A Wordle to represent UKSG 2009

Here's a nice Wordle of LiveSerials postings from the 2009 UKSG annual conference. I think it sums up UKSG's focus quite nicely, although I'm surprised at how small "publishers" and "publishing" have ended up.

UKSG Research - please send us your views!

We recently surveyed delegates at UKSG's 2009 conference in Torquay to find out more about them, what they thought and what they needed from the organisation. We would welcome your input into this discussion. The survey should not take longer than ten minutes and all feedback is valuable.

Tell us what you think

Presentations from the conference now on the website

A quick note to let you know that presentations from the conference are now available on the UKSG website:

• plenary sessions
• breakout sessions

Keep an eye out for further retrospective reports of the conference coming soon to LiveSerials.

Evolving role of the institutional repository breakout

I attended an interesting breakout session on the evolving role of the institutional repository in promoting library research support. Garret McMahon provided background about the Research Support System developed at Trinity College Dublin. The RSS is a web-based service allowing research staff to generate CVs and a researcher’s profile from information provided about their research activity. It is fully integrated with complementary systems in the university such as human resources and pushes information out to other services and systems including the institutional repository TARA. The research staff need only enter their publication and research activities once and the information is pushed out internally and externally.

Jessica Eustace, one of 4 Research Support Librarians outlined the kinds of strategies she employed to embed herself into the research process. For postgraduates she offers:

• Specialist training days on database tips and tricks
• Going into labs and assisting researchers on a one-to-one basis
• Drop-in sessions for Endnote queries

For principal investigators she provides:
• Researcher profiling
• Assisted deposit into the IR
• One-to-one training on using the RSS and IR

Both the RSS and institutional repository are promoted by newsletters and bulletins but it is advocacy at the level of individual researchers that has paid the most dividends in that the Research Support Librarian is seen to actively to engage with researchers and their needs. Embedding herself into the workflow for research profiling adds value to the RSS and provides a fuller picture of research activity while promoting output via the institutional repository. Not all institutions have the benefit of the kind of integrated system available at Trinity but getting into schools, faculties and departments and improving dialogue with researchers is a vital first step to understanding their needs and working towards a more holistic approach to improve library support for research. Institutional repositories have created additional work but have enabled librarians to assist in promoting research at our institutions. By adapting our role to meet evolving needs we can help to prevent librarians from becoming irrelevant which in Joseph Janes’ view is the greatest threat to the profession.

We-think: perking us up at the close

Most people are fumbling around in the fog of social networking - thinking they're making progress without being able to measure this. Very few businesses can be sure of their business model in 5-10 years time (I'm pleased to say he thinks we can bet on Glastonbury's model being the same in 10 years' time. A nice opp for me to post my UKSGlastonbury picture - who'da thunk it).



Newspapers are haemorrhaging revenues and facing the disruption of the web - everyone is looking for new business models. But even what we might class as the key players in the social web (Facebook, Twitter) don't really have strategic business models.

Where should we look for answers? Consumer culture, organisation, business models and ethnic/social values - and the changes all are undergoing. Not so long ago, the web was classed as a passing fad - and some (Andrew Keen et al) still rail against it. A "growing clamour of voices" is starting to see the potential but also the downsides (of malware etc - the web ain't entirely a friendly place). Scary stories about mash-ups in Moscow designed to enable more successful harrassment (of .. ethnic groups?).

Consumer culture
Look at people, and what they want to do. Young scientists are a sign of what research needs to become - open access databases, electronic lab notebooks, open source software - "new collaborative models of interdisciplinary research". Then there's Charlie's 9-year-old son. During one hour of what we would have had to spend watching Songs of Praise, Charlie's son can learn animation on a Sunday night. He likes online social experiences and activities including drawing, photography and Garage Band. He weaves successfully (obliviously) between old and new media. Talk -- do -- sit -- listen -- enjoy: this new culture paradigm requires different offers and business models from our media.

Organisations
Time was, big boulders on the media beach were BBC, FT - bringing out new boulders such as Channel 4, News International was a major mission. Now, media is owned by the users and made up of thousands of "pebbles that threaten to swamp the boulders". "From now on, all new businesses will have to be in the pebble space ... creating and connecting pebbles." There will be "boulder businesses" but they'll be even bigger than before; "in between will be lots of people trying to connect pebbles and boulders". The British Library is a boulder trying to operate in the pebble world; Twitter is a pebble trying to work out its business model.

Business models
We are all trying to find new ways to make money out of information and media. "The language we have inherited from industrial era media disable us from working out what these might be." The notion of media and mediator is old-fashioned; the boundaries are blurred. Charlie hopes for "mutual media" - created by people contributing to media in shared ownership. It's not just publishing, broadcasting (enjoy); it's about enjoy -- talk -- do. Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are commercial media businesses in the making; Mumsnet, Wikipedia and the Student Room are social media businesses; the BBC will become a public media business - the British Library faces this same challenge. At the core of all these mutual media businesses is the need to make money while allowing users to generate and share beyond your control. The media businesses of the future will have large communities and small companies, and will require a completely different set of skills.

Values
Alongside this will be "a huge contest about values". It's remarkable that we still refer to the internet as a single thing. It's a "ramshackle organisation" with roots in a "hippie culture" and not in corporations or governments - "which is why they find it so hard to deal with". The internet has a different way of thinking. This is starting to become apparent - challenges to Facebook's privacy policies or Google's dominance.

Roadmap for survival
Organisations used to be about doing for people and, in the process, to people - schools, banks, newspapers. The web is about 'with' - working with, learning with, talking with. "The logic of with" is the key to engaging with users to create a roadmap for navigating the social fog.

21st Century Library: a whole new ballgame

Team presentation from Graham Stone & Helle Lauriesen. [full disclosure -showed up 10 minutes late]

Early adopters of e-resource managers bought multiple systems that often overlapped on e-resource management. Numerous A-Z provisions for example & now trying to move beyond the status quo.

Biggest problem is the mishmash of administration & finding it unattenable as staff cuts occur.

Trying to enhance the user experience as well as save administrative costs.

CIBER looking at extensive deep log analysis but this won't work if the library has too many knowledgebases in play.

Statistics gathering also harder across multiple systems. The end goal is to wed deep log analysis with statistics to show usage across disciplines.

Users so not have a clear & compelling place to start their research. The OPAC is limited by structure based on print concepts: books, journals, cds, etc.

Lists are an inefficient way to provide access into article level & data retrieval. Federated searching still too clunky for end-users to embrace.

Need a one-stop shop approach. Looked at ERMs solutions & discovery tools. Looked at ten possibilities. Some of these are still in beta. The question is to ask which system will get you where you want to go. Not an evolution of what's come before but a revolution of becoming truly e-resource centric.

Make all resources discoverable thru the building of a complete digital presence. Where possible make the library entry page easy & simple.

Look at what you want to achieve & cut out duplication that results in increase user satisfaction & better control of resources overall. Don't let the market dictate what you need but make the decisions determining your needs first. Then play with the interoperability of the systems that help reach these goals. In all of it keep affordability in mind & determine what you cannot afford to invest in.

Accessibility is not an option but a necessity. Duplication of efforts are not feasible & do we need to de-aggregate & re-create silos in order to provide better discovery?

Question: what about open-access, repository access, & ILL needs?

Can possibly add in local repositories but not necessary global ones-depends on the system.

Question#2: Can you add in all campus resources?

In some cases but then the tool becomes truly an IT solution not necessary a library tool.

Last question was about functionality of federated search?

Federated search is not a tool that panned out in a way that truly answers students needs.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Cocktails the Morning After

Slawomir Gorniak's title of Security at the Cocktail Party will probably be a bad reminder for many of the delegates who were at the conference dinner last night :-) His focus on social networking as an identity management system is an interesting topic for a conference where engaging with the user has been raised as a key issue through all the presentations.

He highlights that Social Networks can create great business benefits through increasing interactivity. Those twittering throughout the conference would agree on this point I think, and I have been happy to make new contacts with several key publishers through tweets.

Social Networking also lets you know your user - there is lots of information about users available but issues of personal data protection need to be considered. Controls for protecting information are important.

At the moment, social networking is proving to be a bad identity management system in lots of ways - users aren't good at thinking about the consequences, such as answering a quiz saying that you have been arrested in the past and openly publish on Facebook - this will damage your career prospects. It happens in professional networks as well, such as inappropriate disclosure of information on LinkedIn profiles. In a trial, 41% of randomly selected profiles on Facebook were willing to make friends with a plastic frog (fake profile)

The value of social networking is not in the tools, it is in the personal data and the ability to profile people for advertising. The sector is currently estimated to be worth $15 billion. Making the tools more secure is not in the interest of the tool providers, but there is a need to break data monopolies to improve privacy and security. What is the business model? Some of the big players have started to embrace data portability - such as Google Friend which is based on identity and access management standards (however Facebook would not particpate in Google Friend).

We need to create clear corporate policies on social network usage and consider both your personal and professional needs when using the networking sites. This is something we have raised several times over on the JAM blog.

Social Networking is like the Hotel California, you can check out but you can never leave. Nipon Das, New York Times.

Talking to the students about user behaviour

During questions following Clare Duddy's session, Clare notes that she:
* prefers not to set up "My accounts" on multiple resource platforms. "I prefer to take the information away from you [with social bookmarking or bibliographic reference manager]".
* doesn't use Facebook for information needs - "it's purely social - and so last year - I've moved away from doing any [social networking]". If there's a pre-existing community of users, it can work for a library to engage with them there but you won't create a community that's not there just by putting yourself on Facebook. "It's just one more thing to log in to".
* exchanges information with other students using email and Google Documents.
* likes facets for search but "it requires a lot of getting used to ... and sometimes they're a bit off".
* "doesn't really" use instant messenger - "my mum uses it". In fact, "I know a lot of people whose mums are on Facebook and it's another driver for the Facebook exodus".
* "cannot for the life of me see the point" of Twitter.
* is into RSS - "my whole life is ruled by my reader". Uses RSS over email alerts "just because it's easier".
* is writing her dissertation about next-generation catalogues and tagging ("the fact that hardly anyone wants to tag in the library catalogue .. but I love it"). People don't have the sense (in social tagging) that they're contributing to a pool of information for use by others - they think all tags are individual and will take care to distinguish their tags from others'.
* might want to receive information through mobile phones in future but dependent on how phones evolve - "if it was really cheap and really good".
* "I read on screen a lot more now than I used to when I was an undergraduate, maybe because I can't afford to print anything out. I don't mind it as much now I have a nicer computer with a nicer screen for reading on."

Google and Librarians: why it shouldn't be us and them

In preparing to speak to us today .. Clare Duddy did some Googling. In Google's browser. She warns us upfront, in case we hadn't clocked, that she's pro-Google.

Clare is a Masters student at London Met university who won a UKSG competition to present her views on information discovery in the Google generation. I am torn between wishing that I'd had an opportunity like this when I was a student, and thinking how petrifying it must be to present to an audience of professionals eager to hear your views. Clare tells us she's nervous but proceeds to speak confidently and knowledgeably on a subject that while familiar to us all, still holds surprises.

Us and them
Clare already works part time at Oxford University libraries as an electronic journals assistant. Interestingly, she sees the "us and them" of the information world as librarians vs Google (not, as some of the other UKSG delegates might see it, as librarians vs publishers). Between her work and her thesis, Clare spends a lot of time looking for information. "I've been online for more than half of my life, and search engines were already prevalent by the time I started my academic career - I've never had to find information without them." She quotes a friend: "Google is an extension of my memory - I don't have to keep facts in my head."

Finding information
There is a new balance in education as we keep up with emerging technologies. Google has 63% share of the search engine market (13.5bn searches in the US in Jan 09); OCLC research shows that 89% of college students start searches on search engines and Clare confirms it's her first port of call for all her information needs from academic to social. It's a known known. Perhaps less known is that the same research shows only 1% of users starting their search in an online database.

The Google generation
The Google generation is not defined by an age group but by a demographic - "always connected"; multi-tasking; computer literate. Clare says we might also see this group as "impatient, gullible and lazy" - taking the first result they find in a search engine and giving librarians sleepless nights. As we know, the main problems with using search engines as our point of entry to research are:

Material not indexed
* deep web
* access controlled
* non-linked
* robot-excluded
* non-HTML
* no static URL)
Despite this, Google has value - it highlights "informal literature" - the non-traditional materials that other library resources don't surface so effectively, if at all. Through Google Scholar you can filter your search to authoritative content, and the Library Links program enables libraries to direct users to licensed content. And because of Google's power and influence, they drive exposure and sensible structuring of content (e.g. Harvard has redesigned its website to expose its digital collections more effectively; National Libraries of Australia have created stable URLs and metadata for individual items in their image collection). There is a sense that we overestimate what you can't find, and underestimate the value of what you can find.

Quality of material online
"Democratic" (user-generated) publishing - famously exemplified by Wikipedia - concerns librarians and publishers, the gatekeepers of authoritative content. But Wikipedia's advantage is its breadth - over 2.7 million entries in comparison to Oxford Reference Online's 1.3 million (yes, there could be an apples and oranges issue here). "We have to assume that we can't control the web or impose our authority on it any kind of comprehensive way", so how do we manage our response to what we find? With "a pinch of salt"; the widespread news coverage of Wikipedia's flaws, and our own knowledge of how simply we can publish what we want, helps us understand that not everything we find can be trusted. Librarians spend a lot of time already training users about the quirks of different online resources; why not include Google and Wikipedia (etc) in that training.

Deskilling search
Clare recalls a lecturer harking back to the glory days where "users were not allowed near the computers and had to use a librarian to find information", but "librarians are no longer required in that role" - they feel displaced; is their reticence about broad search resources based on frustration? There is a context in which "one-box" search engines are in fact the best way to find something. But still users have need of more complex search interfaces and despite their fondness for simplicity they do recognise the value of more sophisticated search.

Conclusion
"Young people today need to be educated to use these tools properly, just as we had to be taught to use a library and book properly in the past". We shouldn't assume there is one Google generation with one set of characteristics - users are still a complex group with varying needs. It can only be helpful for us to acknowledge the place of Google in our users' lives and to help grow their understanding of this tool in the context of the other tools we offer.

(see next post for question and answer session revealing more of Clare's online behaviour)

Coda: Clare's presentation was excellent - not only interesting and well-informed in terms of the material covered but ably and compellingly presented. The feedback about this session has already been overwhelmingly positive and we'll definitely be thinking about how to follow up with more user input at next year's conference.

Consortia: not flaky, but unique

Kathy Perry reminds us that library consortia are not new; libraries have been cooperating for more than a hundred years (1876 - ALA committee on cooperation in indexing and cataloguing college libraries, and cooperative purchasing "expedition" started in 1913!) Since then, statewide consortia have sprung up - Ohio broke the mould by getting (new) state monies for this in 1987. ICOLC has been meeting twice annually since 1996 and now comprises 211 consortia representing over 5000 libraries, with particular growth outside the US in the last 10 years. Kathy quotes Merryll Penson (Galileo): "consortia are like snowflakes"; not flaky - "unique". Most have very low staffing and rely on volunteers.

Priorities are changing for consortia - tasks that wouldn't even have been on the radar some years ago are now among the top priorities - training, digital initiatives, next generation catalogues. Budgets are a problem here as everywhere - when asked how they are addressing this, one respondent to Kathy's recent survey said "Prayer". Tom Sanville, OhioLINK guru commented that "Flat is the new 'up'." Curiously, "negotiating contracts" is given as a 'new' priority - I don't understand how this wasn't already a priority for consortia! I was pleased to know that "advocacy / marketing" is a growing aspect of consortia's budget management - I think measurable end user engagement and traffic will be key to justifying and growing budgets ongoing (later, in the context of training, Kathy talked more about "justifying our value to our decision makers"). Very few consortia have research projects and very few are working together on issues related to archival storage of print collections.

During questions, Peter Burnhill suggested that a lot of information discovery, retrieval and usage is happening outside the library - between peers in both formal and informal contexts. How can libraries and consortia engage with this? Kathy's initial thoughts: this is why libraries and consortia are prioritising next-gen catalogues, to "more readily reflect the world as we know it". We're also working with products like Zotero to help researchers collaborate in a way that reflects not just scholarly publications but web-based materials and conversations. Libraries are trying to engage at this level. Jill Taylor-Roe adds comments from the OA perspective - we're managing a lot of the OA payments to publishers that we're also licensing big deals from, and there should be some synergies in managing the fiscal movements in a more cohesive and efficient way. Hugh Look notes the skills shortfall in this area and the lack of guidance. We need more investment in these skills that would be transferrable to many other areas.

Responding to change in scholarly communications: fight, face-off, fix and faff

Hugh Looks tells a long and amusing story about a minor train crash he was in as a child to indicate that despite the serious global threats that circulate in the world, it's often smaller more mundane problems that really derail us. Publishers are under pressure at the moment to sustain their margins and other divisions within their parent companies are also suffering, and unable to provide any support at this crucial time. We don't fully know the shape of tomorrow's pressures, though continuing economic uncertainty will be a shared problem and changes in research and education will have a growing impact, particularly as students become more demanding. Current developments will continue to change the shape of scholarly communications (OA etc).

Responding to threats

• Fight - lobby - consult - become indignant.
• Flight - sell (who to?) - close.
• Face-off - pretend it's not happening; ignore the problems.
• Fix - big deal, better terms, enhanced products
• Follow - accept that alternatives are needed
• Faff - make small changes without a real strategy.

So far we have witnessed a combination of fight, face-off, fix... and faff. The only real solutions are follow and fix. Fixing requires us to make it more attractive for people to stick with the existing model - super-consortia, increased big deal flexibility - creating efficiencies that allow reduced costs without lower margins. Follow (stay in the business, accept alternatives are needed) requires further changes to pricing models, with redistributed functions and costs (e.g. author pays).

There are 3 places where value is created and costs are managed in a networked business.

• At the periphery (libraries operate here) - close to the user with specialist expertise.
• At the core - where the shared infrastructure and expertise is (where the researchers are).
  
• In the middle - the distribution part - which is always most vulnerable to commoditisation, and is a hard position to defend. Libraries are partly here, as are publishers.

Alternative models that could be considered at the periphery include advertising and sponsorship - not a good market for this just now. We could take a leaf out of the mobile phone pricing market where pricing is comparatively low but with caps on usage.

There are no simple answers
The issues are all about transition - many of these models could work, and the problem is the disruption involved in getting there. None of us really understand how that's going to work, and it can only be managed on a system-wide basis (it can't be managed by individual entities). It may not even be a solvable problem. Potentially we're part way through a long cycle and we don't yet understand the beginning and end of it. We have to live with high levels of uncertainty which will lead to a lot more short-term Face-off (a great shame - waste of time and energy) and more Fix (because we haven't yet worked out what the Follow strategy is). "Mit der Dummheit kaempfen Goetter selbst vergebens" (Schiller - against stupidity, the Gods themselves struggle in vain) - deeply and painfully true, and at the root of most of our problems. We are only going to work this out with a lot of communication and some serious applied intelligence - there are no simple answers.

During questions, John Cox points out that it's very difficult for us to communicate well and to act as a system because of anti-trust laws. The only way out is for libraries to decide what they will demand of publishers and see what the response is. John also raised the idea of a telecoms style subscription model for scholarly publishing. I think it was Peter Burnhill who then noted the gap between funding for research and funding for libraries which have not risen commensurately.

Plenary presentation summary: Journal Spend, use and research outcomes: A UK perspective on Value for Money. Presented by: Ian Rowlands, CIBER

During the second plenary session on Tuesday during UKSG, Mr. Rowlands presented some preliminary data from part of Research Information Network funded research project. He is halfway through project and will be continuing into next year. There are some very interesting visualization tools to explore the data online.

There has been an unprecedented growth in access to journal material over the past decade as content has moved from print to electronic. However, it is critical to assess the impact of the increase in access and availability of content has had in past decade. Has this increase in access led to higher productivity and more innovative research?

In exploring the research outcomes, Rowlands is looking at many quantifiable criteria, including: Number of Counter downloads, # of Phds, # of grants, institutional spending patterns, and deep log analysis in a variety of disciplines.

It should come as little surprise to the community that the transition from print to electronic publication is nearly complete. 96.1% of science journals are online and 88.5% of arts and humanities journals are online. In 2007, the academic community spent £80 million on e-journal licenses. Collectively those purchases have yielded more than102 million downloads or 0.80 £ per download.

There has been tremendous end-user take up of these resources. The number of downloads doubled from 2004 to 2007. This represents a 21.7% per annum growth in downloads over that period. The core proposition of providing online articles is “very popular” among researchers.

There has also been a rapid increase of number of journals available at an average institution. The average number of titles per researchers is up from just above 4 to just below 8. {TC – Given the present economic environment it is likely these figures will decrease in the coming year, but it certainly will remain at a higher average level.}

Citation analysis is showing that users are drawing more sources, and including more references per paper. The use of navigation and discovery tools, increased access, has created a situation where research is now more deeply founded in previous work.

University administrations are looking for clear and compelling justifications for the continued expense of information purchases and Mr. Rowlands thinks that compelling information is now available.

This change of availability has impacted the information seeking behavior of end-users. It is not surprising that Google is the “librarians friend”. Many Researchers are using gateways, such as Google, Pubmed, etc. to get access to content. Examples of the increase of traffic abound. One OUP Journals saw a two-fold increase in journal uses as an effect of opening up their content to Google.

The access provided by online content is also having a profound impact on resource use. The convenience of 24 X 7 access is tremendous. 17% of activity is taking place on weekends and the “Working day is growing” with 1/3 of activity taking place outside of “normal office hours” of 9:00am – 5:00pm. This access was more difficult in a print-based world.

However questions remain about whether efficient search is the same as or necessarily yields successful research? There is a strong negative correlation between research rating of the scientists in institutions and the average session length on Science Direct. The most “successful researchers” were the group spending the least amount of time online with content. Trends pointed to the fact that the most successful researchers use gateways. Much more search activity is taking place outside the library, typically on services like Pubmed, Google, and Google Scholar.

There were natural clustering of intensive use and the figures for the differences between moderate, high and super users correlated significantly with outputs such as the numbers of papers produced, the amount of grants funds received and the number of PhD’s the institution produces. In addition, while the average cost per download is consistent across institution, the more active the institution the less per article the institution paid.

Mr. Rowlands stressed that these data merely show associations not causation. Nor does the data show any directionality. Is it that a lot of research creates demand for lots of information, or is it that research institutions, put things together and in place for research, which therefore impacts results.

The next stage of this research will look at historical information. Among the topics to be explored is what are linkages between products, spending and outcomes? He is working to produce a computer model, that shows, for example, scenarios what the increase in the number of titles and/or downloads might have on research outcomes.

The initial information points to the fact that downloads and research outputs are like “gears on a bicycle” that move in tandem. As one gear gets bigger, the faster the other gear turns. Although one needs to understand the causality question, the understanding of the fact of the connection is a useful addition to knowledge about assessment and performance measurement.

{NB Disclaimer: Much of this summary is verbatim and/or paraphrased from the Mr. Rowlands talk – very little in this post is interpreted and should not be credited to me. Apologies to Mr. Rowlands for any errors.}