Describes how the University of Strathclyde is choosing to give priority to e-content and services instead of a new building

Law, Derek

English

University of Strathclyde Institutional Repository

Strathprints Institutional RepositoryLaw, Derek (2009) An awfully big adventure: Strathclyde’s digital library plan. Ariadne (58). ISSN1361-3200Strathprints is designed to allow users to access the research output of the University of Strathclyde.Copyright c© and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authorsand/or other copyright owners. You may not engage in further distribution of the material for anyprofitmaking activities or any commercial gain. You may freely distribute both the url (http://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/) and the content of this paper for research or study, educational, ornot-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge.Any correspondence concerning this service should be sent to Strathprints administrator:mailto:strathprints@strath.ac.ukhttp://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/ Law, Derek (2009) An awfully big adventure: Strathclyde's digital Library plan. Ariadne (58). ISSN 1361-3200     http://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/7639/    This is an author produced version of a paper published in Asian Journal of Latin American Studies, 19(3). pp. 43-65. ISSN 0022-216X. This version has been peer-reviewed but does not include the final publisher proof corrections, published layout or pagination.   Strathprints is designed to allow users to access the research output of the University of Strathclyde. Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. You may not engage in further distribution of the material for any profitmaking activities or any commercial gain. You may freely distribute both the url (http://strathprints.strath.ac.uk) and the content of this paper for research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge. You may freely distribute the url (http://strathprints.strath.ac.uk) of the Strathprints website.  Any correspondence concerning this service should be sent to The Strathprints Administrator: eprints@cis.strath.ac.uk  An Awfully Big Adventure: Strathclyde’sDigital Library PlanDerek Law describes how the University of Strathclyde is choosing to give priority to e-content andservices instead of a new building.IntroductionBy Scottish standards, Strathclyde is a new university, being a mere two hundred years old. It is a largeuniversity with 20,000 students, some forty departments covering most disciplines other than medicineand a huge programme of continuing professional development (CPD). Set up as ‘a place of usefullearning’ it has always specialised in the applied disciplines – business, engineering, professional training(teachers, lawyers and social workers) and has set out to be quite different from its better-knowncompetitors. But in a world ruled by league tables, where it typically finishes fourth or fifth amongst theScottish universities (with spikes of excellence!) it was determined that in the current strategic plan [1] weshould find ways of attempting to move all our activities into the top three. It was made quite clear thatwhere excellence and methods of achieving could be identified, investment would be forthcoming. Byextension, disinvestment would take place in underperforming areas. The strategic plan also quitespecifically proposed ‘A revitalised and contemporary approach to the provision of library services andinformation resources.’Coupled with all of this was a recognition that our estate was too large and should be reduced, oneelement of this being the closure of our one remote campus and its consolidation into the main city centresite.The Library mirrors this general position. It has a collection of over a million volumes, dating almost entirelyfrom post-1960. Its excellence is built on scale for there has been no great tradition of building archives orspecial collections. Growth runs at over a kilometre of shelving a year and the main building is a tired1960s conversion of a publisher’s warehouse on the edge of the campus. On most measures it comesout in fourth or fifth place in Scotland. The one notable exception is service. The National Student Survey[2] figures show that users place Strathclyde well above the national average on service, reflecting a realattempt by the Library to be excellent where it can. This is further reflected in the standing of the Librarywithin the University, where it is seen as a positive contributor to the institution and is treatedsympathetically.As part of the strategic planning process, all departments of the University were asked to reflect and reporton how excellence would be identified and achieved in their area. In the Library this meant reflecting on theexternal environment. The vast majority of current journals are already available electronically; Google isdigitising books by the million and has recently reached a deal with American publishers which ensures away forward for this programme [3]; the new CIBER report [4] sees electronic books at last makingheadway. Indeed we must be close to the point where a cash-strapped Vice-Chancellor will wonder why aLibrary is needed at all. Paradoxically then, the proposed campus closure and the transfer of the relatedbranch library would fill the Library to the point of unworkability, unless we undertook major building works.The final strand in this developing story is that Strathclyde has a converged management structure forLibrary, IT and Learning Services. It has pioneered the use of laptops in teaching and has substantialcollections of e-material, as well as its own digitisation unit. So the Library has a lot of experience of1 of 4 03/03/2009 12:00changing user behaviour and expectations.Defining ExcellenceThe first and most obvious starting point was the tired fabric of the Library. So we looked around. The firstcuriosity to strike home was that all of our major competitors had spent or planned to spend literally tens ofmillions on new buildings or extensions – indeed the sector as a whole in Scotland appeared to havecommitted some quarter of a billion pounds to library buildings, apparently as an act of faith, rather thanwith any obvious rationale. It became very quickly clear that, were Strathclyde to spend say fifty millionpounds on refurbishing its library, it would be no better off relatively in any league table. While someexpenditure on library fabric was unavoidable, this seemed a poor way of achieving the University’soverarching goal. It seemed a perfect time to adopt the classic approach of reframing the question. Oneof the key aims of the strategic plan revolves not just around excellent teaching, something to which everyuniversity would no doubt aspire, but also to be innovative in teaching. This implies a strong focus ontechnology and by extension on e-content. Again the Library was seen as central to this.Unique Selling PointsA great deal of effort went into workshops with users and senior managers - those of the students’ unionbeing notably helpful. The innocent question from the President of the Students' Association, namely‘What’s a card catalogue?’, which arose in response to a curmudgeonly defence of the past, proved a realturning point in the debate. Prensky’s well-known writings [5] both on digital natives and on legacy contentwere particularly influential. Views on future needs were gathered and the question was posed as to whatwould justify spending millions each year on a library building, the vast majority of whose collections were– or soon would be – available at the desktop. It was relatively easy to identify the born digital materialcreated by the institution as a starting point. It was seen as a primary responsibility, beginning with theinstitutional repository (already one of the largest in the UK) and running through a gamut of Web sites,research data, wikis, blogs and e-theses. It should be admitted that most of this material has beenidentified rather than ‘captured’ at this stage. Second would come the digitisation of archive and specialcollection material. Much work has been done in this area by the Centre for Digital Library Research and arecently appointed University Archivist had begun the slow task of building an archive of material which didnot compete with other universities from scratch. So we focus on miscarriages of justice (asbestosis,BCCI, Paddy Meehan, etc) or modern Scottish artists, or town and country planning; we look to digitise thecollections which are uniquely ours. A few older collections such as one on alchemy would be built up anddigitised in collaboration with the relevant academic departments. In other words, our USP would beprecisely those collections unique to us. In particular, our key collection objective was to be the digitalasset management of the intellectual output of the organisation. And thirdly we would buy and subscribe toa range of materials which ensured our place in league tables based on per capita spend.The Library BuildingThis still left the issue of the Library Building itself, shared with academic departments, many of whomwere moving to new space and adjacent to a new sports centre planned for completion in 2012. At over13,000 square metres the Library is large, but not large enough to squeeze in the collections from ourbranch library. At the time this discussion was taking place, there was huge concern over the spiralling costof utility bills. As with most universities, these costs are top-sliced and there is no real understanding of thecost of heating and lighting the library for example. Calculations by our Estates Department showed thatthe cost of utilities for the Library is in excess of half a million pounds a year.Staff and Staff SkillsStrathclyde’s greatest strength is its staff and this is recognised by users. However many of the academic-related staff were appointed in the 1970s and are in the final stages of their career. Operating in aconverged service has allowed the library access to different skill sets and a growing number of blendedprofessionals have appeared within the Information Resources Directorate which oversees this convergedarea. One of the key challenges will then be to identify the relevant skill sets and then the structures whichwill support this kind of development. Work such as Sheila Corrall’s on Infostructure [6] provides anattractive and fresh view of the classic technical services/reader services structure, but there will have tobe a good deal of heart-searching and perhaps false starts before an optimal model is reached How farthe Library will ‘own’ the information space and staff of the University is one of the interesting questions-cum-challenges.The PropositionTaking all of these elements together, a plan quickly emerged. It remains mercifully free of detail in manyareas, but the outline is clear and has been adopted enthusiastically by the University. It is regarded asbeing in keeping both with the excellence agenda and with seeking a reputation for being innovative.Morever, the plan will help the University to address collegially some of its academic and estates issues. A2 of 4 03/03/2009 12:00substantial capital budget of £2.5 million has been authorised for the purchase or creation of digitalmaterial and a recurrent increase of £800,000 agreed for e-journal and e-book purchase. In return theLibrary has agreed to clear the equivalent of half the space on each of its six floors. This space will bere-used principally as teaching space. This in turn will allow consolidation of the Law, Arts and SocialSciences Faculty in a separate building and the removal of teaching space elsewhere, so reducing thesize of the estate, and by extension utilities and other costs. The library collections will be digitised wherepossible, consolidated into rolling stack where usage merits it and disposed of where there is no real meritin retaining back runs of journals readily available cally. The Library is not and never has been alibrary of record for commercially published material and will focus on access rather than possession.Somewhat cautiously (there are no real benchmarks for this) we anticipate beginning this change byremoving completely or to store, one quarter of the collection within three years, while no longer addingnew metres of paper each and every year. A more ambitious view is that as the grip of Google continuesto bite we can probably accelerate this programme. The pace of change will be dictated as much by thepracticalities of the availability of content and the time involved in de-accessioning monographs as byphilosophy or finance. An intellectual Rubicon has been crossed. At the same time we shall have to spendquite a few millions on upgrading the tired fabric of the Library to make it acceptable – but it will be a muchsmaller library.The InvestmentThe recurrent funding is to be spent principally on new subscriptions to e-journals. To some extent this willbe dictated by availability, but the key determinant will be supporting academic excellence. One element ofthis will no doubt be the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) results of December 2008, balanced bysome notion of equity between the Faculties. As far as the £2.5 million is concerned, an entirely arbitrarydistribution has been agreed between the Library, the Library Committee and the Senior ManagementTeam of the University. Here inequity will operate since availability of e-versions will be a much moresignificant factor. The priority will be back runs of journals to replace paper collections, since this providesmaximum return for minimum effort in terms of removing the paper stock. To a lesser extent this will applyto monographs but it is not expected that there will be a significant space saving here as the number ofcommercially available e-books to replace 30-year old publications is limited. Access to material onGoogle Books is as likely to produce good results here. Some £1.7 million has been notionally allocatedto this aspect. A further £300,000 has been allocated for digitisation of non-copyright material and specialcollections, much of which is expected to be undertaken by our in-house digitisation unit. An initial focuswill be on the branch library due to move to the main campus in 2010-11, to see how far the need to movematerial can be reduced. The final £500,000 is both a contingency fund and will also meet some staff andsoftware costs associated with managing and moving the stock.ConclusionArguably nothing proposed for Strathclyde is new or original, except perhaps the scale of the challenge.Nor would we claim it to be so. However, we do feel that we have been given an opportunity to redefinewhat the library represents and will represent to its users. We shall continue to place an emphasis onservice as well as collections, since users clearly value this. we shall develop the meaning of the newlibrary mantra, whether for academics at home or students pursuing innovative learning on the move: ‘Don’tjust go to the library – take it with you’. We will make the Library a compelling and progressive part of anexcellent and innovative university. At least, that’s the plan.ReferencesStrategic Plan - University of Strathclyde http://www.strath.ac.uk/strategicplan/1.The National Student Survey http://nss.webreport.se/login.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2fDefault.aspx2.Google Book Search Settlement Agreement http://books.google.com/intl/en_uk/googlebooks/agreement/3.Information behaviour of the researcher of the future: a ciber briefing paper. London: UCL, 2008.http://www.ucl.ac.uk/slais/research/ciber/downloads/ggexecutive.pdf4.Prensky, Marc. Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, On the Horizon, Vol. 9 No. 5, October 20015.Corrall, Sheila. Developing Models of Professional Competence.The 6th World Conference on Continuing Professional Development and Workplace Learningfor the Library and Information Professions. Oslo, 2005http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla71/papers/cpdwl-Corrall.pdf6.Author DetailsDerek LawProfessorUniversity of Strathclyde3 of 4 03/03/2009 12:00Email: d.law@strath.ac.ukWeb site: http://www.mis.strath.ac.uk/IS/staff/IRDDerek.htm4 of 4 03/03/2009 12:00

Google Book Search Settlement Agreement http://books.google.com/intl/en_uk/googlebooks /agreement/ 3. Information behaviour of the researcher of the future: a ciber briefing paper.

An awfully big adventure : Strathclyde's digital library plan

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