Classics

As we move from a collections-based to a relational library, storytelling becomes very important. One trend is the emergence of a stronger narrative or storytelling emphasis on websites, which helps position the library, promote its services, and address specific interests.

The phrase 'workflow is the new content' captures an important insight. In the digital environment we often create, use and share content through workflow applications.

Over the past few years I have been talking about three systemic ways in which collections, broadly understood, are evolving in a network environment. They are: the collective collection, the facilitated collection, and the inside-out collection.

This post discusses two approaches to the coordination of collective collections. One is retrospectively, where coordination is layered over pre-existing autonomously created collections. The second is prospectively, where a group takes a collective approach to how collections are built.

While collective collections have been much discussed, less attention has been paid to how to operationalize them in consortial settings. This post introduces work done with the BTAA to explore this challenge.

Libraries now manage facilitated collections alongside their acquired collections: these are collections assembled from the web organized around user interests.

We are now used to memory institutions as a way of collectively referring to libraries, archives and museums. We also recognize that memory is not univocal or may be contested.

Libraries are not ends in themselves, but serve the interests of the organizations of which they are a part. As university emphasis varies around research, education and career poles, we can expect to see libraries evolve to support those emphases more strongly.

Libraries and related organizations group together in a variety of ways to get their work done. They consort where there are scale advantages: to lobby, for example, to negotiate and license, to reduce costs, or to build shared infrastructure.

It is important to know what you know, so that you can avoid the curse of knowledge and communicate effectively.

Collections are changing in a network environment. One important direction is the assembly of resources around user needs based on a facilitated access model rather than an acquisition model.

It has been interesting watching Research Information Management or RIM emerge as a new service category in the last couple of years.