syndicate (knowledge base, holdings,...)
  • services: Libx, widgets,...
  • SEO. Consistent url patterns across services, hackable urls, bookmarking buttons, etc.
This is about interoperability with the web

User and institutional leverage
  • expertise, reputation (provide bibliographic tools,...)
  • watch identity management: prepare for when manage context (usage) and claims. (affinity strings)
  • integration with other campus systems (course management,..)
  • 'follow' and intervene? (Salesforce.com)
Usercentric mashups will continue to be important

Organizational
  • seek collaborative sourcing models
  • externalize infrastructure
  • focus on distinctive impact
  • place local in bigger contexts
  • track identity management and reputation enhacement
  • recognize that things have changed
Presentation end. Time for discussion and questions

Live: Lorcan Dempsey--emerging Pattern 2

Mendeley: 100,000 users and 8 million research papers; manage profile; manage publications; "like itunes for research papers";

VIVO at Cornell: $12mil project funded by NIH

Reputation management, social networking

Discovery scenarios:
  • Relationship between consumer and library: direct--added value
  • Between library and flow: disclosure and syndication
  • Between many/indirect discovery: may involve identity, locate, resolution or other services at library
The "indirect discovery" scenarios; with the second and third scenarios the discover happens elsewhere

With the second scenario we want to disclose holdings and existence

Search engine optimization (SEO)

Example of indirect discovery: Google Scholar, Google Books

Syndication via iTunes

Syndication: bookmarking and rss; pushing stuff into their flow

We now have "an ecology of services"

What does it really mean to push stuff out onto the web?

Live: Lorcan Dempsey--Network Reconfigurations

An "insta-mashup" i.e. Lorcan's experience with LinkedIn and the NYT; pulling stuff from NYT based on his LinkedIn profile; here's stuff you might be interested in.

Will probably see more like this

In the future, how much will we focus on "identity services" for the network that will, in turn, deliver information based on your profile.

Social services require identity

Realtime services require identity

movile services require identity.

They all want to know who you are, or who you claim to be.

Tweetdeck knows about Facebook identity. Lorcan's example, for this morning, where he went to Tweetdeck which in turn used his FB identity to authenticate his internet use with the hotel (ALoft/Minneapolis) in which he was staying

Importance of cloud computing when you're constantly changings devices; cloud and mobile are natural partners

network is the unit of attention
data aggregation
gravitational pull
networks effects
long tail

Multiscalar: personal, departmental, disciplinary, library, consortial, systemwide

bookmarking, researcher pages, deposit papers, research data

identity and federation lacking across scales

Choices: focus on distinctive local impact? Engagement? externalize infrastructure? Common requirements?

Live: Lorcan Dempsey--Collection Directions

Stuff that comes from the outside in (old) and the stuff that comes from inside and wants to get pushed out (new)

Grid with two axes: stewardship; uniqueness
  • Low unique/High stewardship = newspapers, gov docs, cd & dvd, maps, scores; concentration of licensed material, small number of suppliers, 'professional services'; bought materials--move to licensed? concerns with space/usage
  • high unique/high stewarship = rare books, local/historical newspapers, archives, mss, these, dissertations; special to whom? distinctive?
  • high unique/low stewardship = ePrints, learning objects, courseware, e-portfolios, research data, prospectus, institutional website, tech reports; institutionally important, future 'special'
  • low unique/low stewardship = open source software, newsgroup archives, freely-accessible web resources; interest will grow
The outside in stuff: discover, deliver, disclose holdings, manage claims

The inside out stuff: disclose. Array alongside other institutions? Make sense as individual destinations?

Live: Lorcan Dempsey--Emerging Pattern

Environments: back office/management; materials workflow; user environment; between Managment and end User Access

Workflow:
  • Bought/physical
  • Electronic/Licensed
  • Digital/Digitized
  • Special collections/Archives
Manage it-->Content-->Metadata-->Get It-->Find It

This results in a very complex environment, with legacy systems, etc.:
  • ILS, ERM, Repository, Special
  • MARC, A&I, XXX, DC, EAD
  • ILL/Circ, Link resolver, special
  • OPAC, MetaSearch,A-Z,NxtBen, Website
Website intergration that gives something wholistic/organic

U of Michigan's web site does quite a nice job of wrapping around all these services, etc.

Industry pattern that you can see emerging==end-user environment with integrated discover and the management environment that has integrated resource managment

When you put the network in there, it gets a little more complicated, but can still see this integrated environment

Live: Lorcan Dempsey--First Network Interlude

Here's the first "interlude" in Lorcan's talk.

Attention switch
  • Then: resources scarce; attention abundant
  • Now: attention scarce; resources abundant
  • this flip is important because it tells us how people think about information
Workflow switch
  • Then: expect workflows to be built around my service
  • Now: Build services around workflows
Consumer switch
  • Then: More investment in business/eduction environments
  • Now: More investment in consumer environments
People are bringing more advanced expectations. Is this driven by the attention on the consumer? What, these days, do we really mean by "being available." If a piece is found, according to OCLC, in four research libraries, is it "available" or "effectively lost?"

"In an environment of scarce attention high transaction costs equals low/no availability."

Dave White's "Visitors and Residents" in terms of a presence on the web.

Live: Lorcan Dempsey--the Numbers

Lorcan's comments (we may also link to the UMConnect Presentation at some point):
  • This is the 3rd time Lorcan's been here to present
  • Discoverability report done by the U Libraries was done very well
  • How people do things, discover things and deliver things
  • Disclosure to the network
Numbers:
  • 4,316,022 WorldCat holdings
  • 575,542 UM contributed records in MNCat
  • 2,687,888 number of holdings attached to UM contributed records
  • 683,258 number of items held by 5 or fewer institutions
  • 1,603,701 number of items held by 25 or fewer institutions
  • 311 languages represented in collection
  • 233 countries of publication represented in collection
  • These are the stats/numbers as of July 2009
  • 784,796 UM owned titles in HathiTrust as of October; 20% of UM holdings
  • 12% of these titles in less than 25 libraries
  • retain the 12% as local asset; the stuff held by 25-100 libraries--shared research collection, regional consolidation; stuff held by more than 100 libraries--source print delivery with network provider?

Live: Lorcan Dempsey--Wendy Lougee Intro

OK, I decided to "live blog" Lorcan's speech to the U Libraries. Wendy is now going through the opening and, interestingly, indicated that this talk is available not only through UMConnect to library staff unable to attend, but is being streamed to CIC colleagues as well. Given the collaborative nature of our endeavor, this is a great move to open up Lorcan's talk to a wider audience.

Wendy mentioned "Financing the Future" and wants to make sure everyone has read it. I'll come back later (if I don't have time now) and put in some other links. Here's a link from the staff wiki to today's event.

Lorcan's title slide: "discovery, delivery, disclosure"

Lorcan Dempsey on Campus

Today marks the beginning of an interesting speaker series for the U of M Libraries. The series is described thus:

"The University Libraries have invited speakers to engage the Libraries staff in broad strategic themes that will shape the future of the University Libraries. These themes capture an arena of strategic importance to the University and to the Libraries. Through the process, we will explore directions and potential investments...."

Today's theme is "Discovery and Delivery" and the speaker is Lorcan Dempsey of OCLC. Here's the little blurb that accompanies today's theme and speaker:

The Libraries' classic roles in providing collections and information access have undergone fundamental changes in the context of new models of distributing content, new technologies and players in the discovery environment, and changing expectations for delivery among our users.

When "discovery happens elsewhere" and users expect discovery and delivery to coincide, how should libraries respond? What mechanisms should be developed to meet the needs of students and faculty?

What roles do major players (such as Google and Amazon) currently have in the overall search and discovery environment and how will these roles evolve? In the years ahead, how will the library interact with these players and their services?

What is the future role of the local library catalog? Does it exist? What should it contain? How should it be defined?

What are library staff roles in this new discovery and delivery environment? Where are the future alignments for library expertise?


We have been given a number of readings in preparation for today's presentation. These include:

* Horizon report 2009: The Horizon Project produces a yearly report identifying emerging technologies that are likely to have a large impact on learning-focussed organizations. Worth reading because it places the technological developments affecting academic libraries in the context of the key trends and challenges facing the learning institutions that they serve. Includes executive summary and a summary of the key trends reviewed.
* University of Minnesota Libraries Discoverability report executive summary (staff access only; don't know why). The Libraries' Phase 1 Discoverability report identifies key trends related to discovery and offers principles to guide decisions involving discovery. The full report also provides an analysis of usage data for the Libraries' main discovery systems.
* Mark Dahl, "Evolution of Library Discovery Systems in the Web Environment". Dahl recounts his work on a series of projects that take him beyond traditional library discovery tools. Provides an engaging narrative framework for understanding the need for new types of discovery and the development of technology to support them.
* Peter Brantley, "Architectures for Collaboration: roles and expectations for digital libraries". Former Executive Director of the DLF offers some personal views on what libraries need to do to adapt to their changing environment. A broad, high-level view of the changing responsibilities and opportunities facing libraries.
* Lorcan Dempsey, Four Sources of Metadata about Things. Our speaker, Lorcan Dempsey, delineates four kinds of metadata which libraries can use to enhance their discovery services.

And, finally, here's a little bio blurb for Lorcan Dempsey:

Lorcan Dempsey, Vice President, OCLC Programs and Research and Chief Strategist, oversees the research division and participates in planning at OCLC. He is a librarian who has worked for library and educational organizations in Ireland, England and the US. He has policy, research and service development experience, mostly in the area of networked information and digital libraries. He writes and speaks extensively, and can be followed on the web at Lorcan Dempsey's weblog and on twitter. Before moving to OCLC, Lorcan worked for JISC in the UK, overseeing national information programs and services, and before that was Director of UKOLN at the a national UK research and policy unit at the University of Bath.

I'm debating whether or not to live blog this event. We'll see.