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MIT Libraries
Annual Report FY 2000-2001
Technology Planning and Administration
During this fiscal year the MIT Libraries has established itself as a
committed player in the educational technology landscape of the Institute.
The strong progress of our DSpace initiative, along with the creation
of another Mellon-funded initiative, have helped draw vital attention
and funding to the Libraries’ role in educational technology. Libraries
managers have participated in planning groups from MITCET to OCW, and
expect to continue their engagement with educational technology efforts
across the campus. And within the Libraries new ideas continue to be nurtured,
building out our limited research experience. Even as we take a place
at the campuswide ed-tech table, we also continue to improve our own operational
technology foundations. This year we made the transition to the third
generation of our Barton library management system, a transition which
demanded extraordinary effort from our whole staff. We also revised our
public web and our printing architecture with an eye on the sustainability
of these services.
Taking a Seat at the Educational Technology Table
Libraries have long been at the heart of education technology on the
campus. In fact, books are a masterful piece of educational technology,
and all that libraries do to manage these assets for MIT are expressions
of earlier efforts to master this educational technology. But the world
moves on and today the new expressions of educational technology are in
the digital realm, where again the library is building a role and reputation
for itself.
MIT Libraries administrators now sit on both the MIT Council on Education
Technology and the Open CourseWare steering committee. We have also engaged
deeply in our role on the campuswide Information Technology Architecture
Group. Managers of the Open Knowledge Initiative and Stellar projects
from Academic Computing have sought our expertise, and Libraries staff
have participated in the "knowledge summit" sponsored by these
efforts. We have begun regular formal strategic planning meeting between
the highest levels of Academic Computing and Libraries management, so
that our efforts may be well coordinated. This participation in the Institute's
vision and planning for educational technology has seen vital growth this
year, and sprouts from the Libraries’ mission and research agenda.
DSpace
The DSpace project, supported by the Hewlett-Packard Laboratories ($1.8M)
and the Andew W. Mellon Foundation ($214,000) seeks to build a system
which can capture, preserve, and communicate the research output of the
Institute which is born in digital form (see http://web.mit.edu/dspace).
The project is now fully staffed and has defined the core attributes of
the system. This year we established a Faculty Advisory Board which has
met twice and a Technical Review Board which has helped the team confront
some sticky technical choices. We have also identified a set of "early
adopters" within the Institute. These departments, labs, and centers
will begin to use DSpace in the fall of 2001, while the rest of campus
will await the formal release of the repository in the first few months
of calendar year 2002.
The MIT Libraries have also begun active planning for the handoff of
DSpace from the research team to our operational technology group. This
handoff could take place as soon as the summer of 2002.
We have also hired two Sloan MBA's to take on the Mellon-funded challenge
of building a business model for DSpace. We believe such a plan to be
crucial to our ability to sustain DSpace for the long term called for
in our commitment to faculty.
EJournal Archiving
This year the MIT Libraries were gratified to attract a second Mellon
Foundation grant ($140,000), this time for the purpose of planning for
an ejournal archiving project. We are interested in tackling the archiving
of a specific subset of the new scholarly literature, a medium we think
will constitute the next generation of ejournal publishing, a medium we
will call "dynamic ejournals." Dynamic ejournals are scholarly
web sites which aim to share discoveries and insights, but do not feel
bound by the conventions of "issues" and "articles"
that have become standard in print. We believe that the dynamic ejournals
currently published represent the leading edge of a broad range of dynamic
content which we must learn to capture for future scholars.
This effort builds on the close relationship between the MIT Libraries
and the MIT Press. The Press produces CogNet, one of the premier examples
of a "dynamic ejournal" present in the world today.
The goal of this planning grant is to develop a proposal for actually
undertaking the archiving task proposed for submission to the Mellon Foundation
for further funding. This project proposal should be ready to submit to
Mellon before the end of FY2002.
Digital Reference
One of the most encouraging aspects of our new energy around research
into educational technology issues is the fact that staff throughout the
Libraries now feel empowered to investigate new service ideas on their
own initiative. One of the most intriguing initiatives from our staff
this year has been one to develop a service which would place the skills
of the reference librarian out on the net. Libraries have always been
more than the sum of their collections, they have also offered skilled
guidance and research assistance to those who stop at the desk in a reading
room and seek such aid. Digital libraries have been missing this essential
component of library service, and the digital reference team has been
exploring ways to bring this service to the web.
This year the team succeeded in mounting a small pilot "Ask Us"
service on the MIT Libraries web page. The team worked closely with LSSI,
a library vendor who in turn works with a high-end provider of web-based
interactive customer support and service systems. They have learned the
benefits and limitations of such software while providing the library
vendor with insight into the real needs of academic research libraries
and their patrons. We hope to expand this pilot project in the next academic
year.
Tending to Operational Technology Foundations
Even as we reach for new horizons and investigate our role in the emerging
digital delivery mechanisms of education, we also have to tend to the
established technologies of our trade. Managing the physical (and electronic)
assets of the Libraries is done with the help of an automated system we
call the "Library Management System". After six years of service,
the current library management system reached the end of its anticipated
functionality on schedule in FY2000. The process of migrating to a new
system was begun last year and reached the implementation stage this year.
We also found that our web site had outgrown its original design and functionality,
and it was redesigned with the benefit of significant user input this
year. And, finally, we found that to sustain the growth in printing inspired
by networked resources, we had to move to a cost-recovery architecture
for public printing.
Third Barton
This year's task was to make a choice between the Sirsi Unicorn system
and the Ex Libris Aleph 500 system and then to implement that choice.
Aiming for both selection and implementation in a single year was an ambitious
agenda, but we felt the process would be difficult no matter the pace,
and so were determined to press ahead as quickly as possible. We reviewed
the vendor responses to an RFP issued last summer, solicited information
from and made site visits to various sites currently running these two
systems, compiled information from various phone and email contacts with
the vendors, and most importantly, obtained extensive feedback from our
staff following week-long hands-on demonstrations from each vendor. Our
RFP was relatively brief, with much of the emphasis of our process weighted
toward the hands-on demonstrations provided to our staff. Our review led
us to conclude that the Aleph 500 system from Ex Libris would be the best
match for the MIT Libraries.
Contract negotiations took place in the fall of 2000. We promoted one
of our staff to the position of Project Manager for the transition to
the new system, and serious work on that transition began last December.
The transition process has been difficult due both to the tight timeframe
and to Ex Libris' decision to support our migration via a team operating
in Israel. Our staff performed terrifically well planning for the transition,
converting our data, and configuring the new system. We met our target
of making the transition on the fiscal year boundary, missing our original
forecast "switch-to-production" date by only one week. This
target was met due to the extraordinary efforts of our staff over the
past six months. We've documented that the effort required close to 5%
of the total productivity of our staff during this period.
Public Web Redesign
When the MIT Libraries undertook its first professional design of its
web pages four years ago, we developed a distinctive look which reflected
our physical embodiment. Thanks in large part to usability studies by
our Web Manager, we've learned that this reflection of our physical layout
does not serve the MIT community very well. Our users, it turns out, would
rather see a web page which emphasizes the services of the Libraries instead
of their locations. And these services also need to be identified by names
which are meaningful to the users themselves, rather than those which
we in the libraries recognize. In retrospect, this all may seem self-evident,
but diligent usability studies were the tool which unlocked our thinking
and moved us toward a fresh solution.
These usability studies took place last summer and a redesign was embarked
on this fall. The new design was unveiled to the community in June and
has, to date, received warm reviews. Our Web Manager has worked with the
campuswide web services team to pass along the techniques and strategy
of usability studies and our web site redesign stands as tribute to their
value.
Cost-Recovery Printing
The presence of meaningful quantities of relevant journal literature
online has begun to change student and faculty collection utilization
patterns. Photocopying journal articles has begun to give way to printing
them from online collections. (Reading full articles online seems to await
more advanced display technologies.) The MIT Libraries has noticed this
shift as a decrease in photocopying and a corresponding increase in printing.
While we charge for photocopies, which helps us recover the costs of the
machines, service, and consumables involved, we were not charging for
printing from computers. Given the shift underway, we realized we could
not long continue to provide printing within the Libraries unless we found
some way to recover the costs.
After some considerable investigation in 1999, we settled on a plan to
add the same vend-a-cards to our public printing infrastructure as was
already in place for photocopiers. Our cost analysis made it clear to
us that even though we could expect a decline in online printing volume
of as much as 75% once charging was in place, we would be able to recover
the costs of the hardware, servers, and supplies required for public printing
within three years.
We have been charging for public printing since February 2001 throughout
the Libraries. Very few patrons need personal assistance to understand
how the system works. We have begun to see the anticipated decline in
online printing volume, but the experience of other libraries leads us
to expect that volume will recover within four years. Perhaps most surprising
of all, we have had only a very few complaints about the new charges.
New Opportunities
The opportunities for applying technology to the work of the Libraries
never end. In the coming year we hope to implement a laptop loan program
which takes advantage of the wonderful new wireless networking made available
to the Libraries though MITCET's initiative. We also expect to focus on
issues of staff training that will enhance our ability to support the
digital technology we present to both the public and our own staff. And
we will have to seek new technology leadership since our Assistant Director
for Technology Planning and Administration will halt his weekly commute
from Minnesota. These and the continuing challenges of participating in
the Institutes own educational technology dreams will keep the MIT Libraries
innovating.
-- Eric Celeste
webmaster@libraries.mit.edu
This page was last updated on
Thursday, 16-Jul-2009 07:54:40 EDT
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