The ALA Annual conference convened in Chicago this year between June 27^th and July 2^nd. Read on for reports from several interesting sessions we attended.  

Data for Decision Making

Obinnaya Oji, Minitex Resource Sharing   The accumulation of data from numerous sources leads to questions about their usefulness in analysis and how effective they are as a tool in libraries. How we collect, why we collect, when we collect, and what we collect are all part of a decision-making process that hopefully leads to a positive outcome. Two sessions at the ALA Annual Conference were dedicated to the process of data collection and its usefulness in decision making. The first was on “OCLC Library Analytics - Data to Inform Decision Making and Measure Impact.” The focus was on combining collective data with analytical tools to inform decision making. Discussions included e-journal statistics used for collection development analysis. The speaker, Deborah Blecic (U of Illinois at Chicago), examined the use of link resolver data in analysis before obtaining vendor data: “Link resolver data should correlate with erms from vendor.” Kathryn Harnish (OCLC) reminded attendees to be mindful that “When we transform data for analysis, we are imposing an interpretation of it, we have to be aware of it, we are imposing a business logic.” The second session was “Does Your Data Deliver for Decision Making? New Directions for Resource Sharing Assessment.” The focus was on statistics gathering via focus groups, interpretation, and how the information delivers for decision making. Different speakers reviewed data collected at their institutions and how they are used. Most informative was “a combinatorial approach to ILL data gathering” by Margaret Ellingson (Emory University). She defined “combinatorial” as an advanced way of finding a needle in a haystack by knowing where to look for it. Her approach assesses what questions you are trying to answer; what kinds of data you need; can you get it (if so where and how and from whom); and finally what are you going to do with it? These are all basic questions to be answered before we assess, analyze, share, and implement results in an effort to demonstrate the value of our services to our users and funders.  

Jaron Lanier: Who Owns the Future?

Matt Lee Every time you use a free online service today, it is to your detriment in the long term. So says computer scientist, author, and ALA featured speaker Jaron Lanier. As a computer scientist, Lanier is “trained to look honestly and objectively at the results of experiments and explain them.” And when he looks at the experiment of the Internet, he sees trouble. While technology has long promised increased prosperity (e.g., electricity, highways, medicine, etc.), Internet technology has actually increased inequality in the developed world and diminished opportunities for social/economic mobility. Lanier’s talk focused on the dark side of what we might call Big Data. When companies collect and analyze large amounts of data on people or systems, it allows those companies to radiate risk away from themselves and onto others. The insurance industry, for example, succeeded in the past by insuring as many people as possible. Today it profits by insuring as few (potentially sick) people as possible. Big insurance companies shift risk away from themselves and onto society, and they do it by analyzing data on a grand scale. When Walmart decides to lower its prices, it triggers a chain reaction through the supply chain that shifts risk away from Walmart and onto Walmart’s suppliers, their employees, and to society at large. Walmart sales may increase due to the lower prices, but the tighter margins shift to suppliers, who bear the consequences. Big computers at Walmart calculate just how much can be shifted downward. Enron’s use of big data shifted a huge amount of risk to the American public, to our peril. The entire architecture of the Internet is constructed in a way that allows almost anyone to harvest data and use it unfettered for their own purposes. The practice is widespread; throughout the insurance industry, by mega-retailers, in high-frequency investment trading houses, along with search providers, social networks, and more. The architecture we’ve chosen for our networks, by its very design, corrupts large systems by giving them this power. Even if the Amazons and Facebooks and Googles of the world aren’t being intentionally evil, they succeed by using data that they get for free from us for purposes driven by their bottom line rather than the common good. In short, we give data to these big companies who then use that data to squeeze as much as they can from us. If the system continues as-is, Lanier predicts that the middle class will not exist in 20 years. Which is quite a statement. And awfully specific. As in many cases, one can take a perverse joy in unmasking the ills within a system. Proposing a cure for those ills, however, is often less glamorous. And practical solutions are elusive for huge problems. Lanier’s solution, for example, is not practical. He suggests a complete reboot of the Internet. Currently, the Internet affords one-way data interactions, such as copy-pasting text or tracking cookies. Lanier’s Internet would be two-way only. Instead of copying a bit of data (and losing its original context), when you used data from one place, all sorts of metadata from that original source would be included as well. Which would build both context for that data’s use and transparency for its origins. A payment method for that data would also be incorporated. If it turned out that a piece of data was profitable for someone using it, the creator of that data would automatically receive a portion of those profits. Information could not and should not and would not be free in this new environment. For more on the problem and a better explanation of the solution, look to Lanier’s book Who Owns the Future?  

Trends from the Exhibit Hall

Rita Baladad, Minitex CPERS Q: What does CPERS do at ALA? A: We meet with vendors, look for new e-resources, and attend product demonstrations. Here’s a photo of the vendor floor (so neat and tidy!) right before it opens in the morning: Some trends I noticed this year: Small, newly-formed companies

• Third Iron started at a kiosk last year; this year, they moved up to a table and a booth. Third Iron is currently a four-person shop (most of our readers will be familiar with their CEO Kendall Bartsch, former ProQuest manager from Minnesota). Their first product is BrowZine, a bookshelf display app for journals.
• Sidecar Publications is a two-person shop. Their first commercial product is Gimlet, a reference question knowledge base and tracking tool. (As an interesting aside, if you’re curious about how a small vendor views exhibiting at ALA, check out Sidecar’s post.)

Statistics

• Data-Planet, a data resource portal, could also fall under the “small” companies category although the company isn’t all that new. Some Minitex libraries are already familiar with Data-Planet because they supplied the data for ProQuest (formerly LexisNexis) Statistical Datasets; this resource is now available only through Data-Planet. Minitex library folks will be familiar with the Data-Planet rep for Minnesota, Jeremy Zahrte (jzahrte@data-planet.com) as he was our ProQuest/CSA rep a few years ago.
• Statista is another data resource portal. Similar to Data-Planet, Statista aggregates data from various free and commercial sources and allows users to easily export data and create infographics of the data. Check out their Chart of the Day.

Vendors “feeling out” new markets

• Lynda.com is an online library of courses to learn software, business, and creative skills. There’s a helpful class for almost everybody: office productivity (Excel, Power-Point, Word); social media (WordPress, Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook); programming (PHP, Python, Ruby). Lynda.com has individual (consumer) subscribers; corporate subscribers; and a handful of academic and public library subscribers. Right now, subscriptions for public libraries are only for library staff (so, only for “internal” use); Lynda.com is trying to figure out a pricing model that would allow for public library patron use.
• Zinio.com is going gangbusters in the individual consumer and public library market.  I talked to the VP of sales and marketing for Recorded Books, the distributor of Zinio, and told him that the pricing I have seen for academic libraries is somewhat high. The VP replied that they could certainly improve their subscriptions in the academic market; I hope this means that they too are going to consider their current pricing model and devise something that works better for academic markets.

Ebooks OK, OK, this is not a trend but I just thought I’d throw this in here since ebooks are still a hot topic and I looked at a few ebook offerings, most of which our readers are already familiar with (the following list is by no means comprehensive): 3M Cloud Library; OverDrive; ProQuest Ebrary/EBL; EBSCO Ebooks; Beehive; Scholastic. Let me know if there’s a vendor or ebook package you’d like CPERS to evaluate: rita@minitex.umn.edu.    

Resource Sharing Trends in Technology from Discovery to Delivery

Obinnaya Oji & Agnes Lee, Minitex Resource Sharing The different needs of libraries and the response of vendors to these requests were all part of the discussions at the ALA pre-conference session on “Discovery to Delivery: Rethinking Resource Sharing.” The all-day session included presenters from different library types, vendors, and other tech experts. The discussions covered the gamut, ranging from patron needs, discovery platforms, vendor options and input, ebooks, and delivery best practices. [[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"744","attributes":{"class":"media-image size-medium wp-image-88 alignright","typeof":"foaf:Image","style":"","width":"300","height":"190","alt":"laptop"}}]]Anya Arnold (Resource Sharing Program Manager, Orbis Cascade Alliance) delivered the keynote highlighting the process of planning and transition of their 37 members to Exlibris-Primo. The rationale for the change was to improve staff tools, better services, and  improve resource sharing, to mention a few. Additional content in her presentation included their approach to ebooks purchase which is done at a group rate and shared among members, and also their delivery system that delivered 360,000 packages to 83 sites/drops last year. Other presenters brought their expertise to bear in the session. Clare MacKeigan (RELAIS International) discussed the complexities in working with consortia where services may be running across systems. She stressed the need of libraries for choices and how vendors meet those needs. She also observed the challenges vendors face and how they try to solve them, and finally she spoke on incorporating the requirements of delivery staff into software development. Marshall Breeding (LibraryTechnology.org) noted that libraries have different strategic needs. The goal should be to float information to the top like Google or Amazon. He saw ebooks as part of the package and the use of APIs to have a unified presentation layer. He concluded that what is needed is a “more comprehensive approach to index based discovery systems.” He foresees consolidation to products like Alma and Primo, the progressive consolidation of library services, and the reconvergence between discovery and management (mostly in academic libraries). Jamie LaRue (Douglas County Library System, CO) discussed their new approach to ebooks which includes an investment in ebooks management, direct communication with publishers, and accommodating the prevailing trend which is towards self-publishing. Lars Leon (University of Kansas) gave an update on the 2011 ILL cost study, Jason Kucsma (Metropolitan New York Library) on their delivery RFP process, and Lori Ayre (Galecia Group) on what a future state of the art delivery system might look like.