Google Earth, Osama ben Laden and the speed of information

As many were, I was surprised that US intelligence located Osama ben Laden in Abbottasbad, Khyber Pakhtunkkwa, Pakistan far from the North West Frontier area where he was supposedly hiding. About 3 years ago my wife, 2 friends and I stopped in Abbottabad for lunch with a group we were traveling with. We had the opportunity to walk through parts of the market area, cross a one lane bridge where pedestrians, vehicles and horses contested for passage and mingle with an enormous crowd returning from a soccer game.

With the mention of Abbottabad I immediately thought of Google Earth and wondered if I could locate the ben Laden compound. Initially, not much luck in a vast metropolitan area. I then added the words “ben Laden compound” and POW, several marked locations showed up. Most of the “pins” centered on a compound about 1-2 KM SE off Kakul Rd a spur going NE from the Karakoram Highway (N35) as it passes through Abbottabad. The compound and structures were easy to identify then, given the views in the news. In Google Earth there is remarkable detail.

What continues to surprise me, even in this information age, is how quickly information and location spreads even to the point that location of the ben Laden compound is tagged on a tool like Google Earth. In a matter of hours the exact location of the ben Laden compound Abbottabad was highlighted and available to anyone no matter where they be with access to Google Earth

Even though we had high hopes for the digital collections that we have purchased we have been very surprised at how quickly library users have embraced the use of digital books. In the first full year of making the EBL (2010) digital book collection available the use of digital books in the collection now rivals the circulation of physical books. While we’ve purchased access to digital books from the early to mid-90s the addition of some 105,000 digital books recently provided a resource that students and faculty seemed to embrace quickly and use at a much higher percentage that the physical book collection.

We circulated 34,572 physical books in 2010 while EBL in its first full year of use circulated 33,411 book titles. When combined with the library’s other book collections – Safari, Psycbooks, Netlibrary, Springer, Elsevier etc – we expect to see that the use of digital titles now substantially surpasses the circulation of more typical library materials.

The advantage to students and faculty is a choice of a relatively current wide range of book materials that would be impossible to replicate if we had to purchase (and process) physical items.

The advantage to the library is that we can make more volumes available to users than ever before and at a lower cost per volume. With the EBL model we only pay a use fee on the books accessed by our users. The other obvious advantage of digital is our ability now to make these books easily available on a statewide basis. Having access to the library directly is no longer the big advantage is was many years ago.

Any user can now access an increasing larger proportion of the library’s collection anywhere there is internet access.

Thee use of digital is even far more advanced in favor of the digital copy primarily because we started earlier – in the early 90s. Now we only receive a handful of magazines and journals in paper.

In an era where university budgets are under enormous pressure and costs continue upward, many libraries, including Rasmuson, are looking at a variety of ways to increase support for important library programs. Gifts serve an increasingly important role in providing the margin of excellence that distinguishes the Rasmuson Library and many of it unique programs and assets. However, creating and maintaining a consistent development effort is a continuing challenge. Someone has to have this as their primary work focus or other duties will squeeze the development work out.

Naomi Horne, the Library’s Development Officer, has been with the library for close to a year and one half. She holds a half time position in the library and the other half is with CLA. This arrangement allows both CLA and the library to have the support of a development officer where neither of us might be in a position to fund a person full time. While many of our interests are similar to CLA the library faces some unique challenges and opportunities. We have, strictly speaking, no “alumni” yet most every graduating student has spent a lot of their time in the library or using the research tools of the library available on the Internet. We can’t track graduates the same way a school or college so we have to explore different funding approaches.

Naomi’s work involves developing contacts with prospective donors who may have a interest in the library. They may have appreciation for the library because of their undergraduate experience, feel the desire to establish a memorial fund, or generally see the library as a critical part of the undergraduate education experience. Naomi put together a development plan for the library and for CLA about 15 months ago. She is well on her way to carrying out various objectives. In addition to identifying specific individuals who are or may be interested in the library she has developed a plan to launch a bookplate program a bit later this Fall.

For those of you unaware of the tradition of book plates, originally book plates were printed on small sturdy paper and glued into the back of the front cover of the book usually by the owner of the book. They generally were attractively designed and noted the owner of the book and occasionally the collection it was from ( Alfred E. Brooks Collection at UAF) so the ownership of the book would be apparent to all. The way we are using the book plate program is to offer an individual the opportunity to memorialize the important contribution a faculty or staff member may have made to their education, remember a dear parent or friend, a deceased family member etc. Besides honoring a person important in your life the contribution made to the book plate program provides funds to support library book acquisitions. This contribution provides funds to support certain areas (mathematics, history, a area of your choosing) or the purchase of unusual or expensive materials not possible with general fund dollars.

Since we are now acquiring materials in both traditional hard copy form and digital formats we expect to offer book plate opportunities for both formats. The digital book plate will be visible in the catalog entry as ” a Gift in memory of….” or similar wording depending on the intent of the contributor. The virtual book plate will appear each time the full catalog entry is accessed. A number of other colleges and universities have found this giving opportunity to be popular with students faculty and friends of the library.

Naomi will also continue to work to identify prospective donors and funds that can provide a margin of excellence not possible through the library’s general funds.

Expect to hear more in the future.

Paul M
Interim Director

The Unsung Heroes: the engine room of the library Part 1

Many if not most of the library staff interacts with students and faculty of a regular basis and are quite visible. However, like most complex organizations, the library has a small group of core staff who are critical to the operation of the library who are not nearly as visible as the staff that interact with the public on a regular basis. It is a bit like the engine room crew of a large ship. These staff work to make sure that the library stays afloat so to speak and has the staff power and tools to make progress on its programs. They provide critical services – finance, HR, purchasing, processing of library materials,IT services and administrative coordination to make sure the library has this staff, funding and systems to support the wide variety of services.

IT services are critical to the mission of any modern library. IT systems allow the library and it’s users to locate materials quickly whether in the library or thousands of miles away. Systems provide provide software tools to facilitate all our processes: the electronic catalog and the ability to check out books, electronic interlibrary loan, indexing of Alaska periodicals, digitization of oral histories on Native peoples and the delivery of these interviews in both audio and video format, the ability to make historic Alaska films available…the list is almost,most endless. You use the work of IT professionals when you use the library’s web pages, check out a book and use a database. A modern library would be hard pressed to maintain even a minimal level of service without the IT underpinnings that make 21st century information available.

“People drive program, program drives budget” is a favorite mantra of mine. In order to recruit the right people, retain them, provide opportunities for training and assist them as they look at promotion opportunities we need to have in place a effective HR system and people within the library. Getting right people in to the right positions is the basic foundation for an effective library program. Library HR has a very important role of that process.

If the right people are the bedrock of an effective library program what is the next part? Having the financial resources and being able to manage them well in a changing environment is critical to implement program. Whether this be for salaries, for library books, journals including digital formats, equipment and supplies to facilitate processing and use, finances and their appropriate management have a large impact on the success of the library’s efforts.

You may be surprised that state appropriations make up only 82.4 % of the library’s general funding exclusive of a number of grant funded projects. ICR (indirect cost recovery – an assessment against most grants for university support including library services) is 15.07% of our budget. All other sources including initiative funding make up 2.61% of the budget. So …since ICR is only somewhat predictable we spend tracking budget numbers and comparing them to previous years. On that and other budget categories we use a number of indicators to help us understand where we are during the year – run rates on payroll, leave rates (because they impact payroll costs), vendor billings and unusual expenses all present a challenge in keeping the library’s financial ship in balance. Talented, flexible and creative thinking fiscal staff are invaluable!

We have a staff member who helps helps coordinate our office and efforts and keeps us on time. We have staff that assist APR (Alaska and Polar Regions department) with grant logistics, budget and photo services. As grants continue to fund a number of APR initiatives the HR and fiscal functions continue to grow in significance.

While it might sound like a large number from the functions I’ve noted, almost all the work effort mentioned is accomplished by 10 people or less excluding IT staff and the Development Officer. All of these individuals make a huge contribution to the library’s success in spite of being behind the scene.

Next blog: Library Development and why a development is more important than ever

Just in case, Just in time: the library’s dilemma

For hundreds of years libraries focused on collecting books and journals as they could access and find them to add to their collections. This effort, year after year, built voluminous collections of scholarly research materials. From medieval times to sometime in the mid to late 20th century scholars lived in a information scarce environment. Information was difficult to find and to acquire, journals were limited, communications were either or both difficult and expensive. Networks were personal not digital. Almost every addition to a library was important because access to information in any form was difficult. Libraries focused on developing collections for scholar’s use “just in case” …because they really had no other choice.

Then came the information age!

Driven by expanding numbers of scientists, social scientists, humanists writing ever more articles, journal offerings and journal titles expanded dramatically. A individual who I can no longer remember provided a unique perspective in the 1990s. He/she noted that of all the scientists that ever lived, 90% were living at that time – and they were publishing at an almost a frenetic rate.

Communications costs dropped steadily, fax became an important business tool and information could be shared more easily. As both cost and numbers of journals increased libraries were challenged to keep up with the specialized journals that faculties demanded. Unknown to most of us we were hurtling into an age of information abundance. For many faculty, information currency in journals became more Important than the content of a book which had been created in the mind of the author over months or years.

Journals were now competing with books for a greater share of the library acquisition budget! Libraries that traditionally had allocated 60-70% of the budget for books now reversed the proportion and spent upwards of 65-75% of their collection budgets on journals. With this change the ability of most libraries to continue to build impressive broadly focused book collections faltered. We could no longer aspire to build the broad collections that were built consistently over many years.
In response, libraries focused Collection Development policies tighter and tighter on the prime areas of the curriculum leaving large subject areas relatively sparse in terms of coverage. Because of budget pressures “Just in case” collection strategies began morphing into a “Just in time” approach. In other words libraries began focusing more on the immediate needs of the faculty member or graduate student standing in front of them over trying to anticipate the needs of future users.

The Internet and Google, among others, provided the tools that accelerated this process and in several short years fundamentally changed the way we accessed information . The Internet put the whole information process on “Speed” as it were and Google provided unparalleled and immediate search capabilities.  In an information abundant economy immediacy was king!

If Google and the Internet were the godparents of this change Amazon was the delivery vehicle in terms of books! The ability to acquire books in a matter of days, not weeks or months, made the a “Just in Time” approach possible. Just in time delivery was as effective for the delivery of books as it was for other supply chain industries.  An often overlooked benefit of “Just in Time”: books ordered for students and faculty for an immediate need almost always have a higher use per item than books ordered in anticipation of use!

We’ve not abandoned building a broad collection to support the teaching and research efforts of students and faculty but we have put more focus on quickly responding to the immediate needs of today’s scholars.

August 5, 2010
The Emperor’s New Clothes and the Library’s Invisible Books

In the Christian Anderson’s tale entitled “The Emperor’s New Clothes” two traveling weavers convince the king that they can weave cloth so fine, so beautiful that he absolutely must have a set of new clothes that they will weave, cut and fit to him. A swindle is on from the get go. They pretend to use the materials they are given (but hide away) to weave an “invisible fabric.” They convince the court and the king that their efforts are serious. They emphasize that the only reason a person might not see the cloth is that they are unworthy of their position or are too lowly. Obviously, no one wants to be either unworthy or too low (including the king himself) so that they all suspend their disbelief despite their better judgment.

Despite his initial doubts the king is fitted out in his splendid invisible outfit and begins a procession through town to show off his new garments. The king, court and commoners play along with the illusion (read fraud) except one individual. Only a child is candid enough to say – the king has no clothes.

The library’s invisible books are quite different than the king’s invisible clothes!  The library really does have more than 100,000 “invisible” books, digital books that is. Ones that you won’t see on the shelf but that you can use, cite, study and reflect on. This past year the library launched a program to acquire digital books from several distributors. By acquiring select books digitally we can greatly increase the resources available to the UAF community at a fraction of the cost of the physical volumes while making them available to any student or faculty with access to the Internet.

For instance, say conservatively, each  equivalent physical volume would have cost $ 20.00(but more likely $40 to $80). Even using the lower figure the cost to the library for the physical items would have been $2,000,000, an amount more than 5-6 times our entire annual book budget. Working digitally we can acquire access to these book at a fraction of the cost and while paying on a per-use basis.

This strategy is even more effective when you realize that the library can gain access to highly technical books that will be used infrequently or have a short useful life because of the speed of technological change. Safari is a distributor that provides us access to high demand books in computer science. The content of the “pool” of books we rent changes with the needs and demands of the field. We can save funds, acquire the newest materials and increase distribution. An often unrecognized benefit is the the library staff do not have to worry about weeding the collection and disposing of out of date texts. If your experience is like mine I have to go through my book shelves at least annually to dispose of software texts long out of date.

Digital books are not an unmixed blessing. But digital books give us a choice we’ve never had before – the opportunity to acquire the same intellectual in a choice of formats. We still try to build the physical collection with well selected books that fit well within the university’s curricular and research areas.
Paul M

August 2, 2010

I would like to continue outlining the library’s strategic themes started in the initial post in this post.

The last two goals focus more on how to make what we already own [the library and UAF] available on a much wider basis. For many, many years the way to judge the importance of a university and/or research library focused on how many books the library had, how many it could add annually as well as how many journal subscriptions it was able to afford and provide to its students and faculty. These were the two most important criteria.

The digital age has transformed the library environment and how libraries are judged.

Now the ability to provide digital books and journals has allowed many, many smaller libraries to rival the “holdings” of much larger and older libraries so access to collections is seen as almost a given. Now, an important distinguishing characteristic is becoming the size, importance and the accessibility of a library’s special collections, collections duplicated nowhere else. These last two themes focus on that effort at UAF.

3. The Library is a center for collecting, archiving and making accessible copies of unique original source materials relating to Alaska and Polar Regions. It also houses the Archives of the UA President’s Office and many of the records of University of Alaska Fairbanks. This mission was established in 1965 with the beginning of the University Archives.

The Alaska and Polar Regions Department (APR) houses a treasure trove of scholarly sources of Alaska history. Oral histories of Alaska Native elders, journals of gold seekers, hundreds of cubic feet of records of Alaska’s political figures, films documenting everything events such as the 1964 earthquake, business activities, the fishing industry, political events and individual family celebrations form a scholarly resource second to none.

One of our goals is: “Turning the library inside out.” We use this mantra as our guide for providing access to the collections. Archives have traditionally been seen to cloister treasures that only a few can access. We’ve started to change that perception in a major way.

While we will continue an energetic program to collect additional original materials we will strengthen our efforts to capture more of these Alaska related collections digitally. These efforts will allow us to make more of our finding aids web accessible. We are also digitizing an increasing number of original source materials – a films, Native oral recordings, photos and documents and placing digital copies on the web.

We are committed to making many of the library’s original source materials as accessible as possible.

4. A fourth goal this year is to undertake a pilot project to make the theses and dissertations of UAF graduate students available as part of the library’s digital collections. Up this this time we’ve made the physical volumes accessible. Having these in digital form will allow their use by students and scholars at a distance.

This effort has an additional benefit. It will allow us to better understand how we, in cooperation with the colleges and institutes, can establish an Institutional Repository for UAF. The project will give us the experience and perspective to extend the work to additional information formats (university and faculty information including grey literature and reports) providing one entry point if this proves attractive, feasible and practicable.

Whether discussing pixels, digits, or pages, this is a tremendously exciting time to work in or use a library. We are able to provide you and others access to more materials in a greater variety of formats on location or at your desktop than ever before!

As we look forward to FY 11 we’ve identified four major themes to
guide our activities and measure our success. I’ll outline two of
the themes now, and two more in an upcoming post.

1. The library as PLACE

While technologies allow the use of library resources at a distance,
it is critical that we maintain the library as an inviting and useful
place to come to. It is a place where students, faculty and other
researchers learn about collections and services as well as a place
to study and to engage in scholarly and social conversation. Students
work in a team environment more than ever before and it is important
to provide the services, spaces, equipment and connections which
encourage those learning activities. .

2. The library as a gateway for information

The library is accelerating its move to a digital environment.
While print is still important, the digital format offers three
major advantages: price, volume and accessibility. Cooperative purchasing
with other libraries allows us to lower the price for individual
journal subscriptions and thus purchase a larger number of journals titles
for the same amount of money. Current technology now allows us to provide
access to these journals and deliver copies individual articles student or
faculty member no matter where they are.

For example, 20 years ago the library was desperately trying to maintain
a physical collection of about 4,000 journals that were constantly
escalating in price. This year we are providing access to more than
50,000 journals, a goal we could never have even envisioned 20 years ago.

We also provide more than 100,000 digital books through Goldmine,
the library’s online catalog. The topic of the libraries “invisible” books
is a topic lo later discussion

I hope you’ll join us in the library physically or digitally via the
Internet to see some of the exciting things we are planning to do.

Paul
Interim Dean of Libraries