University Librarian Sarah Thomas opened the session by introducing Erla Heyns, who in December began serving as Director of the Flower-Sprecher Veterinary Library. Sarah introduced Sarah Young, who is now the Catalog Librarian at Catherwood Library; Michael Cook, the new Collection Development Librarian at Mann Library; and Leah Solla, who began serving as Chemistry Librarian at the Physical Sciences Library last summer. Leah was not introduced at Academic Assembly in September and Sarah apologized for the oversight. Sarah then introduced our featured speaker, Digital Library Federation Director Daniel Greenstein.
Mr. Greenstein began his presentation, titled “The Digital Library Federation: Retrospect and Prospect,” by discussing the origins of the DLF. The DLF was formed in 1995 by a group of U.S. libraries (including Cornell) who were leading the curve in the development of digital resources and services and who were interested in developing a genuinely national digital library, influencing the scholarly information landscape, sharing the risks and rewards involved in conducting innovative research and service initiatives, seeking greater impact from local library resource investments, and exploring the issues involved in transitioning the research library into a networked civic space.
Mr. Greenstein characterized the DLF as a membership organization, organized from the bottom up, and contrasted that approach to similar efforts in the United Kingdom that are organized from the top down due to centralized government funding. He noted that the DLF is governed by a steering committee of directors (of which Sarah Thomas is currently the chair), is informed by the interests and needs of staff and faculty at member institutions (he observed that this desired characteristic of the DLF is largely aspirational at this point), and is enriched through extensive contacts with stake-holding institutions and communities in the U.S. and abroad.
The DLF is defining programs in the areas of access management (seeking to provide resource discovery, integration, and authentication that cuts across individual collections and institutions), digital preservation, and discipline-specific initiatives (such as those in theology, the social sciences, and art history). The DLF is designing its programs to achieve the objectives of identifying tomorrow’s opportunities today, sharing leading-edge research investments, promoting the use of standards and policies that will govern the national digital library, and incubating innovative information services. To achieve these objectives, the DLF relies on two full-time staff members, contributions in cash and kind from member institutions, collaborative engagement with non-members, selected investment of limited capital funds, and external grant funding for some initiatives.
Mr. Greenstein divided the DLF’s achievements to date into ground-clearing work, leading-edge research and development, service incubation, and information and training. Among the DLF’s ground-clearing efforts, he included, first, identifying research and development priorities, information and training requirements, and new service needs and, second, building conduits between the DLF membership and wider communities in order to minimize redundant efforts at DLF institutions and take a leading role in defining broader developmental agendas. Among the DLF’s research and development efforts, he cited the progress the DLF has made in metadata development, authentication, reference linking, and open archives and the leading role the DLF has taken to shape the digital library research agenda at a practical level. He noted that the DLF’s service incubation achievements include moving beyond an experimental phase in the areas of authentication, reference linking, and open archives, taking advantage of specific opportunities to provide needed services (as in the digitization of art images), and conducting training and awareness-raising initiatives that develop a momentum of their own. He included among the DLF’s information and training achievements disseminating information regarding its research and development effort, documenting systematic evaluation of services, and surveying, synthesizing, and disseminating ground-clearing work, such as that in digital imaging and preservation.
Mr. Greenstein concluded his presentation by identifying questions that the DLF should address as it continues its work. With regard to the DLF as a membership organization, he asked: Is the DLF working in appropriate program areas? In light of this question, he suggested further DLF involvement in collection development, measuring active use, and long-term strategic planning. Are the DLF’s four objectives appropriate or are there others it might pursue? Has the DLF ensured that it informs and is informed by work performed at all appropriate levels within its member institutions? And, is the DLF organized appropriately to achieve its aims? With regard to the aims of the DLF, Mr. Greenstein asked whether those aims are empowering and enabling, catalytic and transforming, focused on library holdings or on the scholarly and cultural record as a whole, and focused on the needs of curators and information professionals or on the needs of users.
A member of the audience noted that, though Mr. Greenstein had characterized empowering DLF members as an internal aim and transforming the scholarly record as an external one, looking outward in this sense is not totally separate from looking inward, that if DLF members can agree on protocols, other institutions will follow the DLF’s lead. Mr. Greenstein agreed with this reframing of his internal-vs-external view, noting the importance of taking research initiatives from the experimentation phase to the implementation phase.
Mr. Greenstein was asked about the DLF’s prospects for success as a membership organization of individual institutions in light of the U.S.’s relative emphasis on individuality as opposed to the rest of the world’s emphasis on collectivity. He responded that, based on his experience with cooperative digital initiatives in the United Kingdom, the U.K. was currently ahead of the U.S. in that regard because top-down funding required the collaboration of individual institutions. He predicted, however, that initiatives in the U.K. will reach an impasse in the next three to five years because there is no mechanism in place to reinforce individual institutions for building on the collective work that has been done. Mr. Greenstein held that the DLF’s challenge is prove that its member institutions can succeed individually as a result of the work they engage in collectively. He cited as an example of this approach the corporate model of pre-competitive collaboration, in which competing companies collaborate to promote innovation and to share development costs, thereby maximizing the benefits they then gain from marketing their individual products and services.
An audience member noted that the NEH will not now fund digital projects without standards for digital preservation and called for the DLF to be actively involved in developing such standards. Mr. Greenstein agreed that it was in everyone’s best interests that standards be developed and followed. He said that he felt that developing preservation standards was an excellent opportunity for the DLF.
Mr. Greenstein was asked in what ways treatment of copyright and fair use in the U.K. differed from that in the U.S. He responded that copyright was not one of his strengths, so he was unable to answer the question.
As a final question, Mr. Greenstein was asked for his views regarding the perception that the library community has maintained a 19th century model of the great research library rather than developing a new model to carry libraries into the 21st century. Mr. Greenstein expressed his desire to be able to facilitate a discussion among the leaders of large research libraries where the participants clearly identified the ways in which the role of the research library has changed over the last one hundred years in order to answer the question, “What are we really doing now?” He noted the risk of redundancy that research libraries face as they are transformed into networked civic spaces because of competitors who provide similar services, albeit badly, but nevertheless successfully. Mr. Greenstein proposed that research libraries need to identify their goals clearly and then harness technology to achieve those goals.
Sarah thanked Mr. Greenstein for his presentation, noting that the final question and answer served as an appropriate prelude to CUL’s Digital Futures Planning Session, to be held on Monday, January 10. Sarah asked that members of the Assembly consider the issues raised by Mr. Greenstein and submit comments to him directly at Greenstein@clir.org or to Sarah in her role as Chair of the DLF Steering Committee.
Minutes recorded by Marty Kurth.
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