The New Dynamic and Economics of Cooperative Collection Development" Conference co-sponsored by The Center for Research Libraries and the Association of Research Libraries, November 8-10, 2002

Citation

Gelfand, J. (2003), "The New Dynamic and Economics of Cooperative Collection Development" Conference co-sponsored by The Center for Research Libraries and the Association of Research Libraries, November 8-10, 2002", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 20 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.2003.23920aac.006

"The New Dynamic and Economics of Cooperative Collection Development" Conference co-sponsored by The Center for Research Libraries and the Association of Research Libraries, November 8-10, 2002

Julia Gelfand

The Center for Research Libraries (CRL) and the Association for Research Libraries (ARL) sponsored this second conference at Aberdeen Woods Conference Center, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, on Cooperative Collection Development. The first conference, held three years earlier celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of CRL's efforts in cooperative collection development, where there was a call to examine ways that CRL could continue its work and respond to the needs of its members in a relevant way.

Three invited papers were commissioned to spark discussion and pave the context for the conference. Each had its own flavor but, individually and cumulatively, they made participants eager to read the full papers once they are published in a summer 2003 issue of Collection Management, to be edited by Ed Shreeves. Robert Martin, Director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and historian, delivered the opening keynote address and set the stage for participants to spend the weekend thinking about cooperative collection development. He identified five themes:

1. 1.

   Collaboration is the strategy of the twenty-first century.

2. 2.

   Technology's impact on libraries – as the advent of networking makes for the creation of digital resources to be transmitted using a variety of telecommunications paths.

3. 3.

   Preservation and storage issues.

4. 4.

   Creating public value with references to the book, Creating Public Value: Strategic Management in Government by Moore (1995).

5. 5.

   Identifying and establishing the boundaries between institutions and calling for new partnerships – changing behaviors of user community, new elements of metadata to provide enhanced access.

The discussion created by this talk definitely put cooperation in the front lines of how we should think about collection development issues and the partnerships with institutions outside libraries we must cultivate and embrace.

Ross Atkinson, Associate Director at Cornell, set the stage by speaking on the "Uses and abuses of cooperation in a digital age." His introduction leads one to review the theoretical and competitive natures of cooperation by applying the law of local access optimization as the basic convention. As he continues, by recalling why cooperative collection development has not had overwhelming success in the research library environment, Atkinson reviewed how the traditional environment encourages or discourages cooperation by exploring:

• •

  synergism and complementarity;

• •

  prospective and retrospective cases by considering a topology that plays against proactive and reactive methodologies;

• •

  tactical fallacy; and

• •

  challenges to the completeness syndrome.

The digital or online environment leads libraries to practice other methodologies and test opportunities such as for:

• •

  traditional materials with sharing resources;

• •

  regressive mode – need to print online and share;

• •

  ancillary resources – requiring more money, staff and space; and

• •

  cooperative buying – whether a package or experience where shared costs and buying clubs are the norm.

This is achieved by extending the "Branin thesis" from collection development to collection management and now to knowledge management and identifying that the purpose of a library is to create and produce information as well as to make resources available as they are originally packaged by using tools and materials together. The opportunities that Atkinson specified to define cooperation for knowledge management include:

• •

  Local production amplification.

• •

  Boundary definition – circumscribe control zones around a core to determine the overlaps.

• •

  Differentiation of means of production – the distinction between information objects on which you work and those with which you work – this requires decoupling selection from acquisition so that the blending factor is accessibility.

The final point Atkinson addressed is, the "Potential for implementation" using the axes of competition. This can best be described as a simple grid with libraries on the horizontal axis and other intermediaries down the vertical axis where one tests for new equilibrium for licensing, competition in assessing collections, and participating in cooperation for collection development. These notes hardly capture the intensity and new thinking about cooperation utilizing knowledge management principles instead of traditional principles of collection management to see if more success is on the horizon for cooperative collection development. I know I join many that heard this dynamic presentation and now look forward to reading the paper and absorbing it in detail. An attendee posed a question at the conclusion of this paper and prefaced it by saying, "many people in this room spend their careers paraphrasing and applying Atkinson's work …" and that summarizes the sense of this talk, that it too will be another example of Atkinson's highly cited writings.

The third keynote address, by Dan Greenstein, University Librarian and Executive Director of the California Digital Library, focused on models to promote stewardship in cooperation. By defining cooperative library development as an "evolving hybrid model," Greenstein introduced six ways to describe project based digital libraries that will engage different ways to practice cooperation:

1. 1.

   discovery;

2. 2.

   digitizing – creating new boutique collections of resources;

3. 3.

   killer applications;

4. 4.

   redefinition of scholarly communication;

5. 5.

   agonizing over preservation; and

6. 6.

   pushing new envelopes.

The new infrastructure Greenstein expects to embrace cooperation contains value-added elements such as registries, repositories, discovery tools and low barrier benchmarks.

Currently there are some obstacles in achieving more cooperation and they may be noted as:

• •

  uncertain values;

• •

  poor business models;

• •

  local distinction; and

• •

  costs.

If the University of California is a test case, it should be noted that it is the sixth largest economy in the world as it can be qualified with these attributes:

• •

  soon to have ten campuses;

• •

  1,800 FTE working in libraries;

• •

  currently containing 32 million volumes;

• •

  $256 million budget with $150 million spent on collections; and

• •

  $28 million on shared collections.

According to Greenstein, the new issues facing the University include how to manage its print, a rethinking of the regional storage facilities, and how we can utilize technology in more productive ways to deliver information for desktop delivery. There are some "aspirational pieces" that have to be studied to overcome dilemmas and implement ways we can move forward to a more digital intensive co-existence.

This includes:

• •

  extending traditional roles as they are pertinent;

• •

  digitalize services and archives;

• •

  create a utility harvesting service; and

• •

  experiment with concept of sharing staffs to realize more cooperative collection development, such as the bibliographer role.

There are obstacles in introducing this program that must be overcome. Equally complex as entertaining the best way to accomplish the goals, they include rethinking assessment and the seriousness of the ARL annual rankings by academic administrators. There is obviously a need to create new models to share costs in this new distributed way.

Thus, with the Martin, Atkinson and Greenstein papers, there was sufficient content to discuss and ponder. The purpose of the conference was to give presentation time to the "Follow-up working groups" from the AWCC 1999 conference and to invite more extended discussion. The four identified projects were:

1. 1.

   Mapping current cooperative collection development projects. A survey was distributed to determine the extent of cooperative collection projects underway internationally. A total of 89 active projects, mostly reflecting North American efforts but with significant representation from Australia and the UK composes the database that was constructed. More than half the projects operate through formal working agreements. In total 60 percent are concerned with brokering electronic resources in some way. Only about a third of the projects participate in the coordinated selection of monographs, 38 percent are concerned with serials and less than a third are centered on other projects. The conclusion is that cooperative collection development activities such as those described or detailed in the database still "have the capacity for growth." The database is available at: www.crl.edu/info/ccd/ccdsurveyresults.htm

2. 2.

   Cooperative collection development best practices project. Using examples mapped in the database, interviews were conducted with leaders of 20 projects to establish the initial needs and goals, determine lessons learned, decision-making processes, scope of organization and authority and the funding methods and the criteria to assess levels of success of each projects. Conclusions included a continued interest in advocating shared or cooperative projects, an opportunity for counting collections and bringing faculty on board to participate. Access to new money to participate in such activities remains a concern. Elements of best practice methodology that most applied include: communication and consultation; focus on the common good; flexibility and adaptability of all partners; and wanting to achieve a seamless integration with the technological infrastructure.

3. 3.

   Cooperative collection development quantitative evaluation project. Performance measures were identified to determine what constitutes a successful cooperative collection development project and included those that reduce unit costs, and increase access to information resources, resulting in increased use and user satisfaction. Group worked closely with the Greater Western Library Alliance to establish base line data on the cost effectiveness of consortial activities.

4. 4.

   Cooperative collection development project in science and technology. Taking one example of a science discipline and seeing what it takes to create an electronic archive as an example of cooperative collection development activity was proposed using the geosciences. Chosen because of the variety of publishing that inherently supports a geologist in the field, or a related scientist, the dependence on mapping and increasingly geospatial information, and the reliance on the mix of scholarly, commercial and public documents, and the need for archival support made that decision attractive. Supporting interdisciplinarity and building on the potential of online repositories were goals that were noted in the proposal, that CRL may consider funding this kind of project.

There were several papers that demonstrated a variety of cooperative experiences and among them were: The University of California example of a shared campus perspective in addressing the "Economics and management of digital resources in a multi-campus, multi-library university"; and specific papers addressed ARL/AAU Global Resources Project; the background at Penn State in creating Rural Sociology Online, and the experience of OhioLink Libraries about a cooperative acquisitions program for books across a diverse statewide consortia. All the papers presented at the conference are available at: http://www.crl.edu/info/awcc2002/papers.htm

Four work groups composed of volunteers were charged to address the most critical interests:

1. 1.

   Development of cooperative collection development best practices.

2. 2.

   Application of cooperative collection development to scientific and technical collections: a case for geosciences.

3. 3.

   Quantitative evaluation tools for cooperative collection development.

4. 4.

   Mapping of current collection development projects (inventory control).

Extended discussions of these reports took place and some were already prepared in proposal form. In addition to these four groups, several additional discussions took place that considered the following topics and how CRL can participate in achieving these goals:

• •

  International cooperative collection development.

• •

  Cooperation support for digital collections.

• •

  Distributed print archives.

Reference

Moore, M.H. (1995), Creating Public Value: Strategic Management in Government, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.

Julia Gelfand (jgelfand@uci.edu) is the Applied Sciences Librarian at the University of California, Irvine, California, USA, and was a member of the Sci/Tech Work Group.