Ensuring that the library development community thrives at the network level

2. Ensuring that the library development community thrives at the network level Terry Reese Gray Family Chair for Innovative Library Services terry.reese@oregonstate.edu

3. Open Source? • Often times, I find that when people talk about the library development community, they often equate Library Code => Open Source • As a consequence, Open Source development, discussions tend to dominate the landscape • But the question I want to ask: Which is more important in the long run for the library community --- Open Source or Open Data?

4. Open Data

5. Why Open Data? • Library Software development is all building bridges between data silos for our patrons • Purposes of research and innovation • Libraries and librarians are researchers – open data facilitates this research • Because libraries are about connecting people with information regardless of use

6. Open Data and Librarianship • In many respects, securing Open Data represents the library communities next big challenge. • Immediate challenges: • Institutional Repository development • Digital collection development • Establishing institutional/consortia identities • Creation of portable identities • Sharing institutional holdings and usage statistics to promote shared collection development • Establishing real-time, unmediated borrowing of electronic materials

7. Building the web through data • Open data is the corner-stone of the next generation internet • Data is the engine behind the dynamic nature of Web 2.0, and the underpinnings of the semantic web. • Development of the Mobile Web requires the presence of Open Data • I-Phone, Android – most applications act as data mediators for users.

8. Building the web through data http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/145732819&referer=brief_results

9. Building the web through data

10. Building the web through data • Mobile Web • IPhone and Android (Google) phone market places are littered with applications developed around the repackaging of Open Data

11. Current trends • Interesting trends • Library workflows are being moved to the network level • Including collection development and acquisitions by players like: • OCLC • EBSCOHost • Proquest • Etc.

12. Current Trends • Content providers are consolidating • Fewer data providers • Services outside the library community are beginning to exert a much larger influence • Google (Books & Scholar) • Open Library (Internet Archive)

13. Why should we care? • I want to ask and answer two question: • Do we still need a thriving library development community? • And what would it mean for this community to no longer exist? • Does this group still serve a role within the current landscape?

14. Why should we care? • Do we still need a thriving library development community? • Why ask this question? Two of the library communities most visible open source projects support a dying model – the ILS. • Can we have a thriving library development community when all data moves to the network level?

15. Why the library needs a development community • Not for software development…but to push for innovations that are primarily good for libraries… • And to advocate for open standards • Examples: Digital Library Federations two most successful projects: • ERM specification • DLF ILS Specification

16. Consolidation…. • And the rise of the McLibrary • Data consolidation and network level services homogenizing the library • On the one hand, homogenization is good • Allows patrons to easily move between organizations easily • On the other hand, it limits research and innovation as many treasured aspects of library science (patron interaction, usability studies, service development) shifts away from library and to the network provider.

17. Growing outside influences • The Google “Lockbox” • Tools that have become interested in libraries because of their rich content, but are finding ways of locking that content up. • Google Books • Google Scholar

18. What does this mean for vendors • New business models • Shift away from a model in which data is locked up in specific tools or workflows & move to a more services oriented mode • Difficulty of building open source acquisitions systems because: • Current Acquisition systems use localized workflows • Moving from one workflow to another is often not intuitive • Lack of standardized acquisitions data for movement of data between systems

19. What does this mean for vendors • New business models • Value of a product should shift from valuing data to valuing services • The library development community isn’t looking to re-build existing tools, but looking for ways to take existing tools and make them better • Biggest barrier -- data

20. What does this mean for vendors • New business models • Likewise, data needs to be made available without restrictions related to use. • This is a hard one, because vendors want to protect R&D effort on services they create • And many people in the library community have a problem with metadata that they develop being utilized in for profit venues • Historically, business models have always been developed around data and the control of that data

21. What does this mean for the library development community? • Community needs to strive to become partners with the library vendor community • How? • Working with vendors to develop and support open standards • Example: DLF ILS • By being data consumers • By giving data back

22. What does this mean for the library development community? • Community needs to take a proactive approach in how we license resources • Negotiating for both access to content and data • Working collaboratively as a community to encourage open data for everyone – not just specific institutions • Find ways to promote the use of open data sources to the library’s user community • Encourage user community to remix and build new services

23. What does this mean for the library development community? • Library Development community needs to become more organized. • Focus less on rebuilding the wheel and more on community development • Become advocates for not just Open Source, but Open Data • Application Programming Interfaces (API) make developers giddy but an API with overly restrictive usage terms severely limit its us

24. Questions