library collaborations: why and how
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Library Collaborations: Why and How
David W. Lewis
Living the Future 7 Transforming Libraries Through Collaboration
Tucson, AZMay 2, 2008
© 2008 David W. Lewis. Permission to use this work is granted under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license (3.0). You are free: to share, to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work, to remix, and to make derivative works under the following conditions: 1. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work), and 2. You may not use this work for commercial purposes. For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder. Apart from the remix rights granted under this license, nothing in this license impairs or restricts the author's moral rights.
Agenda
• Definitions• My Sources• Depressing Opening Quote • Prologue: Winning at Prisoner’s Dilemma• Strategy for Academic Libraries in the First Quarter of the 21st Century
– Sustaining Changes– Disruptive Changes
• ChaCha• Free!• Better Than Free• Story 1 and Story 2• Rant• Governing the Commons• Learning from Open Source• The Cooperation Revolution• Final Optimistic Quote• Our Task
col·lab·o·ratePronunciation: \kə-ˈla-bə-ˌrāt\Etymology: Late Latin collaboratus, past participle of collaborare to labor together,
from Latin com- + laborare to labor 1. to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor2. to cooperate with or willingly assist an enemy of one's country and especially
an occupying force3. to cooperate with an agency or instrumentality with which one is not
immediately connected
co·op·er·atePronunciation: \kō-ˈä-pə-ˌrāt\Etymology: Late Latin cooperatus, past participle of cooperari, from Latin co- +
operari to work — more at 1. to act or work with another or others : act together or in compliance 2. to associate with another or others for mutual benefit
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary
Robert AxelrodThe Evolution of Cooperation Basic Books, 1984Revised edition, 2006
Elinor OstromGoverning the Commons: The Evolution of
Institutions for Collective ActionCambridge University Press, 1990
Clayton M. ChristensenInnovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to FailHarvard Business School Press, 1997Revised edition, 2003
Steven WeberThe Success of Open Source
Harvard University Press, 2004
Clay ShirkyHere Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without OrganizationsPenguin Press, 2008
Opening Quote from Shirky
“New technology makes new things possible: put another way, when new technology appears, previously impossible things start occurring. If enough of those impossible things are important and happen in a bundle, quickly, the change becomes a revolution.”
“The hallmark of revolution is that the goals of the revolution cannot be contained by the institutional structure of existing society. As a result, either the revolutionaries are put down, or some of those institutions are altered, replaced, or destroyed.”
Opening Quote from Shirky
“Many institutions we rely on today will not survive this change without significant alteration, and the more an institution or industry relies on information as its core product, the greater and more complete the change will be.” page 107
Prologue: Winning at Prisoner’s Dilemma
Axelrod’s Question:
“Under what conditions will cooperation emerge in a world of egoists without central authority?” page 3
Prologue: Winning at Prisoner’s Dilemma
Player 1 Cooperates Player 1 Defects
Player 2 Cooperates Player 1 – 3 points, Player 2 – 3 points
Reward for Mutual Cooperation
Player 1 – 5 points, Player 2 – 0 points
Temptation to Defect and Sucker’s Payoff
Player 2 Defects Player 1 – 0 points, Player 2 – 5 points
Temptation to Defect and Sucker’s Payoff
Player 1 – 1 points, Player 2 – 1 points
Punishment for Mutual Defection
Prologue: Winning at Prisoner’s Dilemma
• Axelrod ran several iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma tournaments for computer programs
• The winning program was TIT FOR TAT• TIT FOR TAT’s Strategy:
1. Begin with cooperation2. Respond to cooperation with cooperation3. Respond to defection with defection
• TIT FOR TAT rarely won individual games, but was the best at eliciting cooperation from other programs and so won the tournaments
Prologue: Life Lessons from TIT FOR TAT
1. Don’t be envious — the success of others is a prerequisite for your own success
2. Don’t be the first to defect — cooperate as long as you get cooperation in return
3. Reciprocate both cooperation and defection — not forgiving and forgiving to easily can both be costly
4. Don’t be too clever — being incomprehensible is dangerous, to encourage cooperation you need to make it easy for others to see your intentions
Prologue: Final Word from Axelrod
Enlarge the shadow of the future.
“No form of cooperation is stable when the future in not important enough relative to the present.” page 129
Strategy for Academic Libraries in the First Quarter of the 21st Century
1. Complete the migration from print to electronic collections2. Retire legacy print collections3. Redevelop library space4. Reposition library and information tools, resources, and
expertise5. Migrate the focus of collections from purchasing materials to
curating content
David W. Lewis, “A Strategy for Academic Libraries in the First Quarter of the 21st Century,” College & Research Libraries September 2007 available at: http://idea.iupui.edu/dspace/handle/1805/1592
Strategy for Academic Libraries in the First Quarter of the 21st Century
1. Complete the migration from print to electronic collections2. Retire legacy print collections3. Redevelop library space
We know how to do the first three thingsWe can do then by ourselves or with established partnersThe change is sustaining, not disruptive
Strategy for Academic Libraries in the First Quarter of the 21st Century
4. Reposition library and information tools, resources, and expertise
5. Migrate the focus of collections from purchasing materials to curating content
Likely to involve disruptive changeGood chance that the best solutions will be at the network, not
the campus, level — the question of scaleWe will need to find and collaborate with new partners
Disruptive Change
From Christensen• Different value proposition — usually easier, faster, and
cheaper• Initially unappealing to high-end users because of limited
functionality, but appeals to unsophisticated or new users for whom it is good enough
• New value proposition allows quality and functionality to develop more quickly than old approaches
• Wikipedia versus Encyclopedia Britannica• Google Scholar versus traditional indexes
Questions of Scale
• Where are the economies of scale in operations? Where for innovation?
• Individuals can use the network (the “cloud”) to do their work without institutionally based infrastructure
• Neither libraries, nor their campuses, nor even collections of libraries or campuses are likely to be able to successfully compete with: – Google to search the Web– Google or YouTube to create collections of content– Amazon for information on books– Wikipedia as a source of quick answers
New Partners
• Traditional partners and alliances will not be sufficient
• Need to find ways to work with the network level providers – They will not want to deal with individual libraries
• We can not create new forms of scholarly communication from within our current silos
Strategy for Academic Libraries in the First Quarter of the 21st Century
4. Reposition library and information tools, resources, and expertise
5. Migrate the focus of collections from purchasing materials to curating content
“My experience with librarians, at least in scientific university libraries (I’m a scientist) is that they are basically incapable of anything beyond using the keywords in their database.”
“Wikipedia is becoming the reference desk, because it actually provides lists of relevant materials instead of dropping users in front of databases.”
— Chronicle of Higher Education, Wired Campus BLOG, June 27, 2007
“Nature Precedings is a free service from NPG that provides a way for researchers to share preliminary findings, solicit community feedback, and claim priority over discoveries. By promoting the rapid and open exchange of scientific information, the site ultimately aims to help accelerate the pace of discovery.”
— Press Release from the Nature Publishing Group, June 8, 2007
“Scientists Get a YouTube of Their Own. The National Science Foundation, the Public Library of Science, and the San Diego Supercomputing Center are hoping that their new Web site — billed as a YouTube for scientists — will help demystify important research papers. The site, called SciVee, will allow scientists to upload highly technical papers. But it will also let the researchers post accompanying video presentations that serve as quicker, more approachable guides to their work.”
Chronicle of Higher Education, Wired Campus BLOG, August 22, 2007
“By searching with a Guide your query is sent to a real person who is skilled at finding information on the Internet and knowledgeable on the subject at hand so that you get the few exact results you want, not the millions of results you don't.
ChaCha only provides quality, human approved results. The more you use ChaCha, the smarter and faster ChaCha becomes! Because ChaCha saves, rates, and updates all the answers that are hand-picked by our Guides.
ChaCha's intelligent Guide application learns from every search so our Guides know where to look to find information for you quickly.”
IU and ChaCha partner to create first of its kind academic search service
Alliance to leverage IU’s knowledge assets and ChaCha’s innovative human-guided search technology
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Aug. 2, 2007 INDIANAPOLIS -- Indiana University President Michael A. McRobbie and Scott A. Jones, co-founder and chief executive officer of ChaCha, an Indiana company that is creating a new and more focused way of providing Internet searches, today (Aug. 2) announced they have entered into a strategic alliance for research, development and services for the next generation of Internet search tools and practices.
This new partnership will incorporate the collective knowledge and experience of the university's library and information technology staff into ChaCha's new search engine architecture, which combines a sophisticated machine-based search with skilled human guides who can quickly bring focus and precision to the search product...
It will enable IU and ChaCha to develop a better understanding of how guided search can best serve the complex needs of students, faculty and academic researchers…
By combining machine-based searches with input from human guides, ChaCha is able to offer users the ability to receive instant results, just like a traditional search engine, but the guides help the user focus on relevant information and eliminate unwanted material…
IU librarians, information technology staff and others will serve as guides, available to help the IU community conduct searches through a live instant message chat interface, identify exactly what information the user is seeking, refine the search for the user and then display only the most relevant results.
See: https://www.chacha.com/ for what ChaCha is currently doing.
Lessons (so far) from IU/ChaCha Partnership
• We had hope to get access to technology to manage a knowledge base and chat interactions– Network level services don’t scale down easily– IU’s need to control access was problematic — Straddling the
open content/proprietary content boundary is problematic
• Working with an early stage start-up company is interesting — They are not like us– Short term focus– Move quickly– People change rolls and come and go
Lessons (so far) from IU/ChaCha Partnership
• Internal collaboration with computing organization has developed
• The university is thinking about search and responding to user queries in a different way
• We care about mobile answers, but…• ChaCha is still developing technology to support the people
answering questions — this could prove useful
• We are rethinking how the project should work
Collaboration to Reposition Expertise and Resources
• Many resources and services will move to the network level with disruptive technologies and new service models — most will be open
• Individual libraries will have an increasingly hard time competing
• Libraries have minimal capacity to innovate at the required scale
• Libraries have minimal capacity to change their existing service models
Chris Anderson, “Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business,” Wired Magazine 16.03 http://www.wired.com/wired/issue/16-03/
Better Than Free
“When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied.
Well, what can't be copied?
There are a number of qualities that can't be copied. Consider "trust." Trust cannot be copied. You can't purchase it. Trust must be earned, over time. It cannot be downloaded. Or faked. Or counterfeited (at least for long). If everything else is equal, you'll always prefer to deal with someone you can trust. So trust is an intangible that has increasing value in a copy saturated world.”
Kevin Kelly, “Better Than Free,” The Technium http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/01/better_than_fre.php
Eight Generatives Better Than Free
“Immediacy -- Sooner or later you can find a free copy of whatever you want, but getting a copy delivered to your inbox the moment it is released -- or even better, produced -- by its creators is a generative asset.”
“Personalization -- A generic version of a concert recording may be free, but if you want a copy that has been tweaked to sound perfect in your particular living room -- as if it were preformed in your room -- you may be willing to pay a lot.”
“Interpretation -- As the old joke goes: software, free. The manual, $10,000. But it's no joke. A couple of high profile companies, like Red Hat, Apache, and others make their living doing exactly that.”
Eight Generatives Better Than Free
“Authenticity -- You might be able to grab a key software application for free, but even if you don't need a manual, you might like to be sure it is bug free, reliable, and warranted. You'll pay for authenticity.”
“Accessibility -- Ownership often sucks. You have to keep your things tidy, up-to-date, and in the case of digital material, backed up. And in this mobile world, you have to carry it along with you. Many people, me included, will be happy to have others tend our "possessions" by subscribing to them.”
“Embodiment -- At its core the digital copy is without a body. You can take a free copy of a work and throw it on a screen. But perhaps you'd like to see it in hi-res on a huge screen? Maybe in 3D? PDFs are fine, but sometimes it is delicious to have the same words printed on bright white cottony paper, bound in leather.”
Eight Generatives Better Than Free
“Patronage -- It is my belief that audiences WANT to pay creators. Fans like to reward artists, musicians, authors and the like with the tokens of their appreciation, because it allows them to connect. But they will only pay if it is very easy to do, a reasonable amount, and they feel certain the money will directly benefit the creators.”
“Findability -- Where as the previous generative qualities reside within creative digital works, findability is an asset that occurs at a higher level in the aggregate of many works. A zero price does not help direct attention to a work, and in fact may sometimes hinder it. But no matter what its price, a work has no value unless it is seen; unfound masterpieces are worthless. When there are millions of books, millions of songs, millions of films, millions of applications, millions of everything requesting our attention -- and most of it free -- being found is valuable.”
How Will Academic Libraries Do?
• Immediacy — Can’t compete, will move to the network level• Personalization — Can’t compete, will move to the network
level • Interpretation — Maybe if we develop deep relationships• Authenticity — Maybe if we can maintain the library brand• Accessibility — Maybe, but will require changes in faculty
behavior• Embodiment — Maybe since we have physical items• Patronage — Only at the margins• Findability — Can’t compete, has already moved to the
network level
Collaboration to Move from Purchasing Materials to Curating Content
• Digitizing print-based content• Capturing and preserving born digital content
Collaboration to Move from Purchasing Materials to Curating Content
• Open Access will succeed• The structure of scholarly communication will change• Users will be less dependent on local library collections• Libraries will not have to purchase as much content
• We will be free to invest digital projects for our campuses
Or Not, the Rant“We need to begin with a fundamental fact — the cost of scholarly journals has increased at 10% per year for the last three decades.
This is over six times the rate of general inflation and over two and a half times the rate of increase of the cost of health care.
Between 1975 and 2005 the average cost of journals in chemistry and physics rose from $76.84 to $1,879.56. In the same period, the cost of a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline rose from 55 cents to $1.82. If the gallon of gas had increased in price at the same rate as chemistry and physics journals over this period it would have reached $12.43 in 2005, and would be over $14.50 today.”
David W. Lewis, “Library Budgets, Open Access, and the Future of Scholarly Communication,” Forthcoming in the May issue of C&RL News
Need to change the way scholarship is done or journal cost will continue to sap our resources
Need to move from Proprietary Scholarship to Open Scholarship
Opportunity costs of not doing so are very high
Governing the Commons
• Ostrom looks at self governing systems for managing common-pool resources (CPR) — for example, water or fishing rights
• Open Scholarly Commons is different– The good provided is non-rival– Appropriation of the resource is not a significant problem– Provision of the good has both public good and CPR
aspects– Our problem will be on the provision side — How do we
create the resource?
Governing the Commons
• Provision of the Open Scholarly Commons requires two things– Infrastructure– Scholars prepared to use the infrastructure
• Infrastructure is a public good which can be provided at a variety of levels from national to individual institutions– There will be free riders — This is OK– Vested interests will fight to stop or slow developments,
especially at the national level
• This is the easy part
Governing the Commons
• Scholar’s decisions– The work, and how it is put into the system, has both
public and private benefits– How do we rebalance how these benefits are exercised?– Do institutions exert their rights to manage public
benefits? – Do scholars exert their rights to private benefits more
responsibly? What are the incentives?– Need to changes the norms that drive practice
• This is the hard problem
Learning from Open Source
From Weber“I explain the creation of a particular kind of software—open source software—as an experiment in social organization around a distinctive notion of property. The conventional notion of property is, of course, the right to exclude you from using something that belongs to me. Property in open source is configured fundamentally around the right to distribute, not the right to exclude.” page 1
This makes large scale non-hierarchical cooperation is possible
Learning from Open Source
• Change the way scholarship, as property, functions — the right to distribute not to exclude– Creative Commons licenses– NIH or Harvard mandates
• Scholarship, like open source software, is not simply a nonrival — it is antirival– Nonrival — Use does not diminish the good– Antirival — Use enhances the value of the good“Open source turns what would have been called free riders
into contributor to a collective good.” page 216
Learning from Open Source
“Open source developers perceive themselves as trading many copies of their own (single) innovation for many single copies of others’ innovations.” page 159
• Scholars don’t generally see the trade this way– Rather access to other’s innovation is perceived as a right
that they are owed by their institution – Delivering this perceived right is the library’s problem
• We need to change the way this “bargain” is viewed
Learning from Open Source
From Shirky — Open Systems are successful because they:1. Lower the cost of failure, but not the likelihood of failure
— this provides the means to explore multiple possibilities and increases the likelihood of finding successful solutions
2. Do not create a bias in favor of predictable but substandard outcomes
3. Make it simple to integrate the contributions of people who contribute only one good idea
page 245
The Cooperation Revolution
• From Shirky “The centrality of group effort to human life means that
anything that changes the way groups function will have profound ramifications for everything from commerce and government to media and religion.”page 17“We are living in the middle of a remarkable increase in our ability to share, to cooperate with one another, and to take collective action, all outside the framework of traditional institutions and organizations.”page 21
The Cooperation Revolution
“The difficulties that kept self-assembled groups from working together are shrinking, meaning that the number and kind of things groups can get done without financial motivation or managerial oversight are growing. The current change in one sentence is: most of the barriers to group action have collapsed, and without those barriers, we are free to explore new ways of gathering together and getting things done.”Page 22
The Cooperation Revolution
• Mass Amateurization — Large Scale Sharing“An individual with a camera or a keyboard is now a non-profit of one, and self-publishing is now the normal case… This technological story is like literacy, wherein a particular capacity moves from a group of professionals to become embedded within the society itself, ubiquitously, available to a majority of citizens.”pages 77-78
• Publish then Filter — Mass amateurization of publishing requires mass amateurization of filtering
The Cooperation Revolution
“When a profession has been created as a result of some scarcity, as with librarians or television programmers, the professionals are often the last ones to see it when that scarcity goes away. It is easier to understand that you face competition than obsolescence.”pages 58-59
Are we like the scribes?
The Cooperation Revolution
• Successful social tools require three things:1. A plausible promise — attracts users2. An effective tool — makes community possible3. An acceptable bargain — creates community
• How do we create a set of social tools that create Open Scholarship?
• The hard part is the plausible promise and the acceptable bargain
Final Quote
From Shirky
“Emblematic of the dilemmas created by group life, the phrase “free-for-all” does not literally mean free for all but rather chaos. Too much freedom, with too little management, has generally been a recipe for a free-for-all. Now, however, it isn’t. With the right kinds of collaborative tools and the right sort of bargain with users, it is possible to get a large group working on a project that is free for all.”page 253
Our Task
Create the tools and communities for open scholarship so knowledge can be abundant in our communities
Peter Senge — The world’s knowledge belongs to the world
This can only be the product of cooperation and collaboration.
Comments orQuestions ?
David W. [email protected]
© 2008 David W. Lewis. Permission to use this work is granted under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license (3.0). You are free: to share, to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work, to remix, and to make derivative works under the following conditions: 1. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work), and 2. You may not use this work for commercial purposes. For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder. Apart from the remix rights granted under this license, nothing in this license impairs or restricts the author's moral rights.