Business Case Planning for Research Support Services: A Progress Report

Constellation C: Tuesday, November 1, 11:15AM – 12:00PM

The library community has redescribed its roles in the information lifecycle by building on the extensive knowledge base we have developed through buying published research and organizing and archiving information. With a growing sense of urgency, libraries have defined publishing and archiving services as critical to 21st century research institutions, but dysfunctional in the current environment. Our research and IT colleagues trust Libraries to address these needs that cannot be readily met through existing publication channels or through the existing research infrastructure. But how do libraries effectively operate these services when both short- and long-term costs are not well understood?

We will provide a research update on Business Cases for New Service Development in Research Libraries, a CLIR/DLF-funded research project to recommend methods for effective service planning in research libraries, adapting processes from the business as well as the not-for-profit sectors. Our research will examine how business planning methods can be applied in our not-for-profit contexts, and we will recommend some best practices that may be adopted. We will also research and write up to six case studies based on the development of campus-based publishing programs and research data management services. Our presentation at DLF will recap the goals of this project, present our planning model and outline our plans for case studies. We wish to solicit feedback on how our project can best meet the community’s needs.

Resources

Session Leaders

Mike Furlough is Associate Dean for Research and Scholarly Communications at Penn State University. Joining Penn State in 2006 from the University of Virginia, he leads content stewardship services to support the life cycle of scholarly production, including curation, publication, preservation and outreach to researchers. He is one of the organizers of THATCamp Publishing, and the Taiga Forum, both held in conjunction with this DLF Forum.

Theodore Fons is Director, WorldCat Global Metadata Network, OCLC. In that role he oversees services that include synchronization of WorldCat with thousands of library catalogs, stewardship of the WorldCat Registry, and the WorldCat knowledge base of licensed electronic resources. Prior to joining OCLC Ted worked at Innovative Interfaces, and in academic libraries doing acquisitions, cataloging and reference work.

Elizabeth Kirk is Associate Librarian for Information Resources at Dartmouth College Library, where she is responsible for the Library’s collections program and services in digital resources, scholarly communications, acquisitions, cataloging and metadata, and assessment. Previous to coming to Dartmouth College, Eliz was founding manager of the Entrepreneurial Library Program the Sheridan Libraries at the Johns Hopkins University. She has spoken extensively on electronic information, library services to distance education, social entrepreneurship in libraries, copyright, and using technology to transform higher education.