‘Everything Available’ – the strategy for the British Library’s research services
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Presentation given at the 106th German Library Congress in Frankfurt, 31/05/2017.
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‘Everything Available’ – the strategy for the British Library’s research services
- 1. ‘Everything Available’ – the strategy for the British Library’s research services Dr Torsten Reimer Head of Research Services Torsten.Reimer@bl.uk / @torstenreimer http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8357-9422 106th German Library Congress (Bibliothekartag), Frankfurt/Main, 31 May 2017
- 2. www.bl.uk 2 The research library in an ‘open’ world • Traditionally, libraries help people to: 1. Preserve stuff / information 2. Find stuff / information 3. Access stuff / information 4. Use stuff / information to create new stuff / information • That mission does not change, but the delivery – with fundamental changes in the way libraries operate. • Significant shift for 2 & 3, with implications for 4. • Libraries as interoperable parts of the global knowledge infrastructure.
- 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
- 6. www.bl.uk 6 Disruption 3: Budgets, subscriptions, VfM
- 7. www.bl.uk 7 Disruption 4: open science & scholarly communication • Access • Data • Source • Science • … Open
- 8. www.bl.uk 8 Rethinking the Library in an ‘open’ world • Global collections: everything you can make discoverable and accessible • Procurement: from just-in-case to just-in-time tailored delivery • Focus shift: from legal deposit and licensed to open content • Systems approach: new discovery and delivery mechanisms, including data and other research objects • Bring the content to the users and their favourite tools (even if it means our ‘immediate’ users are machines – APIs)
- 9. www.bl.uk 9 Open Access, two examples Project Magellan • Aim: discover and serve users OA content wherever possible • Means: combine OA Button and other tools and approaches with federated search • Potential outcome: embed OA content in document supply and discovery systems – potentially as service offer for other libraries Open access preservation • Aim: preserve OA outputs, especially ‘green’ • Means: explore whether universities want OA repository content harvested for preservation • Potential outcome: OA preservation repository, with added features including text analysis
- 10. www.bl.uk 10 New service delivery models • Refocusing from in- house development to off-the-shelf solutions, external partnerships and joint-ventures with agile specialists • Develop a new agenda around data science, machine learning and analytics
- 11. www.bl.uk 11 Infrastructure renewal • Modernise and replace our whole digital infrastructure, including: – Preservation and digital asset management – Integrated library system and discovery – Access to content, including tailored delivery and API management • A key driver is to improve services for Library users (B2C), but we will gain scalability to offer services to other organisations (B2B). • Example: Replacing the Digital Library System Preservation system (solely BL) Replacement (shared service) Single tenant (British Library) Multi-tenancy enabled Preservation-focused system Preservation and access ~1 PB, replicated over four sites Dramatic increase in scalability
- 12. www.bl.uk 12 New repository infrastructure British Library Preservation Layer Services Layer (e.g. digitisation) Access Repository System Layer EThOS Data.bl.uk British Library Institutional Repository Partner Repositories
- 13. www.bl.uk 13 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
- 14. www.bl.uk 14 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
- 15. www.bl.uk 15 (Start of) the Everything Available 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 Update 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 Provide support for digital research lifecycle, working with partners
- 16. www.bl.uk 16 Conclusion • Need to be more agile by working with agile players in the market • No single institution can crack this • Time for more coordination at national level and beyond • Collect jointly, preserve nationally, discover internationally • Invitation to join forces for developing and sustaining global open knowledge infrastructure
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.
- Two concrete initiatives
- The BL is currently hosting several repositories or repository like functions with an access layer, including data.bl.uk and ethos.bl.uk. EThOS has information on close to half a million UK theses and is one of the BL’s most popular services. Data.bl.uk offers access to data sets for research. We are in the process of defining requirements for moving both services to a new repository infrastructure, capable of hosting the above and other, separately managed and branded repositories, including a BL institutional repository.
- This is the ultimate aim – being able to find, access and use research data at the British Library should eventually become business as usual.
- This is the start of a roadmap, feedback and discussions welcome!