Presentation and open discussion of the Janus Conference key challenges from the minutes of the Chief Collection Development Officers (CCDO) of Large Research libraries Discussion Group ALA Midwinter Meeting, San Antonio, Saturday, January 21, 2006
Cynthia Shelton (UCLA) gave a brief summary of the Janus Conference held at Cornell University in October 2005. At that conference Ross Atkinson asked the attendees to consider whether and how collection development needs to evolve in the new information environment. He crafted six challenges that are transformative to the practice of collection development. After collaborative breakout groups and discussion among the Janus participants, self-selected work groups formed to redraft the challenges.
The remainder of the CCDO meeting was devoted to discuss and advance these six key challenges. Outcomes were to 1) broaden the input from the audience, 2) identify any further revisions to the challenges, 3) identify some concrete steps in terms of what we pursue, 4) determine who and what groups will be involved, and who will be at the head of each challenge, 5) determine what coalitions CCDO needs to make to bring these challenges forward, and finally 6) create timelines and dates. We may also need to develop research strategies at some point to gather additional data and information. John Saylor (Cornell) noted that Ross Atkinson believed the Janus Conference was just a beginning and hoped that CCDO would take the ownership of future actions. John also volunteered to make the Janus website at Cornell the central communication site, perhaps in the form of a post-Janus site and/or blog. Videos of the Janus Conference are also available and have been sent to conference participants.
Challenge 1: RECON Converting the scholarly record
Edward Shreeves (Iowa) moderated.
The RECON redrafting group articulated, with difficulty, the basic goal, including elements of the goal, and why conversion should take place. Members believe that the hybrid library of print and digital will be no more successful in supporting research than the hybrid catalogs of card files and online records. The proposal recommends that academic and research libraries create a working group that would develop and implement a plan for mass digitization. This group would recommend selection models and best practices for implementing collaborative administrative values. Although Recon would actively seek grant support, the burden of financial support lies with the research library community. This group must also take into consideration all of the projects that are currently in place, such as OCA, Google 5, WTL, and many others.
Comments, observations and questions:
Tim Jewell (Washington) asked if commercial entities had been considered and what would be their role? Hopefully, libraries and commercial entities would create value-added products that would respond to the needs of the scholar and the particular discipline. Jeanne Richardson (Arizona State) responded that the working group must bring appropriate and differing skill sets to the table in order for this challenge to succeed.
What is meant by research library holdings? Would this initiative include images, sound recordings, manuscripts, etc? Ed replied that the group thought it wise to begin with a set of collections or materials that would demonstrate the need and value of this collected effort; however, no materials would ultimately be excluded.
Melissa Trevvett (CRL) mentioned that by 2009 CRL will be converting materials on demand. She also pointed out the daunting task of keeping up with all ongoing digitizing efforts, both commercially and in libraries. She also observed that the Recon challenge ties into the print Archiving challenge.
An alternative to this approach is to allow the commercial entities to convert with the library community following their standards, as was the case with microforming projects during the 1970s and 1980s.
There is a need to designate a body to gather statistical information. For example, what is 10% of the materials budgets? Would this amount be enough to accomplish this project? Numbers become important.
Stephen Atkins (Texas A & M) mentioned that his institution is already spending 10% of their materials budget on digitizing efforts with other Texas libraries; another 10% might be difficult to find. Also, he raised concerns about the composition of the working group and its authority. Other members commented about issues of control, authority, members that op-in and op-out, free riders, etc.
Mark Sandler (Michigan) believes that it is not about the money. What it is about is capturing a process that will get us somewhere. We already spend these kinds of dollars with the commercial sector. This challenge would allow us the opportunity to have deeper rights, fuller control and better standards over the scope of the project. The difficulty of accomplishing this is creating a mechanism whereby 100 or so institutions talk to one another about creating a process to do what we would very likely buy if a commercial entity, such as JSTOR, put it on the market. A struggle is to visualize and create a body that we all have confidence in and that has the authority to allow us to accomplish the goal and be successful. Others suggested that this body should only have the authority to guide us and not tell us what to digitize or not digitize.
John Saylor (Cornell) suggested the idea of putting out an RFP to institutions like JSTOR and telling them what we want. They could come back with a cost and structure to accomplish this task.
Joyce Ogburn (Utah) reminded the group to carefully think about the process versus the goals and what we want to accomplish. We need a business plan-like guide. We cannot afford to let others raid our collections so that we own less and less, and then are unable to buy back the information. We must carefully consider standards, but not let the time of developing standards get in our way of accomplishing this important key challenge.
Challenge 2: PROCON: Ensure objects published in the future are available in digital form
Stephen Bosch (Arizona) moderated.
In contrast to challenge 1, this challenge has us looking into the future and suggesting we help put a road map in place so that libraries will receive materials/content solely in digital form by 2008. This assumes we will work with scholars, publishers, and each other, and that a trusted archive(s) of digital content is available.
Comments, observations and questions:
Cindy Shelton (UCLA) asked if the Procon group viewed this as a difficult challenge and how libraries would work with publishers to achieve this? The initial challenge stated that by 2008 libraries would no longer purchase any materials from North American and Western European publishers that were not in digital form, forcing the issue on the publishers. The Procon redrafting group believes the initial challenge will be in place by 2008 with the large publishers. The smaller publishers and professional societies are not as well situated.
Michael Stoller (NYU) noted the link between the Recon and Procon challenges and the importance of creating a set of principles that the library community should provide to publishers. The Procon group also questioned the idea of actually “turning off the faucet” in 2008 equally to all publishers and vendors, large and small. This action, or non-action, could be addressed in the set of principles, and may alter the 2008 time frame.
Tim Jewell (Washington) stated that the Procon challenge is premised on the availability of trusted archives of digital content by 2008. This is a huge assumption and asked whether the Archiving group thought this was reasonable. Karen Schmidt (Illinois) from the Archiving group thought that much could be accomplished by 2008, while Stephen Atkins (Texas A & M) was not as optimistic (archiving will be addressed in Challenge 5). Stephen Bosch (Arizona) said the Procon group kept the 2008 date in the challenge to keep the momentum going and not pull back because of present unknowns.
Ann Okerson (Yale) said that many members from the original discussion Procon group believed this challenge was unnecessary because research libraries are getting electronic content as soon as it becomes available. So, some research libraries are already purchasing and retaining materials only as electronic copy, without the backup of a trusted digital archive.
Ree DeDonato (Columbia) asked whether publishers will actually shift to e-only. Will they continue to publish in paper? Are research libraries prepared to handle e-only for all types of materials? Cindy Shelton (UCLA) replied that research libraries could help force the shift: if we won’t buy print, they won’t publish print. Barbara List (Columbia) noted that some disciplines would accommodate the shift more readily than other disciplines.
Margaret Landesman (Utah) noted that research libraries may have to actively go in and help small societies with capital to help them with the electronic conversion.
Vicky Reich (LOCKSS via e-mail) mentions that by 2008 libraries will need bibliographers who are trained in collection development techniques for born digital materials.
Peter McDonald (Syracuse) asked whether the Procon group considered what will happen to library vendors and other “middle people” if we go e-only? Stephen Bosch replied that they will most likely figure out their roles in this evolving business and reconfigure business models.
Jim Bracken (Ohio State) mentioned that we must also consider the relationship between the faculty, who write the books, and the publishers. His faculty seeks publishers who will provide print and not electronic. That may push back to 2008 deadline. Also, is there a role for textbooks in this challenge? John Saylor (Cornell) remarked that the CO of Elsevier said they are digitizing all of their books and plan to market them through Amazon. This will increase the exposure to the Elsevier backlist. Cecile Jagodzinski (Indiana) suggested there might be a role for textbooks in challenge three and we may want to distinguish between monographs and textbooks in the Procon challenge.
Cindy Shelton (UCLA) commented that many UCLA librarians have commented that as we move forward, disciplines will matter. When we fine-tune our work, we will have to think about how disciplines cut across these challenges, and how the challenges cut across disciplines.
Challenge 3: Core Collection
Thomas Izbicki (Johns Hopkins) moderated.
Challenge 3 calls for a sponsored working group to develop a core collection program whereby participating research libraries would acquire the same core materials in selected subject areas. A defined core collection would leverage time for library selectors and leverage buying power. The group thinks it best to start with monographs.
Comments, observation and questions:
Karen Schmidt (Illinois) stated that the challenge seems to be focused on print monographs. Thomas replied that it seemed best to start with print; print could be gotten off the ground faster.
Mark Watson (Oregon) commented that it seemed like a lot of work. What is the value of identifying the items that research libraries most likely already hold? Thomas replied that it would be useful to create a basic package to build on. If there was no subject selector in that particular area, a library could use this package.
Cindy Shelton (UCLA) also questioned the cost benefit analysis. What effort would it take to create this core collection versus the benefits received from it? Are they in line? Is there a shared approval plan out there that really works?
Michael Stoller (NYU) commented that local interests always dominate. However, if a core collection could be defined (and the big question what is core?), then selection efforts could go elsewhere, i.e., into transdisciplinary selection.
Stephen Bosch (Arizona) noted that statistics over the decades show that 50 to 60 % of our collections overlap. Although we may not have a concrete definition of a core collection, it has created itself over time. Steve believes there is an economy of scale in this challenge.
Sarah How (Cornell) believes that “core” is built from overlap among regional and approval plans. If this core were to change due to a national focus, how would this interface with interlibrary loan?
Challenge 4: Licensing Principles (formerly Publisher Relations) Cindy Shelton (UCLA) moderated in the absence of Diane McCutcheon (National Library of Medicine).
Challenge 4 calls for collective negotiation on the part of research libraries with publishers for the best possible access to e-content. Libraries will make very effort not to sign licenses that include non-disclosure agreements. Instead, universities will publicly share license and business terms. The original challenge was a bit bolder and included the call for libraries not to license materials above “fair price ceilings.”
Comments, observations and questions:
Ann Okerson (Yale) believes two problems remain on the last frontier of library licensing: libraries continue to sign agreements for content when all clauses are not favorable, and how might libraries publicly share the content of all licenses?
Cindy Shelton (UCLA) asked whether libraries negotiate license language calling for the right of authors to retain copyright and make their publications available in open access repositories and other archives. Ann replied that most publishers, about 80%, allow authors to post articles on their websites without reference to this action in the licenses.
Charles Spetland (Minnesota) also thinks it is worthwhile to share negotiations with one another, especially with specific publishers.
Jane Penner (Virginia) reported that library consortia are not pleased with this particular challenge. Consortia believe that non-disclosure would work against them when they negotiate for best pricing among their libraries. Others believe we should get the contents of this challenge out to other library groups and consortia, such as DFL, ICOLC, and GWLA.
Jeanne Richardson (ASU) questioned whether sharing business terms has any anti-trust implications.
John Saylor (Cornell) offered the Cornell Janus blog to share anything regarding licenses and this challenge. He also asked why this particular challenge was changed. Members from the redrafting group were not present to answer.
Linda Balman (Virginia) believes this challenge does not go far enough because it only mentions licensing principles. The challenge also requires action beyond these principles.
Challenge 5: Archiving
Karen Schmidt (Illinois) moderated.
The objective of this challenge is the assurance of persistent and predictable access to print and digital information over time. Research libraries are doing this locally and with groups of libraries, but there is no current inventory listing all archiving initiatives. The redrafting group incorporated the four actions listed in Don Waters’ paper, Urgent Action Needed to Preserve Scholarly Electronic Journals, and included a fifth action: academic and research libraries should affiliate with an appropriate repository. Libraries don’t need to reinvent the archiving “wheel,” but all need to cooperate, communicate and move forward together.
Comments, observations and questions:
As we create jointly sponsored print archives, bibliographic records become very important to assure that libraries do not toss unique items.
Melissa Trevvett (CRL) reported that CRL is beginning to capture information on print archiving projects. It is very difficult to do this, but very important to the success of this challenge. Also, a proposal will be going forward to ARL regarding efforts to collect institutional information on virtual storage as well. Finally, she questioned whether we should address the need to be more specific of how the print archiving challenge ties into the Recon challenge.
Stephen Atkins (Texas A & M) stated there is a need for these archives, but institutions should not have to ante up additional funding for research our faculty created and for materials licensed in perpetuity.
Cindy Shelton (UCLA) mentioned that a White Paper is coming out from the Southern Regional Research Libraries group recognizing that all libraries and institutions are not at the same place to move forward, and that there will be a modulated plan for buy-in.
Jenny Gilbert (Duke) reported that Duke is part of a group that is sending tapes to OCLC, who is identifying stored monographs among the group institutions. The idea is to eventually set a standard of a minimum number of copies for titles so that other libraries could “comfortably” withdraw (or not store) these titles. This is going forward to ARL and progressing well.
Nancy Davenport (CLIR) reported that at the request of ARL, CLIR will undertake a study to compare and contrast each type of repository, and that there may be multiple solutions depending on repository type, i.e., print monograph, e-journal, etc. These findings will be presented at the next ARL meeting. Nancy offered CLIR services to gather and post information on these challenges in PDF form. She also suggested that CLIR could provide a strategic opportunity fund that would not focus on the how, but instead could be used to fill in gaps, etc., thus providing a richer environment for teaching, research and scholarship.
Karen Schmidt (Illinois) shared two comments from Vicky Reich (LOCKSS). Vicky would like to add that 1) born digital materials are of much greater risk; collection and preservation priority should be placed on materials that are not replicated in print, and 2) a wide variety of materials (books, blogs, and websites) beyond electronic journals require curation and preservation. Sam Cutter (University of Chicago) asked whether research libraries are preserving their own websites. Many are not.
Challenge 6: Alternate Channels of Scholarly Communication
Margaret Landesman (Utah) moderated.
This challenge is creating a network of publishing structures that scholars can use as a supplement or alternative to standard scholarly publishing. The challenge encompasses differing discipline characteristics and use; local versus subject repositories; barriers of skilled staff and leadership; and dollars to invest as venture capital (annual investment of $50,000). There is a strong need to seek collaboration with faculty, societies, and university presses.
Comments, observations and questions:
Cecile Jagodzinski (Indiana) reported that at Indiana they have had success and failures, depending on the discipline. There must be a context for the particular discipline. She believes that we must link with scholarly societies and university presses. If this becomes only a library initiative, it will fail. We must not overlook our national partners of discipline societies and scholarly publishers; they are very interested in this challenge and what libraries are doing.
Cindy Shelton (UCLA) asked if there are institutional repository models, others than physics, which have been successful. Margaret replied that it appears that the characteristics of the scholarly discipline have a key role in its success. She identified successful endeavors as Project Muse, Cognet, Euclid, Anthroscource, BioOne and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. These business models differ; libraries need to invest dollars for success. Alternatively, libraries can approach these groups and ask if they could expand to other disciplines. What would be the costs?
Dan Hazen (Harvard) asked whether there are other cost-effective solutions rather than the $50,000 per institution suggestion. What would that do at each institution? Margaret replied that the institutional $50,000/year would be pooled and thus allow for more flexibility and the creation of infrastructure with an employee focusing on this challenge.
Michael Stoller (NYU) questioned whether libraries would want to support other endeavors with the $50,000 such as repositories or open access initiatives. There is finite amount of money to go around, and the library universe of potential recipients must be considered.
The ALCTS Report on Cyber Infrastructure also provides opportunities for collaboration.
Sarah Thomas (Cornell) believes the action will be a hybrid between local and collaborative. Sarah hosted the Janus Conference and commented that apart from the interesting pendulum-swinging process observed at the conference, she believed attendees walked away wanting to invest and advance the challenges. She is impressed with the University of Michigan and how it ties into the Recon Challenge. Cornell will be doing retrospective conversion. With respect to scholarly communication alternatives, Sarah is happy to announce that Project Euclid, which publishes some 40 journals in mathematics and statistics (a hybrid model), is financially stable. This summer Cornell will be releasing D-PubS, an open-source managing tool that can adopt the Euclid model to another discipline. And finally, Sarah commented that success stories involve faculty and champions. They must be identified and engaged in the process.
Concurrent breakouts for each of the six challenges
Members from CCDO and the audience joined to provide further input into the challenges. People self-selected a challenge to discuss and help advance. Each group designated a recorder. The recorders were instructed to post their reports to the Janus blog at http://janusconference.library.cornell.edu/ . Contact John Saylor if you need assistance with the blog.
Report out and wrap up
Cindy Shelton (UCLA) acknowledged Ross Atkinson (Cornell) for his leadership and for getting CCDO to this point. Today’s meeting had the largest turnout ever observed, which is illustrative of the importance of the work Ross has started. Cindy noted that the important characteristics of his leadership are visionary, provocative, intellectual, exhortative, and dedication to the cause. CCDO will need this kind of leadership as we move forward.
Cindy suggested ways to move these challenges forward while still controlling the process. CCDO could call for a steering committee of volunteers that collectively represented the interests and enthusiasm of all the challenges. Another approach, suggested by Sarah Thomas (Cornell), is to put out a call for those institutions that are interested in one or more of the challenges, interested enough to put some money and effort towards working with a coalition of other research libraries and appropriate organizations. This then becomes a national effort, but launched on a smaller scale. This approach keeps the efforts unified nationally and allows the CCDO group to organize and communicate logistics and achievements.
Challenge 1 RECON: Action Report
Edward Shreeves (Iowa)
The Recon group suggests hosting a meeting(s) in the near future to bring together the appropriate people and entities of expertise (ARL, LC, CRL, CLIR, CFL, etc) to:
1. look at the concept to see if it is still viable and practical;
2. look at an actual structure for managing a project of this kind;
3. develop a RFI that could be issued to determine if there are entities in place that could do some of the work.
The idea is to create a governance model of collaborative and shared ownership for creating this content. A show of hands from CCDO indicated that this challenge remained important and members would discuss it with their library directors.
Challenge 2 PROCON: Action Report
Stephen Bosch (Arizona)
The group decided that it is unreasonable to expect that all materials will be issued in digital form by 2008. Because most commercial journal publishers are already issuing their content electronically, these materials need not be considered in this challenge. The more problematic areas are the professional and small scholarly societies, and monographs. They will need assistance. Are there standards and technical infrastructure in place that these groups can learn from and coalesce with? Groups such as NISO and SPARC may be called upon to assist with standards. Also, libraries need to continue to push publishers to provide digital content and provide dollars to support worthy endeavors.
Challenge 3 Core Collection: Action Report
Thomas Izbicki (Johns Hopkins)
The group does not have a single agenda to report at this time. Does the existing data from approval vendors support a commonality? Also, the group believes serials should be considered as well because most institutions spend 75% of material dollars on serials. More people are needed to work on this challenge.
Challenge 4 Licensing Principles: Action Report
Charles Spetland (Minnesota)
The group discussed the idea of issuing a national cite license or an RFP. Representatives from regional consortia could look at available models. Libraries also need to be insistent with publishers about disclosure; the group will act on CLIR’s offer to post model licenses for national review.
Challenge 5 Archiving: Action Report
Karen Schmidt (Illinois)
Next Steps: Karen Schmidt and Melissa Trevvett will co-chair this working group. Members of the Working Group are:
The group plans to revise the statement that addresses the challenge, bring it to the New Orleans ALA meeting, and then agree on the next steps in this area.
The Archiving Working Group plans to revise its statement addressing the 5th Challenge: Archiving by:
1. Incorporating comments from the general discussion of the collection development officers present
• to emphasize the need to communicate about the various initiatives in print and digital archiving,
• to register the concern about paying twice for archiving of electronic information: once to the publishers and again to the archiving agency.
2. Revising the draft statement
• to ensure that more attention is given to archiving of born-digital material;
• to try to develop a way to include the Library of Congress’s holdings, U.S. and many foreign imprints, into print archive planning despite the fact that the Library cannot commit to becoming a dark archive;
• to re-work the document so that it addresses the challenge in a way that highlights the interdependencies of the kinds of archiving, points out the common elements, but recognizes the unique differences.
• to connect the archiving with the Recon challenge.
Challenge 6 Alternative Channels of Scholarly Communication: Action Report
Margaret Landesman (Utah)
The group believes there is not a clear direction at this time. The challenge paragraph will be rewritten to tease out the issues. There was discussion about successful local efforts, but there seem to be fewer successful national efforts. The group believes that existing infrastructures should not be replicated. There was also discussion about creating a venture capital pool enabling the sharing of development.
Congratulations! We did good work.
Submitted by Jeanne Richardson (Arizona State)
February 17, 2006 (revised)