Shooting the Pianist

I first heard the call for the need to take central control of the university libraries in a managed national structure voiced by Donald Urquhart in 1970. Roughly quinquennial reports since then from Atkinson[i] through Pocklington and Finch[ii] via Follett1[iii] to what one must now regard as Follett 2 have bemoaned the threat to scholarship from pressures on university libraries and more particularly their budgets. Libraries have responded to this admirably whether through the JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee), consortial arrangements or by the spirit of co-operation much applauded by this report. But it remains the case that it is seen as a library problem. The near abject failure of the academic community to put its own house in order is largely ignored by this report and such latterly emerging large scale academic initiatives as Biomed Central[iv] or small disciplinary ones such as the Valley of the Shadow[v] do not rate even a mention in this report. Yet again we are told that the British research output is too small to influence publishers. There is no suggestion that we have any power to influence events and that, for example, we might do better from a committee of the grant-awarding bodies requiring research outcomes to be in the public domain as the National Institutes of Health so notably do. There is no suggestion that the Learned Societies might take a lead with their own journals or that they could influence the future. To be fair to the report it does propose that a debate should be opened up on scholarly communication [Para 158b], that presumably being preferable to action.

The report has many strengths in terms of its analysis of issues. There has been a wide trawl of existing work in the UK and some excellent and interesting supporting research has been commissioned and its results analysed. There is some good description of the present state of libraries, their expenditure and the threats to their collections. But once the report begins to draw conclusions it moves on to much less secure ground. Its approach is conservative. “There is scope for radical developments, but at the same time a more gradual approach may be most effective”. The comment is made in the context of search engines, but characterises the whole report whose major conclusion is the classic British avoidance tactic of setting up another committee.

At the heart of the report is the recommendation to set up a new body, the Research Libraries Network (RLN). This new body is seen as having three functions: strategic leadership; an executive function and a role in high level advocacy. “We know of no other country that has attempted to create a body with this remit”, says the report, but does not pause to wonder why. The case for strategic leadership and high level advocacy are fairly made, but there is no examination of alternatives to a new committee. In a formal sense Re:source fulfils both of those functions. A minor but interesting point is then the complete failure (or is it studied disdain?) to mention that body at all. Although it has arguably set back the cause of cross-sectoral collaboration by several years it nonetheless in theory possesses the power and formal authority to deal with some of the roles and responsibilities proposed, at least in the field of advocacy. The same is true of CURL (Consortium of University Research Libraries), which has grown into a successful and coherent grouping of research libraries- but extending its remit is not considered. Finally no consideration is given to setting up a new sub-committee of JISC to deal with these issues. The point is not whether these options are better than the one proposed, but that they are neither contemplated, costed, nor considered.

A key recommendation for the new RLN is its membership, which will include the national libraries. Again this is welcome. However there is a rather simplistic assumption that the goals of the national libraries, copyright libraries, university libraries and research libraries are co-terminous and that we all share a common agenda. Yet in such areas as publisher relations, the future of scholarly communication and document supply it is not at all evident that we share common goals. Indeed it is easy to argue that the JISC budget should be spent in uniquely HE areas and not in supporting outdated systems of scholarly communication. Once the budget is diverted into a committee whose members have differing agendas, that budget will inevitably be spent on the non-controversial areas, which reinforce the past.

And so we come to the second area of executive action, which largely consists of taking over a huge swathe of JISC functions. By a huge margin the major success story in recent years has been the JISC, which launched into the BIDS initiative before the first Follett Report had even been commissioned and has had an impressive track record of innovation ever since. It is easy to criticise JISC and this writer has frequently done so (although intended constructively!). But this report is positively fulsome in its praise for JISC, before it shoots the poor pianist. No one would pretend that the JISC is perfect and indeed it often seems sclerotic, but emasculating the one success story we have seems a poor recipe for development. An attempt is made to justify taking over JISC functions but no consideration is given as to whether expanding the role of the JISC to cover the added roles provides an alternative option.

The immediate work plan proposed for the new body is interesting in that it is all under way under the aegis of JISC, apart from managing access funding, which RSLP (Research Support Libraries Programme) has undertaken.

Discovery: expedite SUNCAT [Serials Union Catalogue. Funded by RSLP and JISC and under way under JISC managementand under way under JISC management].

Discovery: initiate work to develop a tool for cross searching of catalogues [“work under way led by the JISC”].

Discovery: establish and promulgate metadata standards [underway via UKOLN, CAIRNS etc, funded by JISC].

Access: administer the implementation of further access funding [initially implemented by RSLP].

Access: pursue licensing of key commercial datasets [underway from JISC for over a decade from CHEST to NESLI. “There are clear benefits in being a leader [internationally]”. Surely this is what is happening?]

Access: develop authorisation systems [“work is already in hand on authentication technologies through the JISC”]

Scholarly communication: establish a programme [“we commissioned a report from a working group on scholarly communications set up by …the JISC”]

Retention: examine costs of digital preservation. Establish mechanisms for last resort archiving [“we are pleased to note …the proposal by the JISC to establish a Digital Curation Centre]…GRID Data Centres …and the…Digital Preservation Coalition]

It also notes that:

Additionally, awareness of mediated subject gateways was slowly growing [studied in “an evaluation by the JISC in 2000”. “We are pleased to note that the JISC is investing heavily in these”]

Work on the hybrid library, a concept developed by Chris Rusbridge for the JISC “represents important groundwork” and of course the JISC funded five projects in the area.

The challenge of managing and disseminating new electronic resources has so far been taken up from a library perspective “mainly by the JISC…” which “is engaged in much important development work related to the provision of electronic content and tools”.

In content building the report identifies a need for “sustaining the content building work currently being undertaken by the JISC”. e-Science and the GRID are mentioned approvingly but it is not clear how these and JISC responsibility for them are meant to sit with the new structure.

“The second common thread is managed innovation meeting researchers needs. This has been made possible by a combination of factors, including, importantly, the work of the JISC to develop the Information Environment”

OAI: The JISC and CURL are jointly funding the development of a network of institutionally based e-print repositories”

The report then posits a second stage, which is disappointingly backward looking:

Discovery: establish coverage for a national catalogue of hard copy materials [but there is no analysis of the UKNUC study, jointly commissioned by JISC. The CURL work here is also noted.]

Discovery: as above but to contain borrowing status

Discovery: establish the catalogue

Access: develop tools for handling online materials, integrated with the new catalogue.

Access: develop platforms for information sharing, including peer review systems

Access: promote collaborative collection development for print

Retention: cost-benefit studies for collaborative retention and disposal

Digital preservation: establish mechanisms for last resort archiving

General: representation at international forums

When we strip out the generalities we find that the report is mainly concerned with managing the collections of the past not creating the collections of the future. It is obsessed with catalogues. So the remaining big idea is a national union catalogue of monographs – although the justification for this rather than such alternatives as expanding COPAC remains unargued. Indeed insofar as there is a major problem of discovery of research collections it may be argued to lie in archives not printed sources. This argument is not even explored, far less made – although the Archives Hub is loftily patronised as “ a prime example of what we have in mind.” This is perhaps the most damaging gap in the report and one where there is clear research benefit in expanding discovery tools. The need to expand present OPAC coverage of monographs and grey literature is confused and conflated with the ambition for better search tools and the nearly universal negative response of the town meeting to spending limited funds on a national union catalogue of monographs when considered following the launch of the UKNUC report is ignored. There is an irresistible compulsion to compare such a beast with the Dome, a technical triumph, ruinously expensive, but with even fewer visitors.

Nor is the problem evident. The multiplicity of union catalogues in the USA is mentioned approvingly, whereas the hugely successful and readily usable COPAC and BL catalogues and the CAIRNS and Inform25 projects are deemed to make life too difficult for UK researchers. Access is then asserted as an issue for researchers. Disincentives cited for this not happening include fear of swamping – often claimed for students but a novel argument for researchers. It is also asserted that service standards for external users vary significantly and must be homogenised. Possibly true but likely as true if the word “external” is omitted. Service is a function of attitude not wealth.

The proposal to continue access funding is very welcome. However the RSLG appears to have ignored a paradox commented on but unashamedly avoided in the short term by RSLP. It proposes that access be conditional both on counting bodies through the door and membership of Research Plus. Yet the general long term wish of the report is to develop electronic usage (although the role of libraries as producers rather than consumers of information is not expanded on). Thus a library which has used its access funds to digitise collections, thereby reducing the need to visit while making collections more accessible, is penalised. A classic Catch-22!

Finally we are further and quite properly enjoined to support the national libraries. We are also to seek to harmonise VAT on electronic and printed materials. This may prove a two edged sword, for some have long feared that such harmonisation would take place at 17.5% not 0% as Irn Broon’s Treasury staff would quickly deduce.

The JISC funding to support research would be managed by RLN and “be re-focussed to some extent”. Since RLN seeks a mere additional two million pounds apart from access funds this can only be done by splitting JISC funding in a major way and would surely result in the loss of several years of progress as work and funding is disentangled (an assertion, but that is typically how the report proceeds!). Nor is there any serious argument to demonstrate that such issues as discovery and access are specific to research rather than generic. Arrogating these issues to research cuts across the need for national programmes and, crucially, institutions to integrate the management of online information resources. We surely seek common tools and platforms across digital libraries, e-science data, grid based datasets and learning materials. The library profession should be at the heart of achieving this but that isn't the point made in the report. The case for such a split approach is simply not made.

So we have a curate’s egg of a report. Its analysis of the problems is exemplary. Its identification of the gap in advocacy and international representation is telling, its proposal to continue access funding is welcome. But its failure to consider alternative options, its process of argument by assertion, its wish to look backwards to cataloguing coupled with its failure to look forward to building electronic research collections; its ambition to dismember JISC’s programme of generic research and turn it into a partisan research support agenda leave at least this reader with a sense of regret at a missed opportunity and a fear that a perfectly productive system is in danger of being dismembered to satisfy a limited and regressive agenda, while a whole new vista of opportunity and need is ignored .

And where is the new frontier in libraries? Not where the report is and that is more than regrettable. Because there is a case to be made for an RLN with terms of reference which look forward not backward, which shape the future not embalm the past. The report is very tentative on the role of grid computing, which has already been warmly embraced by the frontiersmen. There is nothing on born digital material or on creating the electronic research collections of the future (although the report is rather awestruck by real time data sharing in experimental science), no grand plan for institutional repositories, for digitisation programmes, or for work on trusted repositories. The growing closeness to the British Library is to be welcomed, celebrated and developed; a re-engagement with international fora is much to be applauded since we do seem to have lost our lead in this field and one turns increasingly to Germany, Australia or the European Union’s Framework Programme (FP6) for innovation. Those links need to be strengthened and revivified. Within the UK there is an assumption that virtually all development is coming from the JISC and apart from isolated mentions of CURL there is no recognition that there are a number of other major funding agencies in the UK addressing these issues, ranging from AHRB (Arts & Humanities Research Board) to SLIC (Scottish Library & Information Council). Rather than attack JISC’s funding base in order to build a folly, the proposed RLN would do much better to influence and co-ordinate the R&D agendas of ALL funding agencies in the UK. And above all we need to develop a vision of a library future based on electronic research collections and how these are to be created, discovered, accessed and maintained. There is a huge agenda for RLN to adopt if it chooses, but it is one that should aim to complement what is working well rather than seeking regime change and the removal of tools of mass instruction.

Assuming that a Research Libraries Network is now to be created however, it could play a major role in taking integrated information services forward. So within its terms of reference, it should seek firstly to co-ordinate the R&D budgets of all the funding agencies in the field and aim to support and stimulate research and development notably under FP6; it should have a particular remit for advocacy and international relations; it should seek to explore the implications of grid computing in areas such as the humanities and social sciences, where there are huge opportunities; it should work on the issues associated with the discovery of and access to archives; it should lead work on preservation of electronic and especially of born digital material which remains a serious barrier to progress; it should aim to define and then set up a network of trusted repositories; it should aim to define information standards for local institutional servers and attempt to move England forward to the same level of activity as Wales and Scotland where coherent national planning for research collection discovery and access is in place; it should seek to explore the issues associated with electronic research collection building for future scholars, it might work with groups such as the Association of Research Libraries on projects such as the scholar’s research portal; it should aggressively seek to change models of scholarly communication not merely debate them. Such an agenda and terms of reference would allow Follett 2 to have the same seminal impact as Follett 1.

Or RLN can carry on reworking the past while others get on with shaping the future.

[i] University Grants Committee (1976) Capital provision for university libraries. Report of the Working Party, HMSO [The Atkinson Report]

[ii] Research collections under constraint: the effect on researchers, by Keith Pocklington and Helen Finch of Social and Community Planning Research. British Library, 1987. ISBN 0712331549 (British Library Research Paper no. 36)

[iii] Joint Funding Council’s Libraries Review Group: Report, (1993). Bristol, HEFCE. [The Follett Report]

[iv] http://www.biomedcentral.com/

[v] http://www.iath.virginia.edu/vshadow2/