Nurturing the Virtual Community

Digital Library Collections

Michael RidleyChief Information Officer (CIO) & Chief Librarian

University of Guelph

NELINET Annual Collections Services Conference Collections as Services

Mount Wachusett Community College March 18, 2008

Digital Collections

Understanding Canadians

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Canadian

Digital Collections

Understanding Canadians

If a Canadian had written Gone With the Wind,

what would Rhett Butler have said to

Scarlett O’Hara?

Digital Collections

Disclaimer…

I’m an academic librarian. I feel your pain.

I’m also a CIO and a university administrator.

So, I come to you from

the dark side.

Digital Collections

Street Cred

Digital Collections

“When simple change becomes transformational

change, the desire for continuity becomes a dysfunctional mirage.”

The Mirage of Continuity (1999) Hawkins & Battin

Digital Collections

“If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse.”

Henry Ford

Digital Collections

Libraries are ….

Arbitrators or Gatekeepers

Digital Collections

Paul SaffoInstitute for the Future

“The future belongs to neither the conduit or content players, but to those who control the filtering, searching and sense-making tools we will rely on to navigate through the expanses of cyberspace.”filtering, searching and sense-making tools

Digital Collections

Libraries are ….

Sense Makers & Coherence Engines

Digital Collections

What Has Happened?

• Collections: digital, collective, ubiquitous, shared

• Services: collaborative, integrated, networked

• Staff: specialized, diverse, team-based, learners

• Users: nomadic, cross institutional, global, expanded

• Space: shared, diverse, multipurpose, community

Massive interdependence

Digital Collections

Collaboration

Digital Collections

Collaboration

Digital Collections

Information Ecology

Digital Collections

Two Major Transformations

to Environment1. From database & repository

to Information Finding People2. From people finding information

Towards the Information

Ecology

Digital Collections

In an age of abundance, current libraries are still designed for scarcity.

Digital Collections

The Digital Tsunami

Exabyte = 1 billion gigabytes

Amount of digital information created, captured or

replicated in 2006: 161 exabytes

All spoken human language since

the beginning of time: 5 exabytes

Email traffic in 2006: 6 exabytes

Digital Collections

Flickr Google RSS Kartoo MySpace Twitter

API Boing Boing Mashups Facebook Grokker

Digg Second Life Wiki Podcasts Del.icio.us

YouTube JumpTV BitTorrent Bloglines uPortal WordPress Miro Netflix Yahoo! Ruby on Rails PHP

Digital Collections

Key Issues

Interoperability

Smart Content

Digital Preservation

Small changes

Big impacts

Digital Collections

What are “Digital Collections?”

• not really about format

• more conceptual than physical

• local and widely distributed

• not “selected” or “built”

• something grown or allowed to emerge

Digital Collections

Interoperability

Digital Collections

Encapsulated Content

Constrains or limitations imposed by:

• technology

• laws and/or contracts

• financial implications

Digital Collections

Smart Content

Digital Collections

Information Finding People

Information (content) needs new qualities and characteristics

• content as transceivers

• beyond “deep linking” to “self aware” data

• the semantic web ….. on steroids

• metadata + web services + info agents

Digital Collections

Digital Preservation

Digital Collections

Migration with Integrity

Digital collections are extraordinarily fragile

• significant technology challenge

• greater cultural challenge

• more than just backups and dark archives

• “ecological sustainability”

Digital Collections

Corollary #1 & #2

Permanent beta.

Ignorance is bliss.

Digital Collections

“Fail.Fail Again. Fail Better.”

Samuel Beckett

Digital Collections

Northern Examples

Canadian Research Knowledge Network

Scholars Portal

Digital Collections

Canadian Research Knowledge Network

Digital Collections

Ontario Council of University Libraries

Digital Collections

“Culture eats strategy for lunch every day of the week.”

Elson Floyd, PresidentWashington State University

Reality Check

Digital Collections

Your Moment of Zen...

DavidPenniman

Executive Director Nylink

“To remain what it is, the library must change . . .

. . . if it does not change, it will not remain what it is.”

Digital Collections

The demise of the Titanic

was brought about by the

As we invent the future of digital collections,

are we thinking about airplanes or icebergs?

In the final analysis the Titanic was not sunk

by an iceberg.

rise of commercial air travel.

A Cautionary Tale...

Nurturing the Virtual Community

Digital Library Collections

Michael RidleyChief Information Officer (CIO) & Chief Librarian

University of Guelph

NELINET Annual Collections Services Conference Collections as Services

Mount Wachusett Community College March 18, 2008