Lorcan Dempsey @lorcanD
The network repatterns the library: from infrastructure to engagement.
References Nanaia Mahuta’s opening keynote. Interest in the idea of culture. For him Ireland to US. As his kids gets older, raises interesting questions about the fabric of their identity. Their affiliation and freedom. Children will want to know where their parents are from. Relates to thinking about libraries and the
Main interest is in organisational terms. Contextualising and enriching network knowledge. Local stories through affiliation, pictures of local areas. Libraries will be creating spaces that allow local stories to be collected and shared.
Community and network interdependence. Libraries collaboration - must move from the margin to the fore. The collective resource is highly distributed.
WorldCat has good coverage for some places in the world, not so good in others, very light in others. Look at WorldCat as a proxy - NZ provides the best coverage of published records related to Maori (New Zealand people) culture. Not everything is in National Library - the records are distributed. ‘Rareness is quite common.’ The types of things that relate to the texture of a place, Personal narratives --New Zealand. Spread is quite significant. To find things, “Prospect” it requires a way to think about and across many different libraries. Points to the need to think about libraries together.
Looks at the New Zealand presence in the published record. Venn diagram of In NZ; About NZ; By NZ authors. (Matched algorithmically from information in Wikipedia.) Most popular authors - Mahy, Cowley, Marsh, Partridge, Eden. Then looked at most popular title by holdings. (Lexicons.) Programmatically looking at holdings using subject headings to analyse. (This information will be published as a research report from OCLC.)
A reset moment for libraries. An opportunity what they do, where they’re directed, what’s important to them. Context of ‘Value’ discussion - ROI is the secondary question, should be asking - are you doing the right things?
Reconnect with host institution goals - a view that reconnect with host goals is important.
Libraries exist in the context of goals established by the organisation. Research libraries - a mission of deep exploration; Academic - student success, reputation; Publis - skills, learning, civic engagement; National - rich engagement with national identity and memory (in a new context of the networked environment,.) Changes in the parent institution is the most important driver of change, so libraries need to understand those changes so they can change to meet them.
Columbus Metropolitan Library - strategic plan. http://www.columbuslibrary.
Shift to engagement - how to be an effective actor in research and learning environments of its users. Thinking about new services, how to engage and enable people to be successful in the way they want, in what they want to do, not how we want them to do it.
Rightscale infrastructure - rebalance in collections and systems between local, shared, and third party to improve impact and efficiency. Collaboration moves from margin to core. Thinking district/national for collections (especially print - which sometimes gets in the way of other areas we want to develop.)
Everybody can’t do everything. - consider is this going to add value for your local community - how do we share the cost of infrastructure? How are we active in our users lives in the changed way they want to do things? Focus on the success, make them work into the future, make them scalable and repeat where you can. Think about new ways of collaborating.
Visible expertise. Used to be invisible and neutral. If the library wishes to be seen as expert then its expertise must be seen. Library staff are absent from websites in comparison to e.g. dentists who are all over their websites and physical spaces. Databases come as lists, not as recommendations. People are entry points to the web. We’re used to valuing particular people as entry points, we rate, rank, and review things. Where is this on library sites? The expertise must be visible through its people, through its presence - you meet people in the network spaces - pull them towards yourself. ‘Need to have some gravitational attraction.’ U of Michigan indexes their librarians who appear in results as appropriate points of contact for more information. Search results include resources and services. “What people might be suitable content points?”
Collections: from curation to creation. Then - acquire external resources. Now - curation and creation : engage with creation, use and sharing of all information resources. People create in their work. Aim is to find the local stories and push them out so that other people can discover them. You want to disclose them into the world. You want to have discovered them. Advising, assisting, working with members of your community to create things, make them available, put them on the web. New goal to create a place where people and their research can be seen. Information activity is helping people share what they have done with the rest of the world in sensible and effective ways. Working with the information needs of their users. Exploring new scholarly forms. In the networked environment (some) people need help.
Chattanooga Public Library - 4th floor “unique because it supports the production, connection and sharing of knowledge.” http://chattlibrary.org/4th-
Space. Then: configured around collections. Now it’s configured around the user. Direct shift from infrastructure to engagement. Space is under pressure in busy libraries - collections vs. engagement with your community. NCSU Libraries - Hunt Library - space reconfigured around experience, expertise and communication rather than collections. http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/
Decentered web presence - then - discovery happened at the library. Now - discovery happens outside. Decoupling their services and creation from their corporate website and are available in other environments. Think about the multiple places where you want people to encounter you. ‘Sleevefacing’ http://www.sleeveface.com/ Not just publishing but making that information discoverable.
Roles: means and ends. Then goals were stable. Now- goals are changing. Structured around meeting new goals. Roles change to address shifting goals > how do I reassign things? Roles shifting. Emergence of more enterprise role. what’s important are the goals rather than focusing on what the role is. Focus on ends. Ready to read corps - getting out into the community.
Do locally what creates the most distinctive value.
Share what makes sense for efficiency and impact. Buy the rest.
Shared print. Then - how big was your mountain of stuff? Now - value relates to system wide curation of and access to print collections.
Digital and systems infrastructure. Now: look for scale for efficiency and impact.
enterprise + insitutional innovation. how to create structures, trust, agreements etc for collaboration?
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