29th August 2006
The article we discussed was Libraries and the Long Tail: Some Thoughts about Libraries in a Network Age by Lorcan Dempsey. D-Lib Magazine, April 2006, Vol 12, No. 4.
It was recommended for reading for a CASL (now NSLA - National and State Libraries Australasia) Electronic Reference Resources Working Group meeting. The article provides a great way of conceptualising a future vision for library networks, facilitating access to library resources, as people can grasp the idea of streamlining the D2D -Discovery-Locate-Request-Delivery process.
The author bases the article on 2 statistics from OCLC research. The first is that interlibrary loans account for 1.7% of overall library circulations (4.7% if we only look at academic libraries), suggesting that 'we could do a better job making it easier to find and obtain materials of interest wherever they are' i.e. finding the 'long tail' - the deep and rich library collections - or 'aggregating system-wide supply'.
The second statistic is about circulation - that in 2 research libraries examined, about 10% of books accounted for 90% of circulations. (It is possible that in other libraries the rough 80:20 rule applies.) This suggests that as well as limited exchange between libraries, many library materials may be underused within an individual library. As the author states: "As we move forward, we will be increasingly asked if this is an optimal system-wide arrangement" - this statement is relevant to our library networks.
The idea of aggregation of supply and demand is a distinct possibility in a national and state library context, with national site licensing progressing, and consortium purchasing among state libraries a reality.
Libraries could follow google's lead, providing a simple google-type federated search interface (we already have LibrariesAustralia) - the mechanism for aggregating demand (a content management system, but with clustering as well as ranking results) sitting over open access and subscription journal publications, digitised and born-digital collections, other library databases (for which libraries have already supplied the metadata 'handles'). This is the 'Discover' stage.
The 'Locate' and 'Request' steps can be condensed and streamlined if the 'Delivery' is electronic full text (and passwords or authentication mechanisms are built into the system), and where libraries' cooperative interlibrary loans mechanisms sit behind the scenes and enable users to request direct to the source library. The reference process, whether electronic or in-person, will help users refine their search requests and use the systems more effectively, and the D2D model would facilitate access to our resources.
It was recommended for reading for a CASL (now NSLA - National and State Libraries Australasia) Electronic Reference Resources Working Group meeting. The article provides a great way of conceptualising a future vision for library networks, facilitating access to library resources, as people can grasp the idea of streamlining the D2D -Discovery-Locate-Request-Delivery process.
The author bases the article on 2 statistics from OCLC research. The first is that interlibrary loans account for 1.7% of overall library circulations (4.7% if we only look at academic libraries), suggesting that 'we could do a better job making it easier to find and obtain materials of interest wherever they are' i.e. finding the 'long tail' - the deep and rich library collections - or 'aggregating system-wide supply'.
The second statistic is about circulation - that in 2 research libraries examined, about 10% of books accounted for 90% of circulations. (It is possible that in other libraries the rough 80:20 rule applies.) This suggests that as well as limited exchange between libraries, many library materials may be underused within an individual library. As the author states: "As we move forward, we will be increasingly asked if this is an optimal system-wide arrangement" - this statement is relevant to our library networks.
The idea of aggregation of supply and demand is a distinct possibility in a national and state library context, with national site licensing progressing, and consortium purchasing among state libraries a reality.
Libraries could follow google's lead, providing a simple google-type federated search interface (we already have LibrariesAustralia) - the mechanism for aggregating demand (a content management system, but with clustering as well as ranking results) sitting over open access and subscription journal publications, digitised and born-digital collections, other library databases (for which libraries have already supplied the metadata 'handles'). This is the 'Discover' stage.
The 'Locate' and 'Request' steps can be condensed and streamlined if the 'Delivery' is electronic full text (and passwords or authentication mechanisms are built into the system), and where libraries' cooperative interlibrary loans mechanisms sit behind the scenes and enable users to request direct to the source library. The reference process, whether electronic or in-person, will help users refine their search requests and use the systems more effectively, and the D2D model would facilitate access to our resources.
posted by Northern Territory Library at 10:37 PM
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