Bloomsbury Library Online

I don't generally use this blog to advertise products (except our own) but this press release about the Bloomsbury Library Online is very much in keeping with my current theme of New Ways of Working and I think that the project will be of interest to librarians. Here is the press release and I have added comments below.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: The Bloomsbury Library Online

Bloomsbury is set to transform the relationship between publishers and libraries, and between libraries and readers, with an innovative development in public lending: The Bloomsbury Library Online.

At a time when the British library system is under pressure to reach larger audiences with tighter budgets, and when the reading public is feeling the pinch, Bloomsbury is launching a unique, affordable and user-friendly online initiative.

In association with www.exacteditions.com and using existing technology in libraries across the country, Bloomsbury is rolling out a groundbreaking e-lending strategy which will allow readers to read collections of bestselling books at local library terminals or with the use of a library card on home computers and internet enabled devices.

The Bloomsbury Library Online will consist of a number of themed shelves: children’s books, sports titles, international fiction, Shakespeare plays, reference books and more. They will launch with a shelf of Book Group titles including Galaxy Book of the Year, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, by Kate Summerscale, Orange Prize longlisted Burnt Shadows, by Kamila Shamsie, word-of-mouth phenomenon The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer, and international bestseller The Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri. Embracing the advantages of the online format, users will be able to read the book, search the text, access author interviews, reviews, press features, and links to specially commissioned reading group guides.

How will it work?
• The Bloomsbury Library Online will be sold on subscription – libraries will subscribe to a bookshelf for a year at a time and will pay according to the size of population served.
• New titles will be added on a continuous basis – free of charge within the subscription year.
• Users will click through from the Library terminals or through an online portal accessible via any web browser (including those found on iPhone and Blackberry) anytime, anywhere in the UK.
• Text accessible through screen readers and therefore available to blind and partially-sighted users.

Bloomsbury Executive Director Richard Charkin said “Libraries are hugely important to readers, communities and authors and are under severe financial constraints. While never forgetting the importance of books themselves, they’re also being pressured to adapt to the demands of the 21st century: bridging the digital divide, serving multicultural communities, attracting new users and reaching into homes. The Bloomsbury Library Online serves to fill that hole and will hopefully blaze a trail for similar developments in the library system.”

Kate Summerscale added: “I’m delighted that The Suspicions of Mr Whicher will be part of The Bloomsbury Library Online – it sounds a great scheme, especially for book groups.”

For further information please contact Colin Midson on +44 207 494 6054 or email on colin.midson@bloomsbury.com
To find out more about Exact Editions, please contact Daryl Rayner on +44 207 554 8632
or email on daryl.rayner@exacteditions.com

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I don't think there is any doubt that electronic books will play an increasing role in the future of public libraries and I think this is the first time that a publisher has provided a range of modern fiction in this format to libraries. The books have to be read on a PC or portable web browser and this is anathema to many readers and librarians. The book as a physical object will always have its fans! Many libraries struggle to provide enough PC for users who want to use the People's Network so how will they cope with users wanting to spend hours reading a novel? I suspect the focus will be on allowing library users to access these books from home. There is also the issue of subscribing to a particular platform from one publisher rather than being able to select individual titles.

You may be interested in Eoin Purcell's blog on this topic.

The world turned upside down. Open access and academic journals.

Paying for open access publication charges: guidance for higher education and research institutions, publishers and authors.
www.rin.ac.uk/openaccess-payment-fees

This publication from the Research Information network and Universities UK looks at the practical implications of the emergence of open access publishing for scholarly articles. The old model was that academics had their peer-reviewed articles published in journals and the publishers sold subscriptions to academic libraries. When electronic publishing came along it first followed this model (though often with dramatic increases in the cost of subscriptions and tight restrictions on subscribers to prevent them making the articles available outside the institution.)
Increasingly however publishers are making articles available free of charge to all readers immediately upon publication but in order to maintain a revenue stream they are charging a publication fee for authors. The authors in turn look to their institution or the funder of their research to pay these fees. As the report says "This turns the traditional publishing model on its head, and this poses challenges for publishers but also for researchers and the institutions that employ them. They have to find new ways to meet the cost of publication fees, alongside the well-established budgets for the majority of journals that still operate the traditional subscription model". All this against a background of even higher price rises due to the falling value of the pound. Academic libraries are particularly concerned that their institutions should develop a coordinated and strategic approach to this development and not just let it fall on the library budget by default.

I don't feel myself qualified to comment on the guidance itself (as I am a bear of little brain) and I am sure my colleagues in the HE sector will do this. I am, however, interested in the wider implications. First, all librarians need to be aware that the model is changing. Public libraries have never seen it as their role to purchase specialist academic journals and with the increase in subscription charges and the move to electronic publishing I suspect that few librarians outside the HE sector are familiar with how much things have changed.

Second, public libraries are concerned with the wider issue of making research accessible to the public and these developments will help with this in many ways. If the author pays for open access rather than the reader - or the reader's library - having to pay a subscription then this should remove some of the barriers that currently exist. It is good to see that this report acknowledges that open access brings benefits not only to the research community but to society at large. Having said that, we are talking largely about material published by academics for academics and its direct relevance to most public library users is limited. (see my postings with the access tag).

Native or immigrant in the digital world?

Dr Jan-Martin Lowendahl

On Wednesday I attended the UKeIG annual seminar "Riding the waves or treading water?: confronting the challenges of a volatile electronic environment". The morning session included two presentations by Dr Jan-Martin Lowendahl, research director of Gartner - an information and technology research and advisory firm.

Dr Lowendahl's first presentation "Emerging IT trends and tools to deal with hype, maturity and alignment" was a general review of IT developments and how organisations could respond to these. His emphasis was not on the new technologies themselves but rather the new ways of doing things that are enabled by these technologies. An interesting concept was the "Hype Cycle" which can be applied to all emerging technologies. This starts with the trigger that creates a new technology. This results in an upward curve of increasing positive hype as people enthuse about the benefits, leading to a peak of inflated expectations. Then comes a trough of disillusionment as problems become apparent. This can be followed by an upward slope of enlightenment as the real benefits are explored followed by a plateau of productivity. Most new products follow this cycle and existing products and ideas can be located on the cycle. Clearly the idea is that you don't get carried away by products that are climbing the peak of inflated expectations, nor do you reject products that are in the trough of disillusionment. Instead you identify those that will end up on the plateau of productivity and adopt those that align with your institutional aims. Looking at the Higher Education Technology Hype Cycle Dr Lowendahl positioned some products and concepts as follows:
On the slope of inflated expectations - Technology enabled classrooms, podcasting learning content.
In the trough of disillusionment - e-learning repositories, e-portfolios.
On the slope of enlightenment - RFID Library management, 802.11x on campus, Internet2/Next Generation Internet.

In his second presentation "Digital natives hit the workplace" Dr Lowendahl explored the concept that there is an emerging generation who are native speakers of the digital language of computers, video games and the internet. They process information and behave differently than previous generations. The rest of us can only aspire to be "digital immigrants" and most of us will retain a noticeable "accent". For example, digital immigrants tend to use the word "digital" as in "digital camera" while the natives will just say "camera". The opportunities for misunderstanding and lack of clear communication are huge according to Dr Lowendahl. He contrasts the outlook of digital native learners with digital immigrant teachers.

Digital natives
Prefer receiving information quickly from multiple multimedia sources
Prefer random access to hyperlinked multimedia information

Prefer to interact/network simultaneously with many others

Digital immigrants
Prefer slow and controlled release of information from limited sources
Prefer to provide information linearly, logically and sequentially
Prefer students to work independently rather than network and interact.

He then considered what the impact of this generation will be when they grow up and reach the workplace. Clearly this will have an impact on libraries, both in terms of the expectations of our users and the impact on our workforce, and this was picked up by the other speakers. Sue Hill (Sue Hill Recruitment) looked at how informational professionals need to keep abreast of these developments through CPD; Val Skelton (TFPL) reported on research about who is managing information in the digital world and Peter Godwin (University of Bedfordshire) reported on information literacy teaching.

The value of this seminar was not that the issues were brand new but that the speakers were able to present them as a coherent narrative that focused on the issues that are facing the profession. SINTO will be picking up on these issues in our Members' Day next Tuesday.

Oxford Online Champion Awards

On the 14th May I posted about the MLA Love Libraries Awards and now MLA has announced another set of awards. Under the headline "Are you a library champion for online resources? New awards recognise public librarians’ work in promoting online resources" MLA has launched the Oxford Online Library Champion Awards 2007.
There are four categories:

• Oxford Online Library Champion of the Year. Designed to honour the exceptional contribution of an individual member of library staff who has successfully championed Oxford Online resources.
• Best Overall Strategy to Promote Awareness of Oxford Online Resources. An award for the public library authority which has carried out the most imaginative and effective range of awareness campaigns to promote the availability of Oxford Online resources to library members and the general public.
• Best website promotion. An award for the public library authority which has used their website most effectively to build awareness of Oxford Online resources.
• Most effective staff training. An award recognising the public library authority which has best demonstrated their commitment to staff training on Oxford Online resources.
  

Nomination forms are available at http://www.oxfordonline.com/mla/awards/

As with the Love Libraries Award I am generally in favour of this. The MLA/OUP National Agreement covers 145 out of 149 library authorities in England and means that over 48 million English residents can explore good quality online resources free of charge until 31 March 2008 simply by joining their local library. If OUP wants to promote this by sponsoring these awards then they are to be congratulated. However there is an issue here. Despite the headline, this award is not about promoting online resources - it is about promoting the resources of one particular publisher. To quote the CILIP Code of Professional Conduct , librarians should:

8. ensure that the materials to which they provide access are those which are most appropriate to the needs of legitimate users of the service

This implies that we should provide access to a range of resources and not just the output of one publisher. It is similar to a debate that is going on as to whether library catalogues should provide links to Amazon as a source of information about titles. This is done by some academic libraries but I don't know of any public libraries doing this. I suspect that most library authorities would not want to be seen promoting a single commercial company.

Personally I don't think that librarians should be too concerned about this. OUP has taken the initiative to set up this agreement with MLA and if other publishers want to make their resources available in the same way then they can. Also OUP does have a reputation for good quality products. Given that public libraries can't aford to pay the commercial subscription rates for all electronic resources the alternative would be to rely on free sources such as Wikipedia. I am not anti Wikipedia but I think we are providing a better service by making Oxford Online resources available as well. I don't believe that any librarian chasing the prize - a two-night luxury stay for two people in Oxford, lunch at the Printer’s House of OUP and individual tour of OUP Museum, tour of the Bodleian Library, and a copy of the new edition of the leatherbound Shorter Oxford English Dictionary - will really compromise their professional commitment to providing their users with the most appropriate materials. On the other hand we must be aware of the ethical dimension of such awards.

Access to digital content.

Today I received an e-mail from Brian Osborne, author of several books on Scottish history and Hon. Sec. of the Society of Authors in Scotland, about my letter in Update (see my posting in February on Access to Digital Content). Mr Osborne said that he very much agree with my arguments on the need to provide a national answer to the problem and the essentially limited benefits of extending access via the drop-in use in academic libraries. He adds that the Society of Authors in Scotland is interested in this issue of authors from outside the academic world getting access to on-line research material – and as a body representing authors from all over Scotland is particularly conscious of the problems faced by those geographically distant from HE institutions.

This reinforces my point that the library profession has failed to address the issue of a national information policy. The Library and Information Commission's document Keystone for the Information Age: a national information policy for the UK (March 2000) - is an enormous lost opportunity. Here are some quotes

Britain is closer to becoming an information society but we still lack the overall policy and co-ordination that will add value to the various initiatives that are taking place. We have, therefore, taken the opportunity to re-state our view that a UK National Information Policy is urgently required if we are to remain competitive in the global information society.

The Government has an impressive record of achievement in starting to realise the goals set in Our Information Age: the Government's Vision... But a National Information Policy is required as a matter of urgency, to provide a framework within which these diverse initiatives can be co-ordinated. Without such a framework of policy there is a risk that synergies will be lost and the full value of public and private investments will not be realised.

Unchecked, many current information developments could exacerbate social exclusion, further isolating the information have-nots from the rest of society. We need policies to ensure that no-one is excluded from the benefits of an inclusive information society

So what went wrong? Why did the profession fail to follow this up? And how
can we deal with the fall-out from this failure to act seven years ago?

Access to digital content.

Two postings in one day! I must be getting addicted and perhaps I need some blogging rehab. My excuse is I want to mention that I have had a letter published in Update 6(3) March 2007 and it's letter of the month no less (oh still my beating heart!).

It's about public access to digital material. The issue is that we have in the Access to Libraries for Learning scheme an agreement by which members of the public can use academic libraries for reference (and most other regions now have a similar agreement under the Inspire scheme). However academic libraries increasingly hold journals and books in electronic format and these can not be accessed by members of the public. The problem is that a) these are covered by licenses which may prohibit public access, b) you need to be able to use the universities' networks and members of the public will not have access rights and c) academic libraries lack the resources (staff time) to implement solutions to these barriers.

A recent report has addressed this problem and makes a number of recommendations which would help but it does not address the key issue which is should academic libraries be responsible for providing public access to digital material? In the letter I argue that this is a question of national information policy and of course we don't have a national information policy. I will shortly be setting up a page on the SINTO wiki to give more information about this.