Shared Monographic Collections

Program Officer, OCLC Research

15th November 2013 | RLUK St Andrews Members Meeting

#RLUK2013

Right-scaling Stewardship

1

Constance Malpas

Digitisation Scale Differentiation

4

Library Digitisation – a US view

Maximising Access to our Collections in the Digital World

Cloud-Sourcing Research Collections:Key Finding: Mass digitized corpus in HathiTrust duplicates substantial portion of

academic print

0 20 40 60 80 100 1200%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

Duplication of ARL University Library Holdings in HathiTrust Digital Library

% o

f Ti

tles D

uplic

ated

Rank in ARL Investment Index (2007-2008)

Median duplication in June 2009: 19%

Median duplication in June 2010: 31%

Median duplication in December 2010: 33%

How does RLUK situation

compare?

6

47,624 titles5%

302,114 titles31%

University of Leeds Library (ERL) TitlesDuplicated in Hathi Trust Digital Library - Jan-

uary 2012

Digitised public domain (US) Digitised in copyright (US)

7

0 500,000 1,000,000 1,500,000 2,000,000 2,500,000 3,000,000 3,500,000 4,000,000 4,500,000 5,000,0000%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

45%

50%

July 2012 HathiTrust Overlap by Collection Size Selected RLUK Institutions

WorldCat Holdings - August 2012

Perc

enta

ge o

f Titl

es D

uplic

ated

Cambridge

Manchester

RLUK median overlap = 24% (titles)US context: ARL overlap ~34%

8

Scale

9

Center of gravity shifting

Many functions traditionally organised at ‘institution-scale’ are being re-organised at above-the-institution scale

Shared e-collections --

Shared services –

Shared print – National Monograph Strategy

UK context favors emergence of national-scale solutions

for core library operations is

Local group, regional, national

Cataloguing, selection/acquisition, stewardship

10

Right-scaling stewardshipUS:

 Central Iowa Collaborative Collections Initiative 

Why? Existing-inter-lending partnerships – strong networks of trustConstorial infrastructure – established governance structuresStrong federalist tradition – favors decentralised solutions

Florida Academic Repository

Mlchigan Shared Print Initative

shared print efforts increasingly organised at group, regional scale

US context favors emergence of group-scale solutions

11

North American print book resource: 45.7 million distinct publications 889.5 million total library holdings

Coherence of regional print book collections is

strong

Shared stewardship – at what scale?

12

transition from print to electronic has been slower for books than journals; less redundancy in system-wide inventory

library reputation still bound up with books; organisational transition is difficult

increased discoverability in the network puts new pressure on print supply chain

affordances of digitized and e-books differ; reader expectations are not yet fixed

Userbehaviours

Supply

DemandBran

d

Optimal scale of collaboration for books v. journals may differ

13

Differentiation

Maximising Access to our Collections in the Digital World

15

‘the gap that should most concern us in research libraries today is not the one that lies between physical and online documents, but the one that lies between commodity and non-commodity documents.’ (p.3)Rick Anderson. Can’t Buy Us Love: The Declining Importance of

Library Books and the Rising Importance of Special Collections. Ithaka S+R, 2013

In few collections

In many collections

A

Licensed

Purchased

Outside, inOCLC Collections Grid

Inside, out

Distinctive

Commodity

Library as brokerMaximise efficiency

Reputation management Maximise visibility

Then

Now

Low Stewardship

High Stewardship

18

How Distinctive Are RLUK Collections?

0 2,000,000 4,000,000 6,000,000 8,000,000 10,000,0000%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

Proportion of titles held by <5 libraries in WorldCat

Titles in collection as represented in WorldCat

Median: 21%

Selective sample (ORLP)

But: scarcity (alone) is not a reliable indicator

of research value

19

Centers of Distinction: Subjects

20

Centers of Distinction: Identities

21

SAINT ANDREWS UNIV LIBR

NATURAL HIST MUS

BRITISH LIBR REFERENCE COLLECTIONS

NATIONAL LIBR OF SCOTLAND

CAMBRIDGE UNIV

MCGILL UNIV

NEW YORK PUB LIBR

EDINBURGH UNIV LIBR

PRINCETON UNIV

SIMPSON UNIV

TEXAS A&M UNIV SAN ANTONIO

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25%

D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson (1860-1948)

Total Works in WorldCat = 146

St Andrews indisputably the ‘go-to’ location for materials related to Thompson

22

Shared monographic collections . . .

Less about de-selection

More about re-selection

Surfacing and syndicating distinctive assets

that support and amplify institutional reputation

Right-scaling solutions that maximise value, use

Thanks for your attention.

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malpasc@oclc.org@ConstanceM

http://www.oclc.org/research/activities/usl.html