The River, the Pond, and the Future of the Research Collection Rick Anderson Acting Dean

J. Willard Marriott Library The Recent Past: a Quick Review 1990s: The Gutenberg Terror comes to an end  Stage 1: Journals  Stage 2: Books – piecemeal (NetLibrary, etc.)  Stage 3: Books – wholesale (Google, Hathi Trust) 2000s: Gutenberg is tamed and domesticated  Print on demand

J. Willard Marriott Library The Recent Past: a Quick Review Library hegemony comes to an end  Massive drop in unit price of information  Radical increase in ease of finding  Ready reference becomes a social exercise  Full-text searching obviates the proxy record  Access (for many) becomes virtually ubiquitous  Meanwhile, librarians working busily to undermine their own role as brokers (OA)

J. Willard Marriott Library The Current Reality The collection is a bad guess at patron needs  Massive budget cuts make collecting hard to defend Reference service is bypassed and unscalable The OPAC is completely eclipsed as a discovery tool (even with WorldCat)

J. Willard Marriott Library

The Current Reality The collection is a bad guess at patron needs  Massive budget cuts make collecting hard to defend Reference service is bypassed and unscalable The OPAC is completely eclipsed as a discovery tool (even with WorldCat) Circulation is down dramatically  Gate counts are up, but the stacks are deserted

J. Willard Marriott Library Circ Trends at the University of Utah

J. Willard Marriott Library New Models Online  just-in-time (both e and p) Online  breakdown of collection walls Higher prices/less budget  less speculation Higher prices/less budget  less archival purchasing Less circulation  strong e-only momentum Online + better data + higher prices + less budget  the end of the Big Deal and of the Medium Deal (title-level journal subscriptions) in favor of the Tiny Deal Bottom line: Less collecting (ponds), more real-time brokerage (access to the river)

J. Willard Marriott Library What We Are Doing at UU Formalised stance: e-first/patron-first PDA pilot programs: MyiLibrary, ebrary, NetLibrary, EBL Espresso Book Machine No more bibliographers/subject specialists Instead, College & Interdisciplinary Teams  SHEM (Science, Health, Engineering, Mines)  SEBS (Social Sciences, Education, Business, Social Work)  FAAPH (Fine Arts, Architecture/Planning, Humanities)  DOCMAPS (Documents, Maps)  MEDIA (Multimedia)  INTERINTER (International/Interdisciplinary)

J. Willard Marriott Library Predictions The future of the library will not look much like a library  Small, focused local collections of books  Access to enormous public collections (Hathi, Google)  Few subscriptions, if any  No packages  A need for consolidated brokerage service at article level, not title level Journals are going the way of the record album  We’re headed back to a “song” economy Journal publishers are going the way of the record label  You can’t make as much on a 99-cent song as you can on a $15 album

J. Willard Marriott Library Stumbling Blocks Sclerotic librarians Fainthearted library leaders (Legacy accreditation structures) (Legacy RPT structures) (Justifiably) fainthearted publishers Customer-focused competitors

J. Willard Marriott Library Discuss! Contact: Rick Anderson