[nfais-l] NFAIS Enotes, August 2010

[Jill O'Neill]

NFAIS Enotes, August 2010

Written and Compiled by Jill O'Neill

 

Scholarly Endeavors, Part I

 

Most of those working in the realm of scholarly and research publication
have encountered the concept of the Carnegie Classification System as
applied to various institutions of higher education (IHE). The
classifications were created back in 1970 as a means of differentiating
between different sorts of IHEs and, as I referenced in the August 2010
issue of Enotes, over just a few decades there arose a recognition that the
classifications were a source of competitive envy. At one point, a
"doctorate granting university" had simply been judged by how many federal
research dollars were poured into its doctoral degree programs. Currently,
however, a doctorate-granting university may fall under one of three
descriptive categories (Research I & II and Doctoral I & II; and
Doctoral/Research-Extensive and Intensive) and the definitions of those
categories have been dramatically changed since the 2005 revision (see:
http://classifications.carnegiefoundation.org/descriptions/basic.php and 

http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/sites/default/files/publications/elibrary_
pdf_634.pdf).

 

The Carnegie Classifications are intended to be primarily descriptive rather
than prescriptive. But the cachet that goes with being (for example) a
Research I institution is significant. Alumni bequests, gifts of endowed
chairs and professorships as well as research grants tend to go to those
IHEs that have already achieved distinction. Membership in the Association
of Research Libraries (ARL) for example is tied to the classification of the
parent institution under the Carnegie Classification as a research
university (although ARL overlays an additional set of criteria pertaining
to continuing commitment to and investment in the library). 

 

As institutions redefine the nature of the learning experience that they
offer, the library behind that educational mission must also be redefined.
To date, the library focus has been primarily on the transition between
print and electronic resources - at least for the past twenty years. If we
accept that the tipping point of that transition has been achieved, then the
next question becomes how collections as well as the business models in
support of access to those collections are redesigned or modified to serve a
more fragmented, but potentially more tightly-targeted user population.

 

One of the most obvious shifts has been the removal of on-site access to
physical volumes within the library. Kent State's 2.9 million volume
collection will be moved off-site by increments of 5% over the next decade
in order to re-allocate space to other student needs, even as they make
space as well in order to spotlight items within the library's special
collections (see:
http://kentwired.com/half-the-books-are-checking-out-permanently/). Library
Dean, James Bracken, believes that is appropriate for a collection where a
full quarter of the print holdings have never circulated. In 2006, Kent
State was classified by the Carnegie Foundation as a "high research
activity" institution (http://einside.kent.edu/?type=art
<http://einside.kent.edu/?type=art&id=5954&> &id=5954&) and it has
maintained that standing as well as its standing in ARL.

 

There have been other movements to adapt, one such being the 18-month-old
initiative of 2CUL (http://2cul.org/). In this initiative, the Columbia
University Libraries and the Cornell University Library, the two CULs of the
acronym, decided that they would attempt a more collaborative approach to
collection development and resource sharing. The first concrete example
emerging from this initiative was the Slavic and East European Collection
Development Agreement announced mid-September see:
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/news/libraries/2010/20100916.slavic.html).
The press release in this instance is worth reading for the quotes from John
Micgiel, director of Columbia's East Central European Center and from Anne
R. Kenney, Cornell's Carl A. Kroch University Librarian. The emphasis in
both instances is on how this initiative supports the libraries in doing
more with less in support of highly specialized user populations in deep
research.  Expedited inter-library-lending (ILL) is one element of the joint
collaboration, but it is worth noting as well that part of that joint
support involves one staff FTE being made available both virtually and
physically to the communities at both institutions (see: Library Journal,
http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/community/academiclibraries/886842-419/corn
ell__columbia_2cul_program.html.csp).

 

In addition to moving books off-site and as an antidote to the poor ROI of
non-circulating titles, there has been an increasing interest in the concept
of patron-driven acquisition (PDA). The Online Dictionary of Library and
Information Science (Libraries Unlimited, ABC-CLIO) defines PDA as "An
e-book purchasing model introduced by NetLibrary in which selection
decisions are based on input from library patrons. Working with the vendor,
the librarian establishes an approval profile based on LC classification,
subject, educational level, publication date, cost, and other criteria.
E-book titles matching the profile are then shared with the library's
community of users via MARC records in the catalog. Once a specific e-book
has been discovered and viewed by a predetermined number of patrons, it is
automatically purchased for the collection. Libraries with limited budgets
can set spending limits for their PDA plans. Variations on this model have
been developed by Ingram Digital's MyLibrary and by Ebook Library (EBL).
Synonymous with demand-drive acquisition"

(see: http://lu.com/odlis/odlis_p.cfm#patrondriven). 

 

The problem with such a model as mentioned by one speaker at ALISE in
September 2010 mentioned is that the existing systems for the
profiling-based purchasing approaches that have been in use for twenty years
may be stretched to their structural limitations and pushing the limits of
capacity (see:
http://oranjarra.com/images/stories/best%20practice%20and%20cooperation%20in
%20resource%20sharing%20among%20academic%20library%20consortia%20a4.pdf).

 

The same speaker, Stephen Pugh of Oranjarra Partners, noted issues with each
of the four basic approaches currently in place for purchasing ebooks: lack
of tailoring to institutional need in the Big Deal, the higher costs in
title-by-title purchasing, the uncertainty of patron-driven acquisition in
the context of budgets (even as the book content can be proven to be used),
and the challenges to vendor-supported systems in the context of approval
plan buying.  

 

The Chronicle of Higher Education spoke with James Mouw, Assistant Director
for Technical and Electronic Resources, University of Chicago Library, who
indicated that from his perspective with regard to stand-alone scholarly
monographs in electronic form, there were three main criteria to be
considered in purchasing:

 

(1)   Both print and electronic forms had to be made available
simultaneously in order to permit the library to select the form best suited
to their needs;

(2)  Digital monographs had to be offered for purchase in such a way as
allowed the library to pick and choose individual titles (in the hopes of
licensing duplicates of titles in more than one aggregation of material).  

(3)  Access to that digital content, once purchased, had to be in
perpetuity. 

 

With regard to actual pricing, the article suggested that prices for print
and digital had to be in line with one another (see:
http://chronicle.com/blogs/pageview/e-books-what-a-librarian-wants/26777). 

 

And while the larger percentage of academic libraries don't generally
purchase textbooks for their collections, its worth recognizing that this is
another area where the demands surrounding ebooks from users are re-shaping
the product of content providers. For a particularly engaging look at that
aspect, you may want to view a Prezi presentation made by Rob Reynolds of
Xplana to the AAP/PSP Books Committee (see:
http://blog.xplana.com/2010/09/the-past-present-and-future-of-higher-educati
on-textbook-publishing/).

 

Reynolds identified nine trends with regard to the evolution of digital
textbooks and e-learning content. Those trends primarily focused on the
business models and the rise of open education resources (OER), but two
critical points were also raised:

 

*	The development of a common XML format for e-text-books (which was
characterized as a "modified ePub format with a standard DTD that could be
extended by each user") and
*	The importance of devices and branded devices (that is,
institutionally-branded versions of tablets to be given to students with
pre-loaded publisher content)
*	 

(see:
http://blog.xplana.com/2010/09/nine-important-trends-in-the-evolution-of-dig
ital-textbooks-and-e-learning-content/).

 

I found it intriguing that Reynolds anticipated that students were going to
accept locked files on locked devices. It's just not that hard to play with
the ePub format. 

 

For the past few months, I have experimented with ebooks. Reading on both
the Amazon Kindle as well as on the Apple iPod Touch, I've accessed,
consumed, and stored between 150 to 200 titles in various applications.
Apart from those devices, I have sampled titles through Web-based, browser
interfaces, for both the mobile as well as the desktop environment. For fun,
you might look at the following video comparison of reading an EPUB title on
a Kindle (http://vimeo.com/15015138) with a video demonstrating reading via
an HTML5 enabled reader (http://vimeo.com/15826571). Both videos are from a
European start-up, Booki.sh (their URL as well as their brand). The
description of their service reads "It works in modern web browsers like
Safari, Firefox, Chrome and Opera. You can read books on your iPad, iPhone,
Blackberry, Kindle 3 and similar devices. And you can access your books
online or offline."  Monocle is the open-source software behind this
particular interface and the publishers that I could locate using it were
primarily trade-based publishers in Europe. However, as one critic noted,
the issue is whether or not users are really going to always be connected at
a decent speed and with an up-to-date browser. 

 

I've gone so far as to experiment with the Calibre software
(http://calibre-ebook.com/) that enables a user to manage a collection of
digital titles, converting an EPUB file to whatever format is best suited to
their particular device. When a friend in academia asked me to give her my
thoughts on an 1873 commentary on the Episcopalian prayer book intended for
young adults of the time, I went looking for a Kindle-ready edition on
Gutenberg and at the Open Library. Neither had a usable file, but at Google
Books, the title surfaced as downloadable in either PDF or EPub (see:
http://books.google.com/books?id=pfxDAAAAYAAJ
<http://books.google.com/books?id=pfxDAAAAYAAJ&dq=The%20Bishop%20and%20Nanet
te&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false>
&dq=The%20Bishop%20and%20Nanette&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false]).

 

Converting that file through Calibre was a little time-consuming and the end
product was riddled with OCR-caused typos, but I was eventually able to read
the book on my Kindle. Subsequently another academic told me of WYSIWYG
editorial tools, Sigil (http://code.google.com/p/sigil/) and the Atlantis
Word Processor (http://www.atlantiswordprocessor.com/en/). While the tools
are not particularly user-friendly, there's no reason why a motivated reader
can't work past the barriers and manipulate existing EPUB files. Readers of
light entertainment will happily make do with publishers' ready-made
offerings, but academic users may want to work with and make available less
well-known materials and it should be expected that tools such as Sigil and
the Atlantis Word Processor will continue to be upgraded to serve those
researchers.

 

What emerges from such experimentation however is that Hugh McGuire was
correct when he wrote for O'Reilly that "an .epub file is really just a
website, written in XHTML, with a few special characteristics and wrapped
up. It's wrapped up so that it is self-contained.so that it doesn't appear
to be a website and so that it is harder to do the things with an ebook that
one expects to be able to do with a website. Epub is really a way to build a
website without letting readers or publishers know it"

(see: http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/09/beyond-ebooks-publisher-as-api.html).

 

Delivery of single volume monographs and textbooks in digital form
represents an area of eager interest and rapid development. Academics have
already mastered the concept of web sites for pedagogical purposes;
mastering an ePub format (even a modified one) isn't much of a stretch.
Naturally not all serious researchers or faculty will want to be bothered,
but some percentage will. 

 

In September, the European Foundation for Quality in E-Learning met for
their annual conference. One of the papers delivered there was centered not
just on the creation of open educational resources, but also on the creation
of open educational practices. Specifically, the report on the OPAL project
was oriented towards the creation of engaging learning experiences - a focus
on activity and use rather than on ingestion of content (see this set of
slides, particularly slide #10 at
http://www.slideshare.net/grainne/conole-lisbon).  While the speaker was
clearly communicating awareness of the gap between vision and practical
reality and the overall immaturity of the open educational resource
movement, the hope is that education will be reformed (in the best sense).
By slide #32 where the speaker, Grainne Canole, Professor for Educational
Technology, The Open University, UK, is listing questions for further
investigation, we see references to the need for more sophisticated tools
and resources and calls for innovation in the use and reuse of the open
repositories that are only just now emerging. More on this initiative may be
found at http://www.oer-quality.org/.

 

The metrics by which we evaluate educational institutions are changing.  As
a result of that shift  their libraries are changing and both the nature and
use of as well as attitudes towards the content held in those libraries is
changing. If you are only looking to the short term (3-5 years out) the
landscape of this marketplace may not be that different, but the longer term
outlook - say 2020 - may well be very, very different.  

 

*************************

 

 

Want to learn more about portable devices and the e-reading experience? Look
for the NFAIS webinar on this topic to be held early next year.

 

Also, early bird registration discounts for the 2011 NFAIS Annual conference
end on January 7th.  Until then savings of up to $100 off the full
registration fee are available and NFAIS members registering three or more
staff at the same time receive even greater savings (for details see the
registration form at
http://nfais.brightegg.com/page/295-register-for-2011-annual-conference).

 

2010 SPONSORS

Accessible Archives, Inc.

American Psychological Association/PsycINFO

The British Library

CAS

Copyright Clearance Center

CrossRef

Data Conversion Laboratory

Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC)

Getty Research Institute

H. W. Wilson

Information Today, Inc.

Office of Scientific & Technical Information, DOE

Philosopher's Information Center

ProQuest

Really Strategies, Inc.

Temis, Inc.

Thomson Reuters Healthcare & Science

Thomson Reuters IP Solutions

Unlimited Priorities Corporation

 

 

 

 

Jill O'Neill

Director, Planning & Communication

NFAIS

(v) 215-893-1561

(email) jilloneill at nfais.org

 

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