New roles for the library in scholarly communication

International Summer School on the Digital Library 2001, Electronic Publishing: Libraries as Buyers, Facilitators, or Producers

New roles for the library in scholarly communication

Thomas Bourke

The academic library of the 21th century will be radically different from its traditional predecessors. Changes already under way are revolutionising the definition, function and scope of the scholarly library. New dynamics are resulting in an altered relationship between academic authors, publishers, libraries and readers.

These were the main conclusions of a five-day international course on Digital Libraries and Electronic Publishing held at the EUI Library in October.

"Libraries, or rather - universities - will play a decisive role in the outcome of this exciting process of change" said Hans Geleijnse, Director of Information Services and Systems at the EUI. The October event, which drew 46 participants from 15 countries, was co-ordinated by the EUI library and the Tilburg Innovation Centre for Electronic Resources - a private company owned by Tilburg University.

The transformation of university libraries is driven by electronic innovation. In fact, users of the EUI Library at the Badia Fiesolana already see extensive evidence of change. This will shortly include the installation of a wireless LAN infrastructure for portable computers and an increased number of networked terminals.

There are many hypotheses for the academic library of the future. But academic librarians are not alone in being compelled to rethink their functions. Publishers, authors and copyright legislators are among many others being challenged. Among the key issues are:

To what extent will 'digital' replace 'print' in the academic library?
Can the 'value added' chain (author: university: publisher: certification process: publisher: university library: reader) be shortened? Will authors become their own publishers?
What can university libraries do about the escalated costs of scholarly journals?
Will commercial publishers of scholarly journals disappear?
Who archives electronic content and (how) can future access be guaranteed?
Who manages the scholarly 'information stream'?
As yet there is no single model to incorporate convincing solutions to all of these challenges. But the EUI event provided sound strategic options for the present, and some tantalising glimpses of the future. A follow-up event has already been scheduled for 2002 (contact information below).

Although the pace of change has been set by electronic dynamics, market factors are not absent. These account for what has become known as the Journals' Crisis. Over the past twenty years, the price of scholarly journals has outstripped both inflation and comparable price trajectories for monographs and other kinds of publications. Unilateral pricing practices by some journals with strong market positions are frequently blamed.

But does electronic publishing strengthen the position of universities vis-à-vis publishers? The answer seems to be 'Yes… but.' In the near future it is unlikely that universities will take over all of the functions of academic publishers. But through a number of innovative technical and business models, universities may exert increasing control of the scholarly production, dissemination and communication process.

Hans Roes, Deputy Librarian, Tilburg University pointed out that self-publishing gives academic staff and librarians a better idea of the potential for digital libraries. This in turn he predicted, would bring "positive change" in relations with publishers.

Libraries are at the vanguard of these developments, even as they simultaneously pursue a variety of complementary tactics - particularly the use of national and international consortia to enhance their price-bargaining positions. David Kohl of OhioLINK (USA), disclosed substantial budgetary savings through a broad coalition of purchasers, combining electronic journal and paper copy access. The OhioLINK consortium, Kohl said, became a 'win-win' for both libraries and publishers. Four hours at the EUI event were devoted to discussion and simulation of license and purchasing negotiation techniques.

An important conclusion however, was that library consortia should be more than 'buying clubs'. They should become dynamos for change for universities and be positioned at the forefront of publisher-university contact and contract.

Jonathan Clark, Director of Science Direct (Elsevier Science) identified four key functions of academic journals: dissemination, validation, registration and archiving. Can some of these functions be taken over from commercial publishers by academic staff and university libraries? Professor Giuseppe Bertola (EUI, ECO) suggested that commercially published journals still had an important certification role to play. However, he saw extensive opportunities for professors to offer their work via personal homepages on university sites.

The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) USA is a consortium of 200 research institutions and libraries encouraging the setting up of new independent journals and provides guidelines to the establishment of journals. At the EUI meeting the Director, Rick Johnson announced the launch of SPARC Europe (http://www.sparceurope.org). In the USA, the editorial boards of the Journal of Machine Learning Research and Theory and Practice of Logic Programming had recently resigned to set up new journals.

An exciting new perspective on the electronic library 'high frontier' was presented by Herbert Van de Sompel, who worked as a researcher at Los Alamos and Cornell. Van de Sompel is a pioneer of the Open Archives initiative for "facilitating the federation of content providers on the Web." The initiative is currently working on the means "to develop machine interfaces that facilitate the availability of content from a variety of providers." Van de Sompel envisages the use of a 'Metadata Harvesting Protocol' to create a new value chain in scholarly communication. The traditional functions of certification, preservation, usage, etc. could be incorporated into a mature version of the scheme.

Thus far, libraries are reluctant to move to 'digital only'. But a predominantly digital future cannot be excluded - especially where there are constraints of physical space. In the digital marketplace, non-traditional, digital-only subscription aggregators may emerge in competition to libraries. These would not need to own any 'physical' books. Carol Ann Hughes, Director of Questia - a private company based in Houston and New York - explained how digital access to a canon of monographs and journal articles aimed at undergraduates is already provided by her company on an individual subscription basis. Tools include text-highlighting, citation and bibliography builders. Ms. Hughes declined to give details of Questia's user base and growth rate. But could such a model be replicated and expanded for doctoral candidates and professors? If so would traditional paper libraries be bypassed, or would they control portals to such content?

And who would be the 'custodians' of perpetual access in the electronic age? Johan Steenbakkers, Director of IT and Facility Management at the National Library of the Netherlands outlined one potential solution: a new IBM initiative which involves the creation of a 'Universal Virtual Computer' emulation to provide archive access to digital versions, and born-digital documentation. This approach would preserve the diversity of technical instruments needed to access digital documentation over long periods. Theoretically such a system would preserve access to digital documentation in perpetuity.

There was consensus at the EUI event, that librarians have the necessary skills to intermediate the rapidly changing scholarly information stream. But libraries need to respond quickly to technological and market developments, warned Hans Roosendaal (University of Twente, NL). He advised management to develop document servers and browsers; archives for the materials produced by their professors and researchers; and called for the overhaul of budgetary provisions to support these steps.

A follow-up conference is scheduled at the EUI for 30 September to 4 October 2002. Further information is available from: Hans.Geleijnse@iue.it or ticer@uvt.nl.

Further details about the renovation of the EUI Library are available at: http://www.iue.it/LIB/info/Renovate.html.

This article is written by Thomas Bourke, EUSSIRF Co-ordinator at the European University Institute Library, San Domenico di Fiesole (Florence), Italy. It was published in the EUI Review in Spring 2002, pages 28-29. A PDF of the second part of this EUI Review issue is electronically available. Ticer B.V. is not responsible for its content. Copyright Thomas Bourke.

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	New roles for the library in scholarly communication
	Thomas Bourke
	The academic library of the 21th century will be radically different from its traditional predecessors. Changes already under way are revolutionising the definition, function and scope of the scholarly library. New dynamics are resulting in an altered relationship between academic authors, publishers, libraries and readers.
	These were the main conclusions of a five-day international course on Digital Libraries and Electronic Publishing held at the EUI Library in October.
	"Libraries, or rather - universities - will play a decisive role in the outcome of this exciting process of change" said Hans Geleijnse, Director of Information Services and Systems at the EUI. The October event, which drew 46 participants from 15 countries, was co-ordinated by the EUI library and the Tilburg Innovation Centre for Electronic Resources - a private company owned by Tilburg University.
	The transformation of university libraries is driven by electronic innovation. In fact, users of the EUI Library at the Badia Fiesolana already see extensive evidence of change. This will shortly include the installation of a wireless LAN infrastructure for portable computers and an increased number of networked terminals.
	There are many hypotheses for the academic library of the future. But academic librarians are not alone in being compelled to rethink their functions. Publishers, authors and copyright legislators are among many others being challenged. Among the key issues are: To what extent will 'digital' replace 'print' in the academic library? Can the 'value added' chain (author: university: publisher: certification process: publisher: university library: reader) be shortened? Will authors become their own publishers? What can university libraries do about the escalated costs of scholarly journals? Will commercial publishers of scholarly journals disappear? Who archives electronic content and (how) can future access be guaranteed? Who manages the scholarly 'information stream'? As yet there is no single model to incorporate convincing solutions to all of these challenges. But the EUI event provided sound strategic options for the present, and some tantalising glimpses of the future. A follow-up event has already been scheduled for 2002 (contact information below).
	Although the pace of change has been set by electronic dynamics, market factors are not absent. These account for what has become known as the Journals' Crisis. Over the past twenty years, the price of scholarly journals has outstripped both inflation and comparable price trajectories for monographs and other kinds of publications. Unilateral pricing practices by some journals with strong market positions are frequently blamed.
	But does electronic publishing strengthen the position of universities vis-à-vis publishers? The answer seems to be 'Yes… but.' In the near future it is unlikely that universities will take over all of the functions of academic publishers. But through a number of innovative technical and business models, universities may exert increasing control of the scholarly production, dissemination and communication process.
	Hans Roes, Deputy Librarian, Tilburg University pointed out that self-publishing gives academic staff and librarians a better idea of the potential for digital libraries. This in turn he predicted, would bring "positive change" in relations with publishers.
	Libraries are at the vanguard of these developments, even as they simultaneously pursue a variety of complementary tactics - particularly the use of national and international consortia to enhance their price-bargaining positions. David Kohl of OhioLINK (USA), disclosed substantial budgetary savings through a broad coalition of purchasers, combining electronic journal and paper copy access. The OhioLINK consortium, Kohl said, became a 'win-win' for both libraries and publishers. Four hours at the EUI event were devoted to discussion and simulation of license and purchasing negotiation techniques.
	An important conclusion however, was that library consortia should be more than 'buying clubs'. They should become dynamos for change for universities and be positioned at the forefront of publisher-university contact and contract.
	Jonathan Clark, Director of Science Direct (Elsevier Science) identified four key functions of academic journals: dissemination, validation, registration and archiving. Can some of these functions be taken over from commercial publishers by academic staff and university libraries? Professor Giuseppe Bertola (EUI, ECO) suggested that commercially published journals still had an important certification role to play. However, he saw extensive opportunities for professors to offer their work via personal homepages on university sites.
	The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) USA is a consortium of 200 research institutions and libraries encouraging the setting up of new independent journals and provides guidelines to the establishment of journals. At the EUI meeting the Director, Rick Johnson announced the launch of SPARC Europe (http://www.sparceurope.org). In the USA, the editorial boards of the Journal of Machine Learning Research and Theory and Practice of Logic Programming had recently resigned to set up new journals.
	An exciting new perspective on the electronic library 'high frontier' was presented by Herbert Van de Sompel, who worked as a researcher at Los Alamos and Cornell. Van de Sompel is a pioneer of the Open Archives initiative for "facilitating the federation of content providers on the Web." The initiative is currently working on the means "to develop machine interfaces that facilitate the availability of content from a variety of providers." Van de Sompel envisages the use of a 'Metadata Harvesting Protocol' to create a new value chain in scholarly communication. The traditional functions of certification, preservation, usage, etc. could be incorporated into a mature version of the scheme.
	Thus far, libraries are reluctant to move to 'digital only'. But a predominantly digital future cannot be excluded - especially where there are constraints of physical space. In the digital marketplace, non-traditional, digital-only subscription aggregators may emerge in competition to libraries. These would not need to own any 'physical' books. Carol Ann Hughes, Director of Questia - a private company based in Houston and New York - explained how digital access to a canon of monographs and journal articles aimed at undergraduates is already provided by her company on an individual subscription basis. Tools include text-highlighting, citation and bibliography builders. Ms. Hughes declined to give details of Questia's user base and growth rate. But could such a model be replicated and expanded for doctoral candidates and professors? If so would traditional paper libraries be bypassed, or would they control portals to such content?
	And who would be the 'custodians' of perpetual access in the electronic age? Johan Steenbakkers, Director of IT and Facility Management at the National Library of the Netherlands outlined one potential solution: a new IBM initiative which involves the creation of a 'Universal Virtual Computer' emulation to provide archive access to digital versions, and born-digital documentation. This approach would preserve the diversity of technical instruments needed to access digital documentation over long periods. Theoretically such a system would preserve access to digital documentation in perpetuity.
	There was consensus at the EUI event, that librarians have the necessary skills to intermediate the rapidly changing scholarly information stream. But libraries need to respond quickly to technological and market developments, warned Hans Roosendaal (University of Twente, NL). He advised management to develop document servers and browsers; archives for the materials produced by their professors and researchers; and called for the overhaul of budgetary provisions to support these steps.
	A follow-up conference is scheduled at the EUI for 30 September to 4 October 2002. Further information is available from: Hans.Geleijnse@iue.it or ticer@uvt.nl.
	Further details about the renovation of the EUI Library are available at: http://www.iue.it/LIB/info/Renovate.html.
	This article is written by Thomas Bourke, EUSSIRF Co-ordinator at the European University Institute Library, San Domenico di Fiesole (Florence), Italy. It was published in the EUI Review in Spring 2002, pages 28-29. A PDF of the second part of this EUI Review issue is electronically available. Ticer B.V. is not responsible for its content. Copyright Thomas Bourke.