hangingtogether.org

Why Human Beings Love Lists

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In an era of increased expectations, we all feel pressure to do more. Institutions are continually offering new services, or expanding existing services. At the same time, budgets are shrinking, and few institutions see a prospect for increased funding allocations in the future. As we introduce new services, and rethink operations, surely there must be something we can stop doing. First, there is an upper limit to what we can do. Second, if we don’t proactively prune and weed, there is a very real opportunity cost in the number of new things any institution can undertake.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal details Getty’s withdrawal from the Bibliography of the History of Art. While I make no judgment about the discontinuation of funding for that particular service, Getty president James Wood explains the rationale behind the decision as balancing new and old:

“If no programs are allowed to ever die, in the end you become captive to decisions from the past,” says Mr. Wood. “Every now and then . . . you’ve got to step back and say, ‘Certain things have been very successful, but we should sunset them now.’”

For some months, I’ve been asking, what can we stop doing? Surprisingly, my question has been greeted with silence. Well, not exactly silence. Most of those I’ve spoken with are interested in hearing what others have stopped, but few are willing to come forward and share. We are in the midst of surveying the RLG Partnership to gauge interest in this topic for our annual meeting. Close to 60% are “very interested” in attending a session on “what we can stop doing,” but only one brave soul has so far volunteered to speak.

I will be leading a seminar on this topic at the upcoming RBMS Preconference, titled Cutting to the Core: Letting Go of Functions and Services. The speakers will be: Michael Fox, Minnesota Historical Society; Mark Greene, University of Wyoming; Eleanor Brown, Cornell University. I will be sharing the experiences of these speakers in some upcoming blog posts.

In the meantime, what have you stopped doing? Some have wryly commented that what they’ve stopped attending conferences — this is not what I have in mind!

Ithaka S+R recently published its Faculty Survey 2009: Key Strategic Insights for Libraries, Publishers, and Societies. It considers the way faculty views of the library are changing, and analyses library roles into three key functions:

“The library is a starting point or ’gateway’ for locating information for my research” (which we refer to as the gateway function). “The library pays for resources I need, from academic journals to books to electronic databases” (which we refer to as the buyer function). “The library is a repository of resources – in other words, it archives, preserves, and keeps track of resources” (which we refer to as the archive function).

Ithaka’s analysis shows that the gateway function has declined (its importance rating has dropped from 70%-58%) over the six years in which the biennnial studies have been made, while the buyer function has steadily increased (81%-90%). The archive function has remained relatively static at just over 70%.

Many of the findings in this report are interesting, and relevant to us as we focus – via our Working Group on Research Services – on the specific topic of Support for Research Dissemination. We have chosen the word dissemination with some care. What we will be looking at is researcher behaviours and practices concerning institutional repositories, individual websites, subject archives, virtual research environments, blogs, blog aggregations and other social venues. In other words, every research dissemination venue except the conventional (and still overpoweringly influential) modes of scholarly publishing – the journal, the monograph and the conference paper. We will look at the way researchers use these alternative venues to disseminate their work, and the factors that account for the types and rates of dissemination. Read the rest of this entry »

@ at MoMA

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On Friday, I had the pleasure of speaking to a large auditorium full of lawyers, law students, archivists, and librarians at Columbia University’s Kernochan Center for Law, Media, and the Arts. The event, “Digital Archives: Navigating the Legal Shoals“, followed on the heels of our event, Undue Diligence: Seeking Low-risk Strategies for Making Collections of Unpublished Materials More Accessible.
The outcomes of the two events made me all the more certain that it’s OK for archivists and librarians to do their jobs, caring for and providing access to the collections in their custody.
During both events, those well-versed in all the details of the laws regarding unpublished works and copyright and privacy were willing to say that there’s not that much to fret about. No one is being sued.
The consensus: There are low risk ways to make collections of unpublished works available online. Just do it with a clear notice and sincere request for additional information. Be aggressive about putting things up and aggressive about taking them down (if you learn of a valid reason for doing so).
And remember, it’s your counsel’s job to offer advice about the legal risks, but it is your job to make the decision.
Speakers and advisors from the Undue Diligence event, along with representatives from the RLG Partnership, put together a one-page document entitled, “Well-intentioned practice for putting digitized collections of unpublished materials online“. If we all accept this as reasonable practice, we can act confidently that our actions are honorable, appropriate, and defensible. If ever the need should arise.
PS. it won’t.

Interesting that a magazine like Forbes would even have this issue on their radar.

Young Learners Need Librarians, Not Just Google

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