Transcript The Network, Library Boundaries, and Systemwide Organization Lorcan Dempsey OCLC Keynote at Seek, Explore, Discover.

The Network, Library
Boundaries, and
Systemwide Organization
Lorcan Dempsey
OCLC
Keynote at Seek, Explore, Discover. The Midwest Chapter MLA
Conference 2009
Columbus, OH, 5 October
overview
what I know about
medical libraries
prelude
our libraries are a
product of an
earlier network era
Institution
scale
speculations about
the future
speculations about the future
The network has reconfigured
whole industries …
Travel
News
Book retail
We have yet to work through
what systemwide reconfiguration
means for libraries …
transaction costs:
why are things changing?
boundaries:
where will libraries focus?
scalar emphasis and sourcing:
who does what?
Ronald Coase
Firms exist because of ….
transaction costs
Transaction costs help determine the boundaries of the firm:
• Delineation between activities that are conducted internally and
those that are transacted for externally
• Higher the transaction costs, more likely an activity will be
internalized within the firm
Firm:
Manufacturing
R&D
Human Resources
Finance
Call center
Supply chain
Plants/grounds
Universities find it useful and
economical to internalize a
bundle of library-related
activities
As the pattern of transaction
costs change, so too will the
boundaries of the library.
a Coasian view of the academic
library
Bangor University, Wales
“searching has been deskilled”
Boundaries
Google
Bangor
Cataloging
University:
Library
Teaching
Research
Administration
Laboratories
Sports facilities
Instititutional support
for research and learning
Resource sharing
A&I/E-journals
JSTOR/Portico
boundaries and
focus
Unbundling the corporation
Harvard Business Review (1999)
Attracting and building relationships
with customers
“Service-oriented”, customization
Economies of scope important
Customer
Relationship
Management
Develop new products and
services and bring them to
market
Speed/flexibility important
Product
Innovation
Infrastructure
Core components
of a firm
Back office capacities that
support day-to-day
operations
“Routinized” workflows
Economies of scale important
Provision of study & social spaces
Interpret learning and research needs
Personalized research assistance
Marketing and assessment
Customization/personalization
Customer
Relationship
Management
Acquire/develop new information
resources and services to support
evolving research and learning
workflows
Product
Innovation
Infrastructure
Libraries
Physical space,
Physical inventory,
Repository
Systems infrastructure
Online services, etc.
Space:
Infrastructure  Customer relationship
Print collections:
Print  shared infrastructure?
Licensed
Systems:
Local  cloud
The library network?
infrastructure
Valuable
Opportunity costs
Social lives and learning
Micro-coordination and ad hoc rendezvous
Colocation with cognate units
Added value activity
space a flashpoint
… what are the appropriate intersection points
between library staff and systems, and the
research and learning behaviors of students,
faculty, and clinicians and how do those need to
change …
customer relationship
management
discovery happens
elsewhere
Information abundant;
attention scarce
community is the new
content …
library must build around
workflow:
can’t expect workflows to
be built around library
‘people are entry points’
d chudnov
some environmental issues
1. Demonstrating Value
2. Perception and Aesthetics
3. Collaboration
4. Innovation
Bangor. John Wright.
http://www.library.nuigalway.ie/assets/inuls2007/johnwright-fri0945.ppt
customer relationship
management
a multiscalar library
copyright
mobilization
repository
data curation
social networking
escholarship
unified discovery
digitization
SEO
“We librarians are so willing to stretch ourselves thin trying to do more with less
that eventually, the less really does become too little.” Quote from unattrib comment on blog
Anne Kenney
http://www.oclc.org/programsandresearch/dss/ppt/dss_kenney.pdf
Anne Kenney
http://www.oclc.org/programsandresearch/dss/ppt/dss_kenney.pdf
Anne Kenney
http://www.oclc.org/programsandresearch/dss/ppt/dss_kenney.pdf
Individual
Departmental
Disciplinary ..
Collaboratively sourced
Hathi trust
Orbis Cascade Alliance
Public support …
OhioLink
JISC
Commercial
Web-scale
Google
Amazon
Institutional intellectual assets …
Institutional repository?
Supra-Institutional repository?
Disciplinary repository?
Webscale repository?
multiscalar confusion?
Distinctive scope of
the institutional?
Rescaling the uniform?
Developing the unique?
So …
From institution
to multiscalar
Institutional no
longer the
appropriate scale
for many things
But …
Suprainstitutional
institutions:
legacy and
immature
Understand what should be done locally
Be more strongly instrumental with affiliations
Don’t spread too thinly
Innovate around institutional configurations
Pool uncertainty!
Thank you
Lorcan Dempsey
OCLC
http://orweblog.oclc.org
http://www.twitter.com/lorcanD