JISC Collections Roadshow

My summary of yesterday’s JISC Collections Roadshow in Edinburgh/Musselburgh

Report on JISC Collections satisfaction survey (Vicky Legge)

• High priority from respondents that licences should be 100% compliant with the NESLi2 model licence
• Open Access main priority is gaining discounts on APCs

I can’t help wondering about value of satisfaction survey about a product you’re virtually obliged to use… it’s not like there’s much choice!

• JISC Collections’ priority for 2013 includes negotiating best price to minimise increases
• Also ebook agreements, continuing to add publishers to JUSP, developing JISC eCollections
• 2014 NESLi2 renewals: AIP, CUP Journals, IoP Publishing, NPG, OUP, Project MUSE

Update on upcoming renewals (Richard Savory)

• “We have no control whatsoever about how much they increase the access fee…”
• “Keeping price increases as low as possible” but this still means we’re having to make cuts as our budgets shrink…
• Possible movement between JISC bands to reflect budget situation? Not going to help if we all shift down one
• Seeking clarity over post-cancellation access – perpetual access to previously paid-for content
• Negotiations are seeking to ensure that licences take APCs paid into account to avoid double-dipping
• Usage trends: usage is up 2012 vs 2011 on the whole. Exceptions: IoP (-1%), Project MUSE (-0.14%). Maybe to do with Arxiv/Open Access?
• Nature Publishing Group goes from strength to strength re: usage, making it hard to keep price increases down
• ACS usage flat; RSC up on last year
• Small publishers update: 21 new offers this year; new deals for BMC, ICE, NRC, RSM, Zeta Books; several more under consideration for 2014

JISC bands (Carolyn Alderson)

• JISC bands changing from A-E to 1-6 to introduce slight increase for band 1 & decrease for band 6 (and some of 5) – spread costs a bit more
• One band E institution is changing to band 5, with 28.72% increase
• Several mentions of increasing charges tied to increasing usage… but increased usage doesn’t change the publishers’ overheads, so why charge more?

Update from Thomson Reuters

• “It’s the year of the WoK renewal!”
• He is going to try to explain the difference between WoK and WoS (good luck with that) [@richperkinslib: My attempt at a stir-fry in a wos was a miserable failure]
• “It’s more difficult for you to manage than it is for us to administer” and an acknowledgement of difficulties accommodating walk-in users!
• New search architecture for WoK
• Transforming WoS into WoK: expansion of citations, extension of regional content, a new design philosophy

Pondering: publishers – which of you would like to be first to be well-known for a good reason rather than a bad one?

• WoS (product) = past, WoK (platform) = future. So that’s that, then.  New pricing model will be more like a Big Deal bundle
• Medline… available through variety of vendors. But if the product isn’t the same, why keep same name? Very hard for users to grasp difference
• Thomson Reuters are looking to introduce a common metadata standard across repositories
• “We need to break free from the shackles of…” Sadly the rep paused to think and then steered sentence in new direction
• Someone asks about how to reconcile availability of more info with shrinking budgets…
• … Rep: “these are the cards we’ve been dealt… we just have to work with it”

Seems like the elephant in the room is The Cost Of Your Subs Is Just Too High

• JISC employee suggests that new bands may help – no they won’t, all they do is redistribute costs, not challenge prices!
• From ‏@moananddrone (MT): Indeed. This is why Gold OA with corporate publishers is a fallacy as their APCs are defined by brand, not measured by cost.

Demo of Knowledge Base+

I wrote about KB+ in my Highlights from UKSG post.

@orangeaurochs I’m going to write a murder mystery which is solved using the knowledge that no two lists of ebooks are ever identical.

- seems especially appropriate during presentation about combining and managing data sources in KB+!

JUSP (Vicky Legge)

• JUSP [the Journal Usage Statistics Portal] provides a single point of access to ejournal usage data – can use federated login
• 152 UK HE and research council libraries in JUSP, and over 50 publishers. Can use it for SCONUL returns
• JUSP can help you identify usage of core titles in a deal, and compare with unsubscribed titles in the deal
• JUSP is a free service!

Janet update (Robert Prabucki)

• Janet is the UK’s National Research & Education Network (NREN) – private network provider
• Janet is not-for-profit, and is part of the new company called “JISC Collections & Janet”
• Janet national backbone and regional hubs being upgraded - Janet6 will be switched on this month

JISC eCollections update (Richard Savory)

• JISC MediaHub has improved advanced search, new MyMediaHub section, new collections including IET.tv and Courtald

And a bit of chat about licences…

Decision tool for determining if partner college students count as HE authorised users… Survey results re: decision tool suggest that it didn’t help to clarify the situation about whether partner college students counted

Le sigh. RT @daveyp: @laurajwilkinson Think we were once told by a vendor “just don’t ask” when we asked about partner colleges

I asked a question about whether JISC Collections have the appetite for renegotiating some of the T&Cs of the licences.  The wording of parts of the NESLi2 licences is out of step with the variety of modes of study that are available at many UK HE institutions, and above all, the wording has evolved from the regulations for print materials, which don’t translate well into a digital environment.

One of the JISC Collections employees said that various documents were available to help with clarifying what you can and can’t do (e.g. exactly who our authorised users are) but I explained that this creates uncertainty and that senior library staff may not be willing to take a risk on interpretation – it is better for the original rules to be straightforward.

My suggested rewriting of the Ts&Cs:

I license this resource for educational, non-commercial use only; and I trust my professional library colleagues to do what is necessary to enable such use to any and all users who wish it.  Love, [publisher] xx

Highlights from #UKSGlive 2013

My learning round-up from the 2013 UKSG Annual Conference

Phil Sykes – University of Liverpool – Open Access Gets Tough

Video of talk – Slides from talk

Is the triumph of OA is now inevitable? Maybe not – the current situation results from a fortuitous combination of circumstances, such as the political involvement of strongly pro-OA individuals.  We have to provide strong support for OA through our professional bodies and via skilled advocacy on campus.

“Librarians insulate departments and academics too well from the true costs of their journal subscriptions.”  We now have the opportunity to be star actors in the transformation.  Nothing is inevitable, it’s time to get to work.

Jill Emery – Portland State University – Mining for gold: identifying the librarians’ toolkit for managing hybrid OA

Video of talk – Slides from talk

We need to influence the change in academia not just within scholarly publishing, but also by getting academics involved.  Make recommendations to them on where to publish.  Don’t wait for the invitation – start the conversation on campus.  We need to re-evaluate our budgets and allocate resource for APCs [article processing charges].  Get into marketing and promotion game.

Research and researchers: identity and evaluation Jenny Delasalle – Uni of Warwick – Research evaluation: why is it relevant to librarians?

Video of talk – Slides from talk

Snowball metrics project – recipe book now available - sets out best practice for how data can be used to support institutional decision-making

Alt metrics [alternative metrics, linked to social web] – open to manipulation, but so are citation measurements.  Opportunities for librarians – the article-level economy is coming, availability of alt metrics will support interest in other kinds of inputs than journal articles.  Researchers want someone with technical expertise who can provide answers and reassurance – librarians can do this.

Laurel L. Haak – ORCID – Connecting research and researchers: ORCID ORCID mission: connecting research with researchers

Video of talk – Slides from talk

“ORCID is an open, non-profit, community-based effort to create and maintain a registry of unique researcher identifiers and a transparent method of linking research activities and outputs to these identifiers”

ORCID is to individuals what DOIs are to articles.

Register for your ORCID iD here.  Can embed ORCID IDs in workflows e.g. University CRISs, manuscript submission, grant applications, links with repositories, linkage with other IDs like Scopus Switchboard.

The new digital students, or, “I don’t think I have ever picked up a book out of library to do any research – all I have used is my computer” Lynn Silipigni Connaway, OCLC

Video of talk – Slides from talk

“A diamond is a chunk of coal that is made good under pressure.” – Henry Kissinger.

Users don’t think that e-resources are library resources.  Users are confident in their information seeking and evaluation skills,and they believe that the same info in multiple places means it’s true…

The learning black market – covert online study habits e.g. they use Wikipedia, they don’t cite it, they feel guilty about it. Some admit to citing the references at the end of Wikipedia articles, even when they haven’t read them.  ”One size fits no-one.”

Idea: Create personas from special collections and use them to make social media accounts more personal.

The student-information relationship: a perspective of its evolution – Joshua James Harding, Warwick Medical School

Video of talk – Slides from talk

Digital consumption was Joshua’s solution to the problem of many heavy textbooks.  He was an early adopter of IT and is now a paperless student.

Having everything on his iPad means he can do clinics and be able to check details, notes, and carry on with confidence.   Inkling – interactive ebooks, also called smart or multitouch ebooks, including the option to buy chapters. While he studies a textbook, it studies him – maps his progress in terms of what’s been covered, how long spent on each chapter, sets alerts for him to go back and revise specific areas after set times.  Librarians must improve pathways for making this info available to students.

Joshua asks why all paper textbooks aren’t available in e format.  Other problems: fragmentation, reduced variety, variable quality, different platforms and formats…  ”Epubs are horrible as textbooks and I urge you, don’t make them any more!”

“I want to be able to annotate PDFs using third-party apps… I think we all want to see the end of proprietary formats.”

Maximising the Knowledge base – the community-driven initiatives KB+ and GOKb – Liam Earney, JISC Collections

Video of talk – Slides from talk

Knowledge Base+ (KB+) in the UK; Global Open KnowledgeBase (GOKb) in the USA.

Both projects aim to capture info that libraries need for managing their eresources portfolios and make this information available to other stakeholders too.  KB+ and GOKb share interests in licensing, but GOKb has a greater focus on sharing a higher level of information across many institutions.

Issues surrounding quality and availability of data in the supply chain:

• Accuracy (many publishers don’t seem to understand what they publish) e.g. They often can’t make lists of what they publish, or sales/back office have different lists… Laughter in the room as this problem is widely recognised!
• Availability – not all parts of supply chain have access to all info they need; despite huge duplication of effort with many people involved in maintaining various different databases, but which contain broadly the same info
• Interoperability: spreadsheets, library staff, link resolver, publisher rep, JISC Collections – all have different silos of info about an institution’s subscription.

Open data delivers practical benefits e.g sharing and collaboration, improved accuracy, reduced burden on any one element in supply chain.

“The nice thing about standards is that you have so many to choose from” – Andrew Tanenbaum

… But do please choose one!  Let your data be promiscuous… Set your data free (but tidy it up first!).  Liam noted that titles have longer relationships with institutions than with publishers.

Electronic resources and ILL – a self-contradiction? – Helle Brink, Aalborg University

Helle gave us an overview of inter-library loans in Denmark, and neatly summarised the current situation in which we can often supply digitised print items but have to send print copies of electronic resources (owing to licencing restrictions).

Possible new models for partial access include:

• Updating the definition of “walk-in user” to include electronic walk-in?
• Pay-per-view
• Voucher solutions e.g. 10 articles per year
• Read-only, no download or print
• ILL after embargo e.g. 3 months
• Public access after embargo
• New ideas?

It seems to me that most problems involving e-resources and ILL arise from the nature of the licences for electronic resources  the terms and conditions evolved from contracts regulating the use of print resources, and they don’t translate well to the new medium.  Maybe it’s time to design e-resources licences specifically for digital media, rather than simply adapting contracts designed for a print environment?

The twenty-year butterflies: which web cookies have stuck in the internet’s pan? – Jason Scott, Archive Team

Video of talk

“There is no rare – there is only expensive” – Juke Joint Johnnie.  Jason says, “There is no gone, there is only forgotten.  If we take the smallest amount of effort to set up things to be remembered, they will never be forgotten.”

Archive Team recognise three virtues: rage, paranoia, and kleptomania.

“Instead of the cloud, I call it the clown.  It’s more descriptive!”

“Tiny URLs are one-time crytographic keypads.  We have discovered link shortening services than re-use short URLs.  I’m not a Luddite, but too many people are putting too much trust in storing things on the Internet.”

Publishers and librarians: we share the same values – why are we fighting? – T. Scott Plutchak, University of Alabama at Birmingham

Video of talk – Slides from talk

“We are some of the luckiest people alive because we get to be part of this.”

“The challenges are technological, cultural, and social.”

“Librarians and publishers – communities that are two key players, but have diametrically opposed views about how to achieve the same goal of making info widely available.”

I disagree that publishers share this goal with librarians.  Are publishers really focused on access to information? Would they still be interested if it were not for profit?  And the routes into the two careers could hardly be more different – how many publishers do vocational training, or volunteer in the information sector as part of their career development?

I think there is a fundamental difference between librarians and publishers in their perception of the value of knowledge and what happens to it when it is shared – to librarians, sharing knowledge increases its value (especially in research); but to a publisher, knowledge sharing without payment represents lost revenue.

The difference between the price and the value of knowledge, eh…

Other

• A group of us went for a run on Tuesday evening – the inaugural UKSG 5K?  Maybe it should be part of the official programme from 2014 onwards!
• A knitting breakout session – another idea for the programme
• Meeting lots of people from other countries who were talking about their work in English has prompted me to acquire some professional vocabulary in other languages.  I’m starting with ALA’s Multilingual Glossary, which includes French and Spanish
• Referring to a discovery interface with different resource elements as a “bento box approach” – nice description!
• I think many people still think of UKSG as a serials organisation, but their remit has evolved in recent years and their current mission is to “connect the knowledge community and encourage the exchange of ideas on scholarly communication” – so if you think UKSG isn’t relevant to your role, perhaps it’s worth taking another look?

Perspectives on the Elsevier takeover of Mendeley

Quotations are cherry-picked to represent the points I found most interesting – please follow the links to each post to see each in its original context.

Elsevier’s press release

“Mendeley is an innovative company with great culture, talent and collaborative spirit, and we will keep it that way,” said Olivier Dumon, Managing Director of Academic and Government Research Markets at Elsevier. “Not only that, but together we intend to scale and evolve Mendeley in ways that benefit the entire research community. We will provide greater access to content, data, and analytics tools to Mendeley’s users and its flourishing third-party app ecosystem, all of which will enable us to increase both Elsevier’s and Mendeley’s engagement with researchers.”

Announcement on the Mendeley blog

Of course, we are aware that – especially in the past year – the academic community has criticized Elsevier for some of its policies and positions. Our own relationship with Elsevier has been conflicted at times. Elsevier is a multi-faceted company with over 7000 employees, so it is impossible to put them into a single box. We were being challenged by some parts of the organization over whether we intended to undermine journal publishers (which was never the case), while other parts of the organization were building successful working relationships with us and even helped to promote Mendeley.

See also this follow-up post: Mendeley and Elsevier – here’s more info

A Matter of Perspective — Elsevier Acquires Mendeley . . . or, Mendeley Sells Itself to Elsevier from Scholarly Kitchen

Mendeley’s future at Elsevier seems to be a mix of “remain a standalone platform, building on what people know and like” and “integrated more deeply with Elsevier’s sales and technology strategies.” There seem to be some obvious paths for Mendeley at Elsevier, as a discovery tool for readers in Science Direct or as an almetrics tool built into Scopus. In a blog post published last night, Mendeley has this cryptic description of its role at Elsevier:

“Mendeley will become Elsevier’s central workflow, collaboration, and networking platform, while we continue on our mission of making science more open and collaborative.”

So perhaps Scopus and Science Direct are about to be subsumed by Mendeley. 

Comment on this post by Rick Anderson:

Personally, I’d like to see our community stop using the word “sharing” when what we actually mean is “copying.” The word “sharing” invokes a halo effect (just as the word “piracy” does the opposite), whereas “copying” has the twin virtues of accuracy and political neutrality. It seems to me that the more we call this behavior what it is, the more likely it is that we’ll be able to have rational conversations about it.

The Story Behind the Elsevier Purchase of Mendeley – Interview with Co-founder Victor Henning from mmit blog

The truth is that no one really knows what impact this will have on the open access and altmetrics movements just yet. In addition how it may impact digital copyright, as many saw Mendeley as not only the iTunes of Reference Management, but also the Napster.

A fiery response to the news: why I’m quitting Mendeley (and why my employer has nothing to do with it)

Elsevier’s practices make me deeply deeply angry. While academic publishing as a whole is pretty flawed, Elsevier takes the most insidious practices further at each and every turn, always at the expense of those of us who are trying to produce, publish, and distribute research. Their prices are astronomical, bankrupting libraries and siloing knowledge for private profit off of free labor.

Read the comments too!

On Twitter, some users signalled their intention to delete their Mendeley accounts using the hashtag #mendelete.  Jason B. Colditz sums it up nicely: Word of the day: “mendelete”.

All in all, yet another a tale about a small independent being bought out by a big multinational – but with so many additional layers about data, privacy, piracy, access, Open Access, subscriptions, licences… It will be interesting to see whether the initial angry response from many Mendeley fans has any effect in the longer term.

RAPTOR workshop – an adventure 65 million sessions in the making?*

*with apologies to Jurassic Park

What is RAPTOR?

RAPTOR is a JISC-funded kit for looking at e-resources statistics.  RAPTOR stands for Retrieval, Analysis, and Presentation Toolkit for usage of Online Resources.  It was a JISC-funded project led by the University of Cardiff - read more about the project here.  This post summarises my notes from the RAPTOR workshop in Birmingham earlier this week, delivered by Dr Rhys Smith and Dr Phil Smart of the University of Cardiff.  The first version of RAPTOR was released in 2011. Institutions have multiple authentications systems (e.g. Shibboleth, IP), and each logs usage by username.  However, each of these logs are on different systems and in different formats, and some info is missing (e.g. usernames, departments).  Federation operators have a need for stats to demonstrate value for money to their funders.  RAPTOR is a piece of software which allows these usage logs to be collated.

RAPTOR’s goals

• easy to install & configure
• not intrusive
• web front-end for non-tech users
• scalable
• standards-based where possible
• free to use
• open source
• community-driven

RAPTOR components

Local deployment options – image credit RAPTOR wiki

Client (ICA – information collector agents) sends info to the server (MUA – multi-unit aggregator; web):

This picture isn’t as good but it captures Phil doing RAPTOR hands:

RAPTOR is a set of Java programs.  Each competent runs on its own Jetty instance.  Public/private keys, SSL handshakes.  Working on exposing MUAs to SAML metadata instead of keys.

Supported authentication systems

• Shibboleth IdP
• EZproxy
• freeRADIUS

And soon to include OA LA (OpenAthens), OA LA proxy, simpleSAMLphp, Radiator – plus anything you can manually configure.  You can configure RAPTOR to parse any log file you like, you just need to be brave.

Application of RAPTOR

More information about usage, enriched with identity info, gives more business intelligence.  RAPTOR can currently pull out department and affiliation from the IdP [identity provider].  This could be extended in future to include other attributes – let the RAPTOR team know your requirements.
Can use the data to show usage of e-resources by department, system use by affiliation (e.g. UG/PG/staff) e.g. PC cluster room usage.  Could map e-resources usage to attainment info – caveat of correlation not causation.  SWITCH is the Swiss version of JANET - SWITCH AMAAIS [Accounting and Monitoring of AAI Services] project is doing similar things to RAPTOR.

RAPTOR-JUse project

The RAPTOR-JUse project aims to integrate stats from people and platforms by combining data from RAPTOR about the activity of individuals (via the IdP) and data from JUSP [Journal Usage Statistics Portal] about journal usage stats from the SP [service provider] end.

RAPTOR and JUSP have different reporting periods – RAPTOR is per event; JUSP uses defined reporting periods.  This is just one example of the issues to be overcome in this project.

Demo of RAPTOR

The RAPTOR login page is comfortingly simple – though you can’t use federated login (for now).  The irony was acknowledged  After logging in,  you will see something like this:

Can you spot the summer holidays trough on this graph?

You can add postprocessors to sort rows, extract top 10 only etc.  It’s possible to format the entity IDs with SAML organisation name.  The team hope to develop a layer in RAPTOR to represent stats by affiliation as a proportion of the total users, not just raw number.

RAPTOR data can be downloaded in .xlsx .csv and .pdf formats.  It’s not (yet?) possible to see total combined stats for different authentication mechanisms through the web interface – the problem is caused by the different host names being owned by different publishers.  If unique IDs are brought in for publishers in future, this would then be possible.  For any users who’ve dropped out of the directory, no values will be recorded.

Installation options

• simple - good for test deployment but won’t scale well
• normal (one ICA on each service to monitor, MUA & web on a Raptor-server server (sic)) – good for large deployment, production use
• completely separate (ICA, MUA, web elements all on different servers) - probably overkill for most situations

RAPTOR local deployment options in diagrammatic form:

For different components to talk to each other, they need to know each other’s host name, and have encryption keys to swap.  Could have Shib/IP info going to different MUAs.

What do you want from RAPTOR?

Ease of config, supported systems, look & feel, dashboard, reporting vs graphing…?  Let the team know what enhancements you would like to see!  Tell them via the RAPTOR wiki.

WUGEN and WAYFless URLs

To explain what a WAYFless URL is, it’s best to begin with explaining what a WAYF URL is.  WAYF stands for Where Are You From, and it’s a type of URL that allows you access to a service provider via single sign-on by including a step where you have to choose your institution/organisation – hence “where are you from?”.  Therefore, a WAYFless URL is one which does not ask you for your institutional affiliation, and bypassing this step makes it easier and quicker for your users to access platforms.

Setting up service providers to work with your identity provider often involves building WAYFless URLs that are specific to your organisation.  However, they can be brittle and prone to breaking if the target platform changes domain name structure.

And that’s where WUGEN comes in.  WUGEN [WAYFless URL Generator] is a tool for building robust WAYFless URLs.  The site leads you through a few steps and builds the URL for you.

Click on “Explain my WAYFless URL” to see a rating of the URL on the reliability thermometer:

Thanks Rhys and Phil for an excellent workshop  Before I left, there was time for a final RAPTOR hands moment:

If you enjoy other forms of raptor-related humour, see Philosoraptor

See more on Know Your Meme

Open Access – time for a review of the whole model of academic journal publishing?

So… hello again!  Sorry for being away from the blog for a while.  To celebrate the end of the first 4 months in my new post, I’d like to record some of my recent thoughts (personal, not those of my employer whether current or former) about open access (OA).

If you’re new to the discussion about OA, you might like to pause to read this summary about open access, including a description of gold and green routes.

Last week, the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee published their report on the implementation of open access.  In all the discussion about gold vs green routes to open access, including last year’s Finch Report; it seems to be taken for granted that the current business model for academic publishing will stay the same and it’s just the sources of funding that will change.  For example, universities may move funds away from library subscriptions for e-resources and use them instead to fund an author-pays model.

But…

Wouldn’t this be a good moment to step back and see how profoundly the internet has changed the way we do (and could) distribute information in a global scholarly community?  And how this fresh look could allow us to build a completely new model for publishing and distributing knowledge?

Almost all the characteristics of the print publishing paradigm are no longer applicable: consider how the overheads, timescales, ease and cost of making copies, distribution logistics – and more – are completely different for PDFs from what they were for print journals.

So why aren’t we challenging the underlying pricing model?

I’ve heard of some libraries spending 80% of their acquisitions budget on e-resources, and only 20% on print materials.  The costs to libraries is on an unprecedented scale, especially when you consider that these hefty invoices are annually recurrent, and that under some circumstances, cancelling the subscription can incur cancellation fees (which are also recurrent) and a loss of access to the content previously paid for (unlike print journals, were you could at least hang on to the hard copies).

In my new job, I am seeing this problem from a slightly different angle too.  Consider a university which is primarily teaching-focused, but is trying to increase its research profile.  This costs money: researchers need funds for attending conferences and other academic events; if they are spending less time teaching in order to carry out their research, then someone else must be employed to ensure that the timetable is covered; and of course, they need access to a greater range of information resources to support their studies.

This isn’t just about budgets and prestige, it’s also about social mobility.  Imagine the difference between this scenario, in which many junior lecturers are pursuing their PhDs alongside a full teaching job, with that at other institutions at which there is funding to support PhD/DPhil students to study full-time.

I know that the situation for publishers is sensitive and they are trying to defend their subscription charges, but I don’t think it makes sense to apply a print-world-based pricing model and licence type directly to e-journals in a new format and a different medium.

There is no single agreed protocol for the article publishing process: peer review, impact factor, half-lives of articles (in terms of access stats), and other factors vary between disciplines; and what is true of the life sciences is not necessarily transferable to the humanities.

Furthermore, journal articles (in any format) play a different role in different disciplines: for example, original research articles in peer-reviewed journals are primary sources in the life sciences, but are often secondary sources in the humanities.  This means that journal articles occupy a different niche in the research ecology of different disciplines, and may need to be funded or administered differently.  The current publishing model and associated norms are based on practise in the sciences.

This could be an excellent opportunity to stand back and consider a new model for making available the products of research, operating a system of peer review, charging (to whom?) a proportionate fee (how much?) for hosting the content, and building in the functionality and possibilities of new information technologies.

How do we begin this conversation?

Transforming the library at St Hugh’s College

Today is my last day in Oxford.  This weekend I’m moving home to the north-east to start a new job at the University of Sunderland on 1st November.  So, lest we forget how St Hugh’s College Library used to look, here are some ‘before’ and ‘after’ photos…

The library then (2010)

L-R from top: View of the lobby; self-issue system (no security); accumulation of students’ belongings left unattended; returns system consisted of piling up books by the office door waiting for staff to check them back in; upstairs computer and printing facilities

The library now (2012)

L-R from top: Printed spine labels using DDC23 and author/title suffix; secure item return bin; informal seating area in the lobby with recreational reading, DVDs, Living Well and other new collections; students using the group study table; students using books and computers for learning; combined printer/copier/scanner and modern computers; RFID self-service kiosk

Thank you to everyone who has contributed to this work by being a member of my library team, Library Committee, or part of the wider college and library communities in Oxford.  I’m really pleased with what we’ve achieved

Scenario planning: the futures of Oxford’s libraries

Earlier this year, I took part in a scenario planning exercise which brought together a group of librarians from a number of Oxford libraries to consider the challenges that the future would bring and how we could best prepare for them.

Brainstorming factors affecting libraries in the future

We began by considering factors that could have an impact on our libraries in the future, and we came up with nearly 150 ideas.  Of this list, these were rated as being the most important and the most uncertain:

“The right – the most robust – responses to these issues will have to take into account a wide variety of uncertainties – dynamics over which Oxford’s libraries have no control.”

Lawrence Wilkinson (facilitator)

These were further distilled to elicit that the two uncertainties that were the most important and the most uncertain – the dimensions in which the alternative futures are most different; and these were:

• academia and the demand it serves – whose extremes are traditional and integrated vs reorganised, emergent communities
• technology and content – whose extremes are closed, restricted and commercialised vs open and free

These two fundamental uncertainties are juxtaposed to create four divergent futures (or scenarios) for Oxford’s libraries.

Four alternative futures

• “The Long and Winding Road” – a world with generally free and open access to information, and a familiar, traditional model of academic life.
• “Magical Mystery Tour” – a world with generally free and open access to information, and academic life taking place in new kinds of communities
• “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” – a world with generally closed and commercialised access to information, and academic life taking place in new kinds of communities
• “A Hard Day’s Night” – a world with generally closed and commercialised access to information, and a familiar, traditional model of academic life

Examples of early players in each scenario

• “The Long and Winding Road” – arXiv.org, MIT
• “Magical Mystery Tour” – Google, Khan Academy
• “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” – Kaplan, The Learning Academy
• “A Hard Day’s Night” – Apple, CourseSmart

We then explored each possible future in more detail, and exploring what we would do if we knew this future were the most likely.

From theoretical actions to strategic steps

As the real future is likely to be a combination of the four scenarios, with a balance between them that changes over time, we considered the overall implications for our future.  We divided our (very long) lists of actions into strategic steps that would (a) work in all scenarios; and (b) be helpful in one future and neutral in another, and (c) be helpful in one future but harmful in another.  These actions covered every aspect of the libraries, including collection/service strategy, funding models, and physical plant (buildings).

The last stage of the process involved only colleagues from the Bodleian Libraries, who met one more time to consider how all of these ideas could contribute to the Bodleian Libraries’ new strategic plan, and translate them into action points for specific teams or departments.

My two cents’

As a college librarian, I was not involved in this last stage, but I was still thinking about how the libraries individually could respond to the challenges and opportunities that had been identified during the course of this work.  The main theme I kept returning to was the idea of a collaborative library strategy.  This is more difficult than it might first seem, because there are about 100 different academic libraries at the University of Oxford (the Bodleian Libraries group, college libraries, departmental/faculty libraries), and these groups are fully independent of each other (as are most of the individual libraries within each group).  Here they are on a map.

As a biologist, I like to think of the libraries as forming an ecosystem with a variety of niches and habitats.  However, without an over-arching plan, we may be competing for the same “market” (e.g. level of study; subject; resource type) and risk overlapping in some areas and missing others.  I’m wondering if it would be possible to define the niche of each library to help its staff and users to know what to expect from it, and to ensure that as a university, we’re providing as broad a range of resources and services as possible.

This could help avoid conflicting priorities about types of study space, by making different spaces available in different places, but accessible to all users.  Some libraries would focus on having lending collections to support taught courses, and others would specialise in research or special collections (thus focusing budgets in particular areas).  This already exists to some extent, but it’s not centrally agreed or managed.

I’ve done this at St Hugh’s College Library by introducing a collection management policy that states that we will:

Purchase/accept/retain primarily what can be identified as:

1. Useful to an undergraduate/reference library, within the range of subjects taught;
2. Interesting in terms of College History, Women’s Education and other research areas specifically connected with St Hugh’s;
3. Contributing significantly to areas where the Library already has major strengths;
4. Exceptionally rare or valuable.

and that

Duplication should be avoided, unless deemed desirable for study purposes.

This helps to inform my decisions about how to use the budget.  For example, most students’ book suggestions submitted via our online form are for books on reading lists, which matches this policy exactly = green light for purchasing.  However, if a DPhil candidate wants an unusual item for their research, I would direct them to their faculty/departmental library.  As well as focusing my book budget to support taught courses, it also avoids accumulating research materials in a college library which is a private library, rather than at a faculty/departmental library which usually has more generous access arrangements for non-college (not just non-University) members.

Because all of these libraries are independent, there can be no mandate from anyone to any of these libraries to force them to adopt such a strategy, but it may be that some of them opt to do it voluntarily.  Perhaps many of these libraries already have similar policies, but perhaps they are not formalised or publicly available.

Weeding vs curation of digital information

In conversation with an academic last week, I learned that solicitors’ informal notes on cases are disappearing from contemporary archives of these materials because of the shift from writing these notes using pen and paper to storing this information electronically.  In this digital age, we are all more aware of the implications of keeping data about other people, and how this could be revealed to them in future.  The consequences of recording unofficial information about a person can be considerable, so those of us involved in recruitment (as well as lawyers), are often careful to make a record only of the final, official decisions on a matter.

Drafts and edits are lost if only the final version of a document is kept.  Does this matter?  In many cases, probably not; but I expect it will make the work of future biographers and memoir-writers more difficult as this informal layer of revision and annotation is removed from the record we leave behind of our work.

The cost of e-storage is now so low, it’s tempting to keep all work-related files in case they come in handy.  However, without a catalogue, controlled vocabulary, and organisation or structure, what use could they be to anyone in the future?  Deciding what to delete is just as important as choosing what to keep.

Michael McIntyre’s “Man Drawer” sketch shows the same problem in a domestic context

What does MA (Oxon) mean?

A blog post in which I attempt to unravel the meanings (in the Oxford context) of matriculation, graduation, undergraduate master’s degrees, postgraduate bachelor’s degrees, and the meaning of the mysterious ”MA (Oxon)”.

Soon after arriving at Oxford, undergraduates attend a ceremony called Matriculation, at which they wear formal dress and are officially added to the register of members of the University.

Most undergraduate degrees at Oxford are 3 years (or 9 terms) long.  If a student has met the degree requirements* at the end of their course, they will then attend a graduation ceremony at which they are formally awarded their degree, and are then referred to as a graduate of the University.  Most UK universities award a BA (Bachelor of Arts) for arts and humanities subjects, BSc (Bachelor of Sciences) for sciences; but at Oxford, virtually all undergraduates are awarded a BA, even if they did not read for an Arts subject.  An exception to this is that undergraduates on some 4-year science programmes are awarded an undergraduate master’s degree, e.g. Master of Earth Sciences (MEarthSc), Master of Engineering (MEng)**.

At Oxford (and at Cambridge), members of the University may apply for a Master of Arts degree 21 terms (7 years) after matriculation.  There is no period of study or examination.  Graduates pay a small fee and attend another graduation ceremony in order to receive their MA.

This is very different from the MAs awarded by most other universities, which involve tuition (and tuition fees) and examination.

This distinction is represented in a person’s postnominal letters.  MA (Oxon) or MA (Oxf) after someone’s name means that they have an Oxford MA.  MA (Cantab) is the same, but for Cambridge.

Full disclosure: I have an MA, but it’s not an Oxon or a Cantab

*these are academic (having passed relevant examinations) and also residential (students have to have lived within 6 miles (undergraduates) or 25 miles (graduates) of the city centre in Full Term throughout their degree

**a further peculiarity is that some postgraduate degrees at Oxford are bachelor’s degrees, e.g. Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL), Bachelor of Music (BMus)

Further reading

Degrees of the University of Oxford

Learning to “speak Oxford”

Copyright fight: Authors Guild v. HathiTrust

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer! This summary is written in good faith and any errors are my own (let me know and I’ll correct ‘em).  Carry on…

HathiTrust is a collaborative project between a number of university libraries and other institutions to establish a repository to digitise (archive) and share access to their collections.

The HathiTrust collection includes both public domain and in-copyright content from a variety of sources, including Google, the Internet Archive, Microsoft, and partner institution projects.

Public domain content from HathiTrust is publicly accessible, and in-copyright content is accessible to authenticated users.

The main aims of digitisation projects like HathiTrust include ensuring long-term preservation of the materials (waiting until the works pass into the public domain often means the opportunity for scanning them in good condition has passed); making the content of books and journals more discoverable; opening up library content to students and others with print disabilities; and ensuring the continued relevance of the book culture in an increasingly digital age (list taken from the Committee on Institutional Co-operation, a HathiTrust partner).

The Authors Guild Lawsuit

(surely that should be Authors’ Guild? #pedant)

In September 2011, the Authors Guild, the Australian Society of Authors, the Union Des Écrivaines et des Écrivains Québécois (UNEQ), and eight individual authors filed a lawsuit against HathiTrust and a number of American universities, citing gross copyright violation.

In October 2012, a federal court ruled against the Authors Guild, finding that HathiTrust’s use of books scanned by Google was fair use under US law.

The HathiTrust repository contains over 10.5 million scanned books, most of which were created as part of the Google Books project.  Of these, about 31% are in the public domain, meaning that the remaining 69% are still in copyright.

Some of the main issues in the case were:

1. The storage of scanned book images and text files for preservation purposes
2. Indexing the full-text of the files for search purposes (though the search results show only where search terms appear in the catalogued items and do not allow the full text of the item to be read)
3. Format-shifting to make works accessible to users with disabilities (e.g. creating a digital copy of a work that can be read by a person with visual impairment using screen reading software, even if digitising the work for other reasons is not permitted)

Main outcomes of the case for information professionals

Sections 107 and 108 of the US Copyright Act

Section 108 of the US Copyright Act allows libraries to make copies (within limits) for preservation and research.  It includes an explicit statement preserving the application of fair use:

Nothing in this section . . . in any way affects the right of fair use as provided by section 107.

The copyright owners argued that because one specific statute (108) applies to libraries, the general statute on fair use (107) cannot apply.  The court ruled that libraries may apply Section 108 and Section 107 on fair use: section 108 on library privileges doesn’t limit the scope of fair use (section 107).

Search indexing

Although the defendants argued that creating copies for preservation is “transformative,” the court did not agree.

Maintaining text files for searching is a transformative use, because the copies serve an entirely different purpose from the original works, but as the files were only for search and not for full-text access, no copyrighted content was accessible.

Search indexing is a transformative use, and it is a fair use.

Accessibility

American educational institution are mandated to serve needs under the Americans With Disabilities Act.

Section 121 of the US Copyright Act permits an “authorized entity” to make formats of certain works available to persons who are visually impaired.  An “authorized entity” is one that has a “primary mission” to serve those needs.  The court decided that although libraries and universities have many functions, they do have a “primary mission” to serve those needs.

There is no conflict of interest with commercial use, as there is no market for scanning and making materials available to people who are print-disabled, nor is one likely to develop.

Access for people who are print-disabled is a transformative use, and it is a fair use.

Commercial use

The court decided that the HathiTrust partner libraries weren’t making materials available for commercial use, even though they partnered with Google to carry out the scanning.

This is important for UK copyright holders whose works in US libraries have been digitised via Google Books or similar projects.

See this summary from Columbia University on “Effect on the Market for the Works”:

• For noncommercial uses, the plaintiff must show “by a preponderance of the evidence that some meaningful likelihood of future harm exists.”
• The court rejected the argument of lost sales, finding that sales of books would have not served text searches or access for persons who are print disabled.
• The court found that the copies in HathiTrust were not a security risk, noting the evidence presented about the security measures in place.
• The court also found assertions of future licensing revenue to be “conjecture” without evidence of some actual harm.
• In broad terms, the court also ruled that copyright owners “cannot preempt a transformative market” and uses that are in a “transformative market” do not cause a loss of license revnue.
• The projected high cost of any possible license market would also be cost prohibitive for an initiative such as HathiTrust, and it may not be possible at all given the numerous works and the need to locate copyright owners.
• Regarding the needs of the print-disabled, the evidence showed that they are a “tiny minority” and a market to allow them access to millions of books “is consequently almost impossible to fathom.”

Digitisation projects such as those carried out by HathiTrust and its partner universities are non-commercial.

Other reports and opinions on the case

United States District Court, Southern District of New York: The Authors Guild, Inc., et al., against Hathitrust, et al. 11 CV 6351 (HB) Opinion & Order

The Chronicle of Higher Education - Judge Hands HathiTrust Digital Repository a Win in Fair-Use Case

Columbia University Libraries/Information Services Copyright Advisory Service –  Court Rules on HathiTrust and Fair Use

Copyright Librarian - Author’s Guild v Hathi Trust: A Win for Copyright’s Public Interest Purpose

HathiTrust – Information about the Authors Guild Lawsuit

The Michigan Daily - ‘U’ wins copyright lawsuit against Hathitrust digitalization project

Wired - Judge Says Fair Use Protects Universities in Book-Scanning Project