Keynote presentation at Boston Library Consortium Annual Networking Day, Boston College, 3 June 2014

1. Some reflections on libraries and stewardship of the scholarly record
Constance Malpas
Program Officer, OCLC Research
3 June 2014, Boston College
BLC Networking Day
Collection Directions
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2. Inside-out
Outside-in

3. 3
Collection Directions: Academic Libraries

4. Low
Stewardship
High
Stewardship
In few
collections
In many
collections
Collections Grid
Research & Learning
Materials
Open Web ResourcesPurchased Materials
Licensed E-Resources
Special Collections
Local Digitization
Licensed
Purchased
Outside-in
Inside-out
Dempsey & Childress, OCLC Research

5. Institutional Needs – Academic Libraries: Current situation vs. 5 years from now
Low
Stewardship
High
Stewardship
In few
collections
In many
collections
Licensed
Purchased
Key Trends:
• increased reliance on group provisioning of print and licensed content
• more integration of freely available web-based content
• special collections focus on institutional mission, reputation
• growing attention to teaching/learning materials; limited library capacity

6. Institutional Needs – Research Libraries: Current situation vs. 5 years from now
Low
Stewardship
High
Stewardship
In few
collections
In many
collections
Licensed
Purchased
Key Trends:
• strategic realignment around purchasing/licensing ‘collections as services’
• redirection of investment toward reputation management, research support
• emphasis on effective disclosure of distinctive assets: special collections,
research data, expertise

7. A landscape in transition
• Fragmentation in higher education sector (elite,
convenience, ‘squeezed middle’) will drive changes
in academic libraries – increased differentiation in
portfolio of collections and services
• Shared infrastructure enabling transition from local-
to group-scale management of purchased and
licensed content
• Institutional capacity to redirect resources from
commodity collections toward distinctive services
will depend on availability of appropriate
cooperative infrastructure
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8. 8
Collective collection: print books

9. 9
31%
90%
North American Print Book Landscape, January 2011
US libraries hold
90% of titles in
North American print
book collection

10. 10
North American Mega-regions
12 zones of highly integrated economic activity
• Does distribution of library resource align with
distribution of economic activity?
• What are the implications for stewardship of North
American print book collections?

11. 11
Relative size of regional print book collections (2011)
92% of North American print
book collection concentrated in
12 mega-regions

12. 12
Inventory
continues to
grow in all
regions
Median +3%
between 2011
and 2013
+4% growth in
Bos-Wash

13. 13
• Largest mega-regional print book resource
in North America
• 27.9M print book titles; 56% of North
American print book resource
• 199.6M library holdings; 22% of North
American print book inventory
• Avg. 7 in-region library holdings per title
• 75% of titles held by <5 libraries in region*
• 33% of titles are unique to region*
Bos-Wash print book collection (2013)
*based on 2011 data

14. 14
Bos-Wash Coverage of other Regional Collections (2011)
Bos-Wash regional resource
duplicates 65-95% of print book
titles in other regions …next largest regional collection can
duplicate just 50% of Bos-Wash collection

15. 15
Bos-Wash Institutional Infrastructure (2011)
• >4000 holding libraries
• Top 5 libraries account
for 15-34% of titles (each)
Academic libraries
account for >70% of
regional inventory

16. Group-scale: Boston Library Consortium
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17. 17
17 libraries
Liberal arts colleges, professional schools, research institutions,
state library . . .
• all affiliates of FCLD print journal archive
• many (all?) participating in Eastern Academic Scholars Trust
Right scale for
stewardship
is…small
consortium?
Large, loose
confederation?

18. 18
Largest
print book
collection
in BLC is
>100X
greater
than smallest
collection

19. 19
Median
BLC member
‘coverage’
of Bos-Wash
collection
is 2%
‘coverage
requires
cooperation’

20. 20
Median
NERL member
‘coverage’
of Bos-Wash
collection
is 5%
‘coverage
requires
cooperation’

21. At every scale…
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ChiPitts
58%
SoCal
47%
Charlanta 67%
coverage requires collaboration
regional coverage

22. >266M library holdings in WorldCat
Shared Print Collections
• Cooperative stewardship of
aggregate print resource
• Part of broader trend toward
‘group-scale’ library
operations
• >30 active shared print
groups in North America
• 9 major groups registering
shared print holdings in
WorldCat
22
Shared Print Titles in WorldCat
April 2014

23. 23
Boston College
Williams College
U Mass Amherst
Median
duplication
23% as of
May 2013

24. Stewardship of the Evolving Scholarly Record
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25. 25
Format transition:
Print-centric to digital, networked
Boundaries blurring:
Articles/monographs, but
also research data, computer
models, video, blogs,
visualizations, conference
posters & presentations,
pre-prints, etc.
Stakeholder roles reconfiguring:
New paths for the scholarly communication ‘supply chain’
Scholarly record

26. Stewardship of the scholarly record
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Create
Fix
Use
Collect
Factors impacting stewardship …
• Increasing volume of content
• Increasing diversity/complexity of content
• Increasing distribution of custodial responsibility
 ‘local copies’ of scholarly record are increasingly partial
 discovery and management are increasingly fragmented
 coherence of scholarly record is reduced

27. Questions for academic library consortia
• Is available cooperative infrastructure adequate to
support deeper collaboration around collections
management, custodial care of scholarly record?
• Do existing consortia represent the right mix of
stakeholders for collaborative stewardship
arrangements?
• How can consortial efforts ‘scale up’ to meet
system-wide stewardship needs? What mechanisms
are needed to federate group-scale approaches?
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28. Thanks for your attention.
©2014 OCLC. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Suggested attribution:
“This work uses content from [presentation title] © OCLC, used under a Creative Commons Attribution license:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/”
malpasc@oclc.org
@ConstanceM
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