Clay Shirky, Fantasy Football, and the Future of Library Collections

Greg Raschke

North Carolina State University

Virginia ACRL

May 8, 2011

Assumptions

Economics are not sustainable Collections budgets will not grow at rate of past 30 years Unit growth and growth in cost per unit are not sustainable

Need to lower costs of overall system Lower unit costs Use data and users to be more precise

Tipping point for ability and expectations to deliver content at point of need

Therefore collection practices and strategies must change This change will be hard – much reason for optimism

Supply-Side Collections Print-based, unpredictable

demand, and legitimate need for just in case collections

Lead to judging quality by size (as in the ARL rankings) and libraries were then held captive to this standard

Contributed to inelastic demand for journals and combinations of speculative buying

Use is secondary to size, dollars expended, and other input measures

Credit to David Lewis (http://ulib.iupui.edu/users/dlewis)

Supply-Side Can Not Continue

Demand-Driven Collections – Core Roles Make information easily,

widely, and cheaply available Collections as drivers of

research, teaching, and learning

To make special or unique collections held/managed by the library available to the user community and the world

Demand-Driven – More Assumptions Less tolerance for and less

investment in lower use general collections

Resource management based increasingly on use

Modify collecting based on changes in the actual use

Embrace expansion of available content and sense-making role

Risks of not evolving and failing to innovate – newspapers

Demand-Driven – Assertions

Tension between time-honored role as custodians of scholarship versus enabling digital environment for scholars

Must work on: Lowering unit costs of

scholarly materials OR Lowering number of

publishable units Must free funds for investing in

“new” arenas such as digital curation, PDA, and devices

Demand-Driven – Assertions

Rewards of adapting – more used and vital than ever

Use based and user driven collecting models will take growing share of budget

Bet on numbers Bet on good and quick Put resources into enabling

digital environment for scholars and custodian role will come out of that strategy

Demand-Driven – Changing Practice Not just PDA – portfolio of approaches - more responsive and

expansive Utilize new tools and techniques to become advanced analysts and

deliver content at point of need Truly embrace evidence-based decision making and ability to

deliver content on demand

Reducing Unit Costs – Data Analysis Collections work less about selection and more about

analyzing use and incorporating content w/technology Data analysis is a key component in solving/managing:

Increasing pressure for accountability Increasing capability to gather and analyze data Increasing precision in the way we build collections

and expend resources Advocacy

Changing practice and data analysis at NCSU

Serials Review 2009 – Open, Data-Driven, and Real-Time Analysis Standardized usage data

(where available) Bibliometrics - publication

data and citation patterns (e.g LJUR)

Impact factor and eigenfactor User community feedback via

interactive, database-driven applications

Weigh/calculate/quantify user feedback

Weigh price against multiple data points

Usage ((07 usage+08 usage/2)+(publications*10)+ (citations*5)+(Impact Factor)

Community Feedback ((Weighted Ranking x % Match) x Total # Rankings) + 0.1 x # of "1s“

Price/feedback value Price/use Merge results to filter out top

20% and bottom 20%

Looking closer – Finding balanceAn example - a closer look at print item usage

Traditional ILS reporting tools can make this difficult

Advanced analytical tools can help

What types of questions can we ask?

Should Patron-Driven records not purchased be purged after 2 years? How does print item usage break down? Do print items even get used?

If it’s not used after 2 years…Should PDA records

be purged?

Maybe…

We haven’t even hit 50% usage

But what if we take a longer view…

If it’s not used after 2 years…

Things begin to look different

Looking even closer… How does

print item use break down?

Single circ usage is consistently ~14%

Would this change in a PDA only world?

Expenditures to University Data

Expenditures to University Data

Expenditures to University Data

Expenditures to University Data

Measurable Uses of the Collection 2009/2010

Full-text journal downloads* 3,672,600

Database use 1,989,972

Print book circulations/renewals 525,430

Digital collections requests 471,403

E-books 149,815

Reserves** 327,267

Total Uses 7,136,487

* Includes use of NC LIVE full-text content** Includes textbook, print, and e-reserves usage

Measurable Uses of the Collection 2009/2010

Demand-Driven - Content at Point of Need Expansive view of available content PDA

Scope, invest, trigger points, and integrate Integrated electronic profiling and selection Packages of online content – affordability (?) Short-term loans Changing ILL and article delivery To users in the mode they want to consume content Move money into new areas – less speculative buying

and more to demand-driven

Collaborative Imperative

Digital curation Digital collections Mega-consortia and collective bargaining Sense-making

Challenges

Have ability to be more precise, more used, and more relevant than ever – need to make the necessary changes

CAVE people Data and user-driven

approaches can punish niche areas, disciplinary variation, and resources without data

Challenges, cont.

Contradiction of personal apps/devices and open resources

Apps are a risk – silo(ing) networked, web environment

Open resources impact ability to control and command discovery environments, content delivery, and data analysis