Demand & Supply: The Critical Role of Research Libraries in International Education

Constance Malpas

Program Officer, OCLC Research

12 April 2014

Internationalization of US Education in the 21st Century

#internationaled

Global Resources: a system-wide view

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Research libraries as shared infrastructure

• Aggregate library resource represents vital infrastructure for foreign language and area studies scholarship

• Current organization of research library ‘system’ is ill-adapted to support emerging requirements for international education

• Institution-scale approaches to building global resource collections misaligned with realities of networked scholarship and international relations

3

Growth of Non-English Content in WorldCat

61%

39%

Source: Glenn Patton, OCLC

Jul 2

000

Jun

2008

Jan

2014

Apr 2

005

Jul 2

011

More titles, fewer holding libraries

Fewer titles, more holding libraries

4

Coverage of critical priority languages in the global library system has increased substantially since 2007

Yet, institution-scale coverage in US research libraries remains limited

5

Title VI National Resource Centers

A loosely integrated network within larger HE

system

129 centers in ~50 universities

6

Significant disparities in

coverage among designated

National Resource Centers

47%

*As represented in

March 2013

7

Non-NRC coverage of global resources equals or exceeds coverage in Title

VI Centers

*As represented in

March 2013

19%

8

*As represented in

March 2013

Large-scale digital aggregations

increase discoverability of global resources

…placing additional pressures on

libraries for just-in-time fulfillment

12%

9

<20% >35%>25%

Maximum Title VI NRC Library Coverage of Content related to South Asian Geographies

10

Coverage is moderate, content highly diffused

Content about Afghanistan U Nebraska, Omaha 34% Library of Congress 28% Harvard 19% UC Berkeley 16% UCLA 13%

Content about Pashto Library of Congress 27% Harvard 24% U Nebraska, Omaha 20% UC Berkeley 19% U Chicago 18%

Content from Afghanistan Library of Congress 38% Harvard 17% U Nebraska, Omaha 15% UC Berkeley 7% U Chicago 2%

Content in Pashto Library of Congress 41% U Chicago 19% Harvard 15% UC Berkeley 12% U Pennsylvania 12%

*Title VI National Resource Centers for South Asia

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‘Spiky’ Distribution of South Asian Resources

Maldive

s 

Bhut

an

Nepal

Afgh

anist

an 

Bang

lade

sh 

Sri L

anka

Pakistan

 Ira

n

India 

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

0

50,000

100,000

150,000

200,000

250,000

300,000

350,000

Single Library Single NRC LibraryHathi GoogleTotal Related Works in WorldCat

Fewer titles More titles

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Challenges

• Diffuse distribution of global resources across US research library system limits discoverability and access

• Limited ‘network intelligence’ for distributed collection management

• Incentive models (reputation, funding) favor institution-scale operations

• Significant disparities in coverage and availability of global resources in digital formats

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Areas for attention

• Maximize library coordination capacity within and beyond NRC network

• Address need for integrated discovery/delivery solutions that leverage distributed resource

• Support and reward ‘above the institution’ acquisitions and stewardship models that improve resource coverage, reduce management costs

• Prioritize investments to improve digital access to global resource collections in targeted areas.

©2014 OCLC. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Suggested attribution: “This work uses content from [presentation title] © OCLC, used under a Creative Commons Attribution license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/”

Comments and questions are welcome.malpasc@oclc.org@ConstanceM

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