‘Everything Available’ – a vision for the development of the British Library services for research
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Presentation given at the annual RLUK (Research Libraries UK) conference on Thursday 9th March 2017. I discuss the British Library's 'Everything Available' portfolio that aims to transform the Library's research services, in particular around discovery, access and use of content.
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‘Everything Available’ – a vision for the development of the British Library services for research
- 1. ‘Everything Available’ – a vision for the development of the British Library services for research Dr Torsten Reimer Head of Research Services http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8357-9422 RLUK conference, London, 09 March 2017
- 2. www.bl.uk 2 Living Knowledge • Our mission is to make our intellectual heritage accessible to everyone, for research, inspiration and enjoyment. • Living Knowledge articulates the vision of the British Library in 2023 as the most open, creative and innovative institution of its kind in the world. • Roly Keating: ‘These are times of historic disruption in the whole global system of information and publication, and it seems right that the great knowledge institutions – with their historic remit to think and act with a view far into the future – should play a full part in shaping the changes that lie ahead.’
- 3. www.bl.uk 3 Disruption 1: new ways of working
- 4. www.bl.uk 4 Disruption 2: discovery, access, user expectations
- 5. www.bl.uk 5 Disruption 2: discovery, access, user expectations https://www.jisc.ac.uk/reports/researchers-of-tomorrow
- 6. www.bl.uk 6 Disruption 2: discovery, access, user expectations
- 7. www.bl.uk 7 Disruption 3: Budgets, subscriptions, VfM
- 8. www.bl.uk 8 Disruption 4: open science & scholarly communication • Access • Data • Source • Science • … Open
- 9. www.bl.uk 9 How to respond? • Add value, be a partner in content creation and research • Bring content to the user (even if the ‘user’ is a machine) • Collections in a global world (preserve locally, discover globally) • Grow capability for discovery and access services • Focus on user experience, usability and value proposition • Tailored content provision • Move to platform / infrastructure provision • Replace/update all core library systems • Deliver more in partnership
- 10. www.bl.uk 10 The five major change portfolios Everyone Engaged St Pancras Transformed Boston Spa Renewed Heritage Made Digital Everything Available BL’s most important and/or at-risk heritage collections fully digitised All digitised content on a common platform Interoperable with other great digitised heritage collections around the world At-risk collections from other countries digitised with EAP/BL support BL’s London campus completed and successfully serving 3m+ visitors per year Improved and extended facilities for exhibitions, learning, research and business support Alan Turing Institute fully established and integrated on campus BL understood, valued and supported by people right across the UK 50,000 people paying membership fees at different levels BL at the heart of a thriving professional network of major UK libraries and knowledge quarters BSP established as international centre of excellence in collection management, physical and digital Multiple partners from cultural and research sectors New generation digital skills, diverse workforce Attractive, high-quality campus facilities, buildings and landscape design Comprehensive and immediate on-site access to the latest research content Sustainable models for remote access Common access and discovery tools for all content in BL collections – and beyond Supporting scholarly communications nationally / globally BL recognised as offering the best national research library service in the world
- 11. www.bl.uk 11 Improving discovery short • UX study and UI changes • Trial new approaches mid • Review and possibly replace current discovery long • Take a lead in researching & delivering new solutions
- 12. www.bl.uk 12 ATI, AI and data driven library
- 13. www.bl.uk 13 Access & use • From just-in-case to just-in-time provision • Tailored delivery, feature OA content • Open up collections: – BL API platform – universal viewer • Supporting research: BL Labs, data analytics, plans for Digital Research and AV Suite • Reconsider infrastructure for access and preservation
- 14. www.bl.uk 14 Replacing the Digital Library System • Primary driver: enhance BL capacity • Opportunity to offer preservation and access services to others Current system Replacement Developed in-house ten years ago Dramatic increase in scalability 750 TB, replicated over four sites Multi-tenancy enabled Preservation-focused system Preservation and access
- 15. www.bl.uk 15 Repository services and questions • EThOS, widely used BL repository service for theses, to be replatformed (with preservation capability?) • BL needs own repository function • Discussion with partners about a shared repository service • Open access preservation?
- 16. www.bl.uk 16 BL data strategy ‘Our vision for the British Library is that research data are as integrated into our collections, research and services as text is today.’ Data Archiving and Preservation Data Discovery, Access and Reuse Data CreationData Management
- 18. www.bl.uk 18 (Start of a) roadmap Short-term Improve discovery solutions User registration and remote access Tailored delivery and just-in- time-provision of content API platform (starting with EThOS) Improve user experience Develop open access strategy and policy Lay groundwork to implement the BL data policy Scope services for proposed Digital Reading Room Medium-term Improved whole discovery architecture Enhanced identifier and digital preservation services Shared services model and national infrastructure Make Library collections accessible through external tools/infrastructures Appropriate on-site support for data-driven research and digital/AV materials BL as custodian for culturally relevant business data Long-term New approaches to discovery, including AI-based systems Exceptional increase in TDM capacity for heritage content and BL collections more Provide support for digital research lifecycle, working with partners
- 19. www.bl.uk 19 Making everything available means working together • No single institution can crack this • Time for more coordination at national level and beyond • Collect jointly, preserve nationally, discover internationally Two concrete things: • Skills: work shadowing and placements • Repository / preservation workshop this spring
Editor's Notes
- 2014 survey from the UK’s Software Sustainability institute shows how important the use of software in research has become. Who is preserving this software? Are we set up to manage the digital outputs properly? Can we feed our information sources into these tools so researchers can use them in their preferred workflows?
- Researchers expect simple, clean interfaces, with immediate online access to information. What isn’t available that way is increasingly seen as irrelevant. Device and location independent working
- 2012 British Library and Jisc study on Researchers of Tomorrow; shows Google and similar services way ahead of library catalogue as discovery solution. Libraries risk becoming invisible.
- Researchers’ frustration with publisher and library solutions for discovery and access shown by SciHub. Illegal, but fast and simple access to masses of scholarly content.
- Cost of subscriptions keeps increasing, while budgets often shrink – certainly in case of BL. Purchased Acquisitions Review concluded that BL may pull out of big deals - cost per download is simply too high. HE libraries struggle too, but cost per download much lower.
- Research outputs are increasingly open. Which means not only do researchers expect to be able to access and reuse content easily, they are also increasingly less likely to need the library for access. We also need to update our infrastructure to support the requirements of open science.
- This is the ultimate aim – being able to find, access and use research data at the British Library should eventually become business as usual.
- BL is serving individual users onsite and online, but also provides services indirectly via other institutions and has a role in (inter)national service provision.
- This is the start of a roadmap, feedback and discussions welcome!