Support for the Research Process: An Academic Library Manifesto has just been published. This brief call to action document represents the collaborative work of the RLG Research Information Management Roadmap Working Group.
The goal of the document is to set forth a “top 10″ list of action items for Academic Libraries to focus on in the face of a rapidly changing scholarly research landscape.
Much of what is currently written about the future of libraries focuses on how to save libraries, or on whether we even still need libraries. In this document, we tried instead to focus on what academic libraries can and should do to ensure that “current and future researchers will have the support they need to navigate and exploit the full potential of evolving digital scholarship.”
One potential follow-up to this document would be for members of the academic library community to take each of the action items and develop examples, use cases, and best practices:
1. Commit to continual study of the ever-changing work patterns and needs of researchers; with particular attention to disciplinary and generational differences in adoption of new modes of research and publication.
2. Design flexible new services around those parts of the research process that cause researchers the most frustration and difficulty.
3. Embed library content, services, and staff within researchers’ regular workflows; integrating with services others provide (whether on campus, at other universities, or by commercial entities) where such integration serves the needs of the researcher.
4. Embrace the role of expert information navigators and redefine reference as research consultation instead of fact-finding.
5. Reassess all library job descriptions and qualifications to ensure that training and hiring encompass the skills, education, and experience needed to support new modes of research.
6. Recognize that discovery of content will happen outside of libraries—but that libraries are uniquely suited to providing the organization and metadata that make content discoverable.
7. Embrace opportunities to focus on unique, core services and resources; while seeking collaborative partnerships to streamline common services and resources.
8. Find ways to demonstrate to senior university administrators, accreditors, and auditors the value of library services and resources to scholarship; while providing services that may seem invisible and seamless to researchers.
9. Engage researchers in the identification of primary research data sets that merit long-term preservation and access.
10. Offer alternative scholarly publishing and dissemination platforms that are integrated with appropriate repositories and preservation services.
As Ricky Erway at hangingtogether says:
You don’t need to nail it to your library’s door, but you might want to think about how many of these things you currently do, how many you could do, and what you could stop doing (or streamline) so that you can better support your institution’s research mission.
Google Books has responded to pressure to provide a way to browse all the available magazine titles. Software Engineer Jeffrey Peng coded a page that lists all the magazine titles, with a Cover View or List View option.
You can also get a full list by going to Advanced Search, clicking the Magazines radio button (don’t put anything in any search box, and leave All Books checked); then hit Google Search. Again, you can switch between List View and Cover View (links in the top right of results page).
Our reference staff had just been talking about the heavy use students in Stanford’s Program in Writing and Rhetoric are making of the magazine archives in Google Books, and how helpful a “browse title” feature would be. Kudos to Google for making this happen and responding to user feedback.
Now if they could only do something similar for Google Scholar, so you could browse a list of all available journal titles … that would be really cool.
I just tried requesting the The Stanford-Lockheed Meyer Library Flood Report through my local public library (ironically, the report is not available at any of the Stanford Libraries). All I got was a message that said: “Sorry, no copies available to request.”
I poked around (‘cuz that’s what librarians do) and figured out that they have a cooperative agreement with only one of the four owning libraries, and the copy of the report in that library is checked out and not due until February 10, 2010. I don’t get any options to put a hold on it, only a message that says “Sorry, no copies available for request”. To most people I know, that pretty much means the report is not available.
Why request a copy of the Stanford-Lockheed flood report? Because Google said it wasn’t available.
In an op-ed piece about Google Books in the New York Times, Sergey Brin claimed that “the vast majority of books ever written are not accessible to anyone except the most tenacious researchers at premier academic libraries.” In support of that argument, he noted that The Stanford-Lockheed Meyer Library Flood Report is no longer available.
It didn’t take long for the library community to cry foul–noting that WorldCat shows that four (yep–four whole copies) of the report are available. To many in the library community, Brin’s lie/laziness/shoddy research (pick your favorite) rendered the entire op-ed and his entire argument false.
Lorcan Dempsey offers a slightly more nuanced approach, noting that “on a closed mailing list in which I participate, one commenter argued that this level of availability meant that the volume was actually not available in any ‘practical sense’.” Dempsey himself concedes that “Certainly, if the report were available through Google Books (or some other network level repository of digital books), its availability would be greatly amplified.”
Dempsey talks about “grades of availability”, but in the end, he still insists on setting the record straight:
That said, it seemed to me (as it did to the librarians on the web4lib discussion list) that saying that this volume was no longer available was a stronger statement than the situation warranted. I could go with ‘not easily available’, but ‘no longer available’ was too much …
And as I sat there looking at something being called a muskrat, I wanted to say, no, it is a beaver …. ;-)
The truth is, no matter how much work we put into exposing our collections, and making InterLibrary Borrowing procedures more seamless, an item that is available in only 4 libraries is not available in any meaningful sense of the word to the vast majority of people.
Would it have been more accurate for Brin parse his claim as Dempsey suggests? Sure. Would it have been more effective if Brin had asked a reference librarian to find him an example of an item that was absolutely unavailable (i.e. no circulating copies available anywhere)? You bet. Is it sad to me that the library community has latched on to this detail at the cost of seeing the bigger truth that digitizing books and making them available online dramatically increases availability? Very, very sad.
When librarians tell other librarians “Oh look—the Stanford-Lockheed report is actually available in 4 libraries, so Google is wrong!”, we pat each other on the back and feel vindicated. When we say stuff like that to someone who gets a message “Sorry, no copies available to request.”, they’re going to look at us like we just don’t get it. Because we don’t.
Some recent writings and key quotes in defense of the Google Books settlement:
Forbes–In Defense of Google Books:
By scanning the books, Google took us to a real-world discussion of how to get these volumes into the digital world in some way that we can live with. It is questionable whether we would have gotten there without such a bold move.
Slate–Save the Google Book Search Deal:
The critics’ premise is that the monopoly that the settlement creates is invaluable—and that without the settlement, we can create a competitive market for putting out-of-print books online. But I fear that’s a fantasy that misrepresents the options.
Wired–A Writer’s Plea: Figure Out How to Preserve Google Books:
I’m also working on a book about the history of (what we now call) green technology… And without Google Books, I’m not sure it would have been possible to write it. At the very least, my contribution to the book world would have been smaller and shallower.
The searchability, accessibility and breadth of the Google Books collection do not just portend some future best-ever digital library. It’s already the best resource for research that exists.
And a full round-up of filings in the Google Books case:
The Google Books Settlement: Who Is Filing And What Are They Saying? (PDF)
Two recent announcement for music and library lovers:
- UC Santa Cruz has received a grant to digitize their Grateful Dead Archive. UCSC Librarian Virginia Steel notes that “the grant gives us the opportunity to create a new model for web-based archives that will include traditional materials from our Grateful Dead Archive–along with materials contributed by scholars and Deadheads around the world.”
- Rapper Tupac Shakur’s manuscript writings and other papers will be made available for scholarly research by the Robert W. Woodruff Library of the Atlanta University Center. According to the press release (PDF), the collection “features Shakur’s handwritten lyrics and track listings, personal notes, video and film concepts, fan correspondence, promotional materials and other items providing a unique insight into his career and creative genius.”
From the Stanford Report:
The Stanford scholar who wrote a controversial biography of James Joyce’s daughter has settled her claims for attorneys’ fees against the Joyce Estate for $240,000. The settlement successfully ends a tangled saga that has continued for two decades.
In this video, Shloss describes the settlement as both a “vindication of my scholarship”, and a “winning combination” of patient, traditional scholarship; creative lawyering; and cutting edge technology:
The Supplemental material to Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake site really does represent an innovative and effective way of presenting supporting evidence.
If I understand the history of the case correctly, the creation of the supplemental materials site was first made necessary when the Joyce estate forced her publisher to eliminate significant amounts of supporting materials from her book. Not surprisingly, some reviews of the book criticized the work as speculative and lacking in supporting evidence. Shloss responded by publishing the supplemental materials online, for U.S. access only, claiming Fair Use. The Joyce Estate responded with threatening letters, and Shloss responded with help from the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. Shloss and Fair Use prevailed, both in the sense of giving scholars a victory and some clout in asserting Fair Use, and in the sense of motivating the creation of a very cool online site of supplemental materials.
In an effort to get in on some of their Collaborative Rabble Rousing, I volunteered to chair an RLG Working Group that is writing a manifesto for academic libraries, addressing the need for change to better support changing research and publishing practices.
Once Dan Greenstein’s remarks about the the university library of the future started attracting attention, we decided to offer a preview of our work at hangingtogether, the RLG Programs blog.
Please head on over there and let us know what you think.
We have had quite a bit of success with Our Library Facebook Page both in terms of number of Fans and amount of interaction.
Despite the promises of Web 2.0, it turns out that few people actually comment on Library blogs, and my sense is that most Library Facebook pages get very little interaction. So I have been pleasantly surprised that our Facebook page has been attracting a fair amount of interaction lately, and I have some thoughts on what is working.
Some numbers:
- This past week (September 18-September 24; which is 1st week of school here), we have had 35 Interactions (27 Likes, 9 Comments, & 2 Wall Posts).
- Our Post Quality for this past week was 3.8. Post Quality “is determined by the percentage of your fans that engage when you post content to your Page.”
- We are averaging about 3.5 interactions per post for the past week, and close to 2 interactions per post for the past month.
Some observations and lessons learned:
- Facebook Fans are real fans. The Fans of our page are truly fans of our library, and fans of libaries and books in general. Some of the most popular posts and status updates are positive quotes from patrons or general posts about how great libraries/librarians are or about the value of books and reading. One way I find positive (and sometimes negative) quotes about our library is through Twitter searches for “Stanford Library” or “Green Library”.
- Timing matters. Even the most clever of posts will get little interaction from the kids if it is posted early in the morning. By the time students roll out of bed and check Facebook, your post has been pushed off the first page of their newsfeed by updates from their 300 other Friends and Pages. Edited to add: Maybe this one should be “Patience matters”, since that status is now getting some traction, many hours after it was posted.
- Demography matters. Posts about college students and their childhood icons will attract attention from the students. Posts about the death of a 94 year old music legend will appeal to the older fans.
- You can use your Facebook page to ask for feedback … and you might even get some. If you use Facebook to advertise new services, you can get immediate feedback.
Before anyone asks it, I’ll go ahead and answer the “So what?” question. I am not suggesting that the number of Fan interactions on Facebook is, on its own, any kind of measure of a library’s worth or success. I do think Facebook interactions can be one source of feedback from our patrons. I also think that when Fans “like” something on Facebook, they are often saying “thanks for sharing, that was interesting” or “I like this thing the library is doing, or this news about the library”. Facebook interaction is one way of knowing when we are providing services and information that our patrons like.
I also already answered the “Aren’t you worried about negative and/or inappropriate comments on your Facebook page?” in Fear of Flaming.
It has been quite awhile since I blogged about baseball (despite my Giants having one of their best seasons in a long time), but this story is too good to pass up. Apparently, Chicago White Sox pitcher David Aardsma was not available to pitch recently because of a reading-related injury. From ESPN’s Jayson Stark’s Injuries of the week (scroll down):
• First prize: We’ve always thought it was sad that too many Americans think reading is painful. But maybe they have a case, after closer David Aardsma’s mishap this week. Aardsma was unavailable to pitch Tuesday with a sore back. And how did his back get so sore? From curling up, reading a book on the coast-to-coast flight from Seattle to Tampa on Monday. Ouch. Here’s our recommended reading for his next flight: “Excuses Begone!”
Google announced today that Life Magazine is now available in Google Book Search. You can browse over 1,860 issues, covering the years from 1936 to 1972; or use Advanced Search to limit content to Magazines and enter “Life” in the Title box. This is in addition to all the other magazine fun in Google Books.
A search of Magazines with the phrase “Stanford University” and title of Life reveals plenty of gems, including a photo spread of Stanford basketball legend Hank Lusetti and a 1971 article about the famous Zimbardo Prison Experiments.
Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a link for embedding Magazine content, as there is for some book content (hence the screen shot).
