Collaborative Resource Management: Collection Care in the Community?

1. Collaborative Resource Management: Collection Care in the Community? Mike Mertens, Deputy Director, RLUK

2. We have been here before... Parry Committee 1967 • lack of evidence on the ‘adequacy of academic library collections to meet the needs of faculty members and research students’ Atkinson Report 1976 • recommends ‘self-renewing’ libraries, with low-use material being discarded to make way for new material • explicit assumption that discarded material would be available from BL Computer Board (John Forty) 1988 • recommends hub and spoke model of regional research libraries Follett Report 1993 • “develop networks and groupings of institutions based on particular centres to support particular subjects…” Anderson Report 1996 • avoid unnecessary duplication in acquisition and retention • establish local and regional cooperative arrangements Research Support Libraries Programme 2002 (Source: Michael Jubb, RIN)

3. Who or what needs the care? The Collections? Or the Community?

4. RSLP Redux 1 - Some thoughts from 2002... The number of institutions involved in RSLP = 500 Conservation: ‘We failed completely to work out a viable economic model.’ Cross-sectoral collaboration was more difficult than hoped Sustainability: project funding is great, but what happens next? There is a need to work out viable business models to maintain and develop what has been started on the projects; we have to get to grip with it because no more money will come our way... There is a need to work towards a shared digital and print infrastructure

5. RSLP Redux 2 - Some further thoughts from 2002... Collaboration has to take place because of the transforming quality of modern technologies; it has to happen in terms of resources, policies and leadership (since then Google, Napster, P2P...) “It will be suggested to set up ‘Body X’ which will be a ‘cooperative’ which is not intended to run the system, but rather to be a facilitatory organization.” (eventually this was the RIN, now a private consulting body).

6. RSLP Redux 3 - Some final thoughts from 2002... What would ‘Body X’ do? Play a leading role in defining and implementing a national strategy (digitisation, digital preservation etc…); Undertake some tasks on behalf of the libraries, e.g. site licensing; Play a leading role in the debate on Scholarly Communications, SPARC etc.; Play a role in the identification of contents; e.g. what to digitize, e-collections, e-science; Play a leading role in establishing catalogues and search engines: UK NUC, SUNCAT etc. Investigate the possibility of deep sharing in certain areas...

7. A moment of clarity from 2012? The Community is now “Body X”!

8. Does this activity need a community? What will it take to create a community around this? Long-term sustainability means that the emphasis now has to be on community leadership. If you were part of this community, what support would you expect, for yourselves and for your users?

9. Paradox 1: Is a community that is pre-fabricated an authentic one? Paradox 2 In times of financial duress, overcoming the conviction of being precisely unable to participate in joint activities on account of cost factors when sharing burdens would exactly help.

10. Ask not so much what RLUK (or others) can do for you, rather state boldly what you can do (and already are doing) for yourselves Does anyone need to convince you of the utility of community action here? If not, nobody is stopping you! The old chestnut of a (distributed) national research collection still holds a kernel of truth What if new tools means it's now easy (or plain unavoidable – the Legal Deposit libraries will not be a last resort)?

11. Does or can RLUK and others still have any expectations or demands? (Shhh...Standardization...?) After the stirring landing speech, what kind of ammunition do you need? Why have previous attempts at the national research collection beachhead failed? What have been the tank traps?

12. The long road to Berlin...or how to beat the Red Army of print decline to the bibliographic Oder? Are the Allies all speaking with one voice? Would our own Preservation Potsdam last? Where are the blown bridges? What's the smallest effective sharing unit?

13. The national print collection is as much the collective co-ordination and participation which would permit these issues to be more profoundly addressed in a structured way, as it is the absolute or relative discoverable measure of what exists in print in our collections

14. The fact is that there is a crisis, the national heritage is at risk and it cannot be secured on the basis of existing resources. Yet that is not the whole answer. The conservation problem is a national one and it will not be solved by any one library...It will depend on cooperation, on the goodwill of libraries working together. Ratcliffe, F.W. Preservation policies and conservation in British libraries. British Library (1984) p. 67

15. So, we have heard all this before, and we have survived the predicted crises. But these were perhaps fluctuations of fortune in the Cold War between print and digital. We shall not be faced with the fixed lines of 1945 forever, however – consider now whether the preservation of print may be looking at a “Berlin Wall” moment.

16. What has your institutional investment in print been? Your print portfolio may be some of the only unique content you have. But is the rate of interest on book bonds now seemingly lower than it's ever been? Are we only to seek liquidity in terms of digital surrogates? Can we have both? (According to Ithaka work, researchers still want – 2009).

17. Mike Mertens, Deputy Director, RLUK Mike.mertens@rluk.ac.uk @RLUK_Mike