 Okay. Welcome everybody. I think it's time to get started. I'm Cliff Lynch, the Director of CNI, and it's my pleasure to welcome you to this breakout session, which is a part of the CNI 2020 Spring Virtual Meeting. The topic today is, as indicated, it's not what libraries hold, it's who libraries serve. This is a joint presentation by Schumann Wang of the University of Cincinnati and Roger Schoenfeld of Ithaca SNR, and it I think will be very timely in light of recent events, although it describes work that happened before the world changed primarily. We'll take questions at the end. Diane Goldenberg-Hart will moderate the questions. There is a Q&A tool down at the bottom of your screens, and feel free to queue up questions at any point during the presentation as they occur to you, although as I say, we will address them all at the end. And with that, I will just say welcome, and I will pass it over to Schumann, who I believe is going to speak first. It's all yours. Thank you. Thank you, Cliff. And good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for your participation, and Roger and I are going to do this. We're going to speak about 30 minutes, then we're going to engage you with the dialogue, with the conversation. This session means to be participatory and interactive, right? So I'm going to do the set of the context, Roger, the next slide, to talking about the task force, which I led as the chair, and some of the work process we have done. First, let me make the statement. This report and all the works has been done prior to COVID-19. In today's situation, if you're thinking about what's going on now in the world and around us, I'm quite sure the dimension of the scope of this work might be quite different in terms of the user-centric perspective, right? Next slide. So a little bit about the Ohio link. For those of you who participated, you might be knowing the Ohio link. The organization has been emerging now. It's the 27 years or something like that for the history. We have been very much the leadership in many ways. This is the largest, one of the largest in the world, the academic library consortium. We have 118 higher education libraries in the organization, from the five AR libraries to many of the research universities, other research, R2 universities, doctoral universities, and all the way to the two years and the community from the both public and private sector. So this is one of the largest academic consortium. We have been very much in the leadership in terms of leading the use of technology. From the early 90s, we were able to create one of the first shared catalog system. So in many of the change encountered in our environment, the Ohio link membership libraries has gone through a lot of, just like you, going through a lot of transformational changes of our service scope. So the drive behind this work is really about this transformational change. The service scope go beyond much more than what we call the print primacy. That service centrally surrounding with the print, with the physical connections has been passed. So those are the situation, drive the library thinking about what we do for our technology. Another trigger us to start this work is by 20, when we started, the market was on the way to be more, the IRS market is on the way to be more consolidation. By the middle of our work, we got the acquisition from the information about the progress to purchase the innovative, become part of the deliveries. So those market consolidation was part of our broader environmental scan. We were constantly to watch over this project. And the market consolidation certainly bring the question which Roger is going to talk about more. Is this the direction we want to see in terms of the stimulate of the innovation? In general speaking, the tremendously drive and the background about this work is really focused on this transformationally change. The service scope has been much broader than the connections and the printing materials. And our needs are really outpaced what the market can offer to us. We were somewhat talking about before forming the task force, the community, Ohio link community was collectively debate. And for the long time, what about what we what we were going, a lot of frustration and about the current IRS system, which is innovative we're using. And we don't know what we're going to do and where they're going. And all of this leads to the urgency, the sense of the urgency in looking about what we're going to do about our system. Next, please. So in the end, about approaching the end of the 2018 and the community and emerge the consensus is instead of looking for next generation of the library system to replace potentially about our innovative, and we were emerged the consensus about we should get together just to make some of the assessment and the brainstorming and the really envisioning what the future system looks like. And from there, we can thinking about where we go directionally about this IRS system. So that was the primary drive. Then we move to the very quick the process. We formed the task force. And I was the chair of the executive committee. So I took that responsibility to form the task force. The task force mean to be the members of the task force. We come out of some of the critters. For example, we have the 118 members, we want to be representative. So our task force, including the AR libraries and four years college, two years college public private, but we also want to be agile, representative, but also agile. And certainly one of the critters we very much emphasize when I select members is be strategic. We thought about who are the people serving the task force, usually when you're talking about the system, people serving the task force could be down to the level of the head of the systems and even the system libraries type of position. But after directors debate, we believe we want to state this strategic level of the membership. At the director level, we did not include anyone under the directors or the members, 10 members of the task force and other directors from the different segment of the membership. Certainly, we want to select the members who can really think out of the box and who are very well connected, not only just their library world, but the service scope and responsibility in their university and their parents organization as well. So we end up have the 10 members and we invite the senior managers from the Ohio link to join us. Then we contract with the ethical SNR and the Roger and his team for the work. The work was originally designed for about 10 months, but they take a little bit longer over the particularly marked consolidation happening and we have some extra work of the environmental discussion over there. Then eventually we come out this white paper and Roger going to talk about in detail. The automated goal for this task force and the white paper I should point out is not functioning as the blueprint for the Ohio link to choose our system. It's more about this is the brainstorming outcome from the community of the Ohio link. We want to make a statement. The statement we want to make is to encourage our community and from both the library side and the user side and the vendor side from the entire ecosystem to create this open dialogue about what we really need for our future system and that's what we intend to do. From there I'm going to turn the time to the Roger and to tell you the more detail about the report that we're going to open up for the conversation. Roger. Thanks so much Shimo and thanks everyone for joining us today. At a very high level this was what I think we wanted to introduce as our approach into thinking about library systems and our thinking about library systems was not just about the ILS specifically or the LSP specifically because there are other kinds of library systems other kinds of systems that libraries use and operate and interact with but our high level engagement was really that library systems should be enablers of the strategic directions that the libraries themselves in service to their parent institutions are trying to pursue but too often these systems have instead of serving as enablers they've actually served as impediments making it harder to achieve the strategic direction that otherwise would have been pursued. That was really at a very high level what we were looking at. I'm going to just walk through a few slides outlining some of the key insights from the report. Many of you I know have had a chance to read it already so this is really just meant as a quick intro or a quick refresh to allow us to get into a little bit more dialogue but in terms of the market factors that we saw impacting the situation today because we recognize that one of the one of the real pleasures of working with this task force was a true mindset an understanding around the market dynamics and the market realities around how investments in systems have been made over the course of time and some of the strategic dilemmas that that then introduces. So some of the key market factors that we considered was that what I've conceptualized as the race to the cloud, the race to move provider systems into cloud-based library systems has required fairly large-scale capital investment that only a few of the providers only a few of the the companies and not-for-profits in the library systems landscape could manage. That shift to the cloud as I think everyone will recognize has enabled some important features. It's also raised expectations among users among libraries in in some important ways and as a result of this this this race to the cloud the capital investments that only a few could manage there's really there's a noticeable decline in the number of meaningful competitors in the systems marketplace for academic libraries than was the case a decade ago. That's you know we've just seen a lot of the consolidation that Shimo was speaking about a moment ago but even so it's not clear that some of the systems that have been marketed as next generation or cloud-based systems it's not clear that these even today have met the full range of current needs and I think that that's you know that's that's a that's a conclusion that I think was a hard one for the working group to reach but one that one that took us a while to get to but was an important realization when when when we got there you know in a you know just to take a couple of examples of where today's business requirements the business requirements that the Ohio link members see for themselves that they don't see met in the current crop of offerings data limitations a lack of standards perfusion of separate and siloed platforms even among the next generation systems that has created just enormous challenges in moving data back and forth and standardizing it in making it interoperable in a in a live way so data limitations is one thing and the second one that that I would mention is that the modern library is digital first and I mean obviously in light of the disruptions that almost all academic libraries are seeing today you know the the modern library is not only digital first but but today digital only in many cases and so we were coming at this from the perspective of its platforms should be digital first in the way that they were that they were that that that that they're provided from everything we saw from everything we studied from everything we learned it it does not feel like any platform has a first-rate solution to managing and making discoverable e-resources and and that's something that felt like a real impediment in terms of the abilities of the current platforms to provide for the current business requirements so so Ohio link you know against this kind of sense of inadequacy of current offerings the working group pulled together a vision not of what would it take to improve the platforms to meet today's requirements but rather what are the what is the underlying vision of what we think library systems need to be able to do in order to serve as those strategic um enablers that I was speaking about a few minutes ago and that vision has four components to it I'm not going to try to get into any great specificity on any of these elements you can consult the report for a lot more detail but just again to provide it at a high level the four the four pieces were these number one to center on the user this is a key part of the vision that the Ohio link group came together with libraries have been talking about focusing on the user reorganizing re-centering around the user for for years now actually moving beyond the collection as the organizing principle and towards the user as the organizing principle whether libraries have done everything they could do or everything they will do in this in this respect is not really the point the point for our purposes is that every library system in existence today is centered around the collection of a given library and I'll say even more so and we'll come back to this in a moment even more so around the print collection of a given library and this this institutionally focused collection focused um element of this of the system's design is really incompatible with the direction that libraries themselves are trying to take around centering and focusing on the user um as as we all know today and have known for some time the typical academic user is not interested in just the collections of this institution of one institution certainly not just the print collections just the published collections they're interested in discovering and accessing not only publications but primary sources not only print but also electronic not only published but also primary sources and not only those at their local institutions but really all of those that they might have access to through collaborations like Ohio link like CRL and and other kinds of other kinds of non-local collections and and and what we recognized was that these discovery and access processes often don't happen for the user any longer this is something that's also been recognized for a while they don't happen for the user any longer as I need to go to the library they they happen as part of a larger set of research or teaching or learning workflows and the library is not any longer the primary starting point whether physically or virtually and so all of these factors are ones that led us to say that the current generation of systems even the the newest generation of systems has not fully centered on the user and indeed is still unduly centered um on on the collection of a given library so that's element number number one element number two with a nod to Lorcan Dempsey and some of his colleagues at OCLC that have done wonderful work to try to call to our attention the importance of the facilitated collection what they've called the facilitated collection as as as I've already made a little bit of reference to library's collections roles have expanded for years now far beyond building local tangible uh tangible collections um and so uh and and and and so and the role that they've taken instead is facilitating access to collections across an array of formats whether that be collecting or licensing or digitization or providing for open access um an array of collaboration so all of that work to facilitate the collection to facilitate access to facilitate discovery is equally important if you think from a user-centered perspective as the local collection and library library systems today remain unduly focused on the tangible collections of individual institutions so we're looking for the Ohio link team was looking for systems that really embraced this idea of a sort of multi engagement for any given library around different kinds of collaborations different kinds of formats different kinds of access models and trying to understand how systems could truly embrace and center themselves around user needs in the environment of a facilitated collection a third element of the vision was institutional integration um library systems have often been designed as silos separate and apart from the other systems that exist within a higher education institution and anyone who has worked to integrate the library system just to make circulation uh the circulation work of a library system keep pace with changing enrollments and registrations and all of that knows that those integrations are often vexed at best but today the library is increasingly integrated into any number of different research and teaching and learning processes within the university or college and yet other than for basic business processes like some of those that I was mentioning a moment ago library systems tend to be almost entirely siloed from research workflow systems from instructional and learning workflow systems and so and so our working group felt very strongly that the library system must be designed to be thoroughly linked to maybe not integrated with but maybe integrated with those other systems that support research teaching and learning in higher education and then finally in most integrated business intelligence this is something that we came back to again and again in so many other sectors digital tools have made it possible for organizations to vastly improve the basic business intelligence they have available to them as you probably may know modern business intelligence you know it should enable libraries to do so many activities that are hard to do now to analyze improve and communicate their value to optimize their operations to strengthen their negotiating position with with their vendors with publishers and so forth library systems can do little of this they've made some steps in the right direction in terms of providing better analytics today than once was the case in the past but there is a long way to go in terms of thinking about modern and integrated business intelligence if library systems were were integrated with other or linked to other systems within the library or with within the broader higher education institution there would be some meaningfully greater opportunities to improve services for users and the business intelligence necessary to optimize the academic library so that's that's really where we were coming from with integrated business intelligence so let me spend a moment or two talking about the reception that the report has received in some I don't mean in terms of on social media and things like that but in terms of what the task force and Ohio link itself was looking for which was to try to influence the marketplace for library systems the point here wasn't to write a beautiful report and see it tweeted a lot or give a lot of presentations about it though we're happy to do that the point really was to try to influence the market for these systems and to ensure that market competition remains strong and to ensure that lots of entities have a chance to think about how to respond to what we believe is a strong vision that will be shared by many other organizations not just by Ohio link and its members but many other organizations in higher education and academic libraries we've seen some very very positive reception both at a staff level for recognizing some of the shortcomings of the existing class of systems and at a leadership level for you know presenting a vision that you know may not be perfect but it's been heartening to hear that it provides a starting point of generating a vision that could be much more widely adopted or shared across the academic library community we've heard a lot of interest privately from some vendors about this vision and here I'm not referring just to what you might think of as the usual suspects in library systems we've heard some very substantial interest from other kinds of providers in the workflow space in the platform space that go well beyond the traditional library systems providers and you know it will be interesting to see whether what arises is a new set of offerings that introduce some perhaps some new competition renewed competition into the marketplace perhaps that that that helped to offer some alternative models for alternative models for what library systems could look like because we've had even the open-source alternatives that have been developed in recent years although they have helped to diversify and in some ways provide some new sources of competition have also adopted some of the fundamentally flawed what we see as some of the fundamentally flawed or outdated paradigms that have informed the commercial providers as well so we're really hoping that some of the implications of this work will be to help stir the pot here a little bit introduce some new thinking bring forth some new ideas and hopefully provide an opportunity for some new paradigms to enter this marketplace and help the academic library engage in you know see have systems available to it that can serve a little bit more as those strategic enablers that we were talking that I was talking about before and certainly not not any form of impediment now in terms of next steps we are continuing to you know a lot has been disrupted over the last few months for all sorts of things and in all sorts of ways but we are interested still today in these issues we believe that these issues are even more present and in some ways even more vexing in the in the current disrupted environment for academic libraries and users then was even the case before some of the limitations around being able to center around the user limitations about being able to really embrace a facilitated collection that goes beyond local tangible holdings these kinds of things matter today and will matter in the future only more than ever before and so we hope that others will be interested in you know in in I think Ohio links hope here is that others will be interested in in in considering what what might arise from from this vision so let me stop there shimo I don't know if you would like to say any any closing words before we turn things over to question and answer and discussion more broadly yeah we got some question come up now um uh we can directly enter into the conversation uh I think you summarized bird will about the report already so it looks like we have the first question here diane do you want to are you going to meet us through discussion or would you like us to jump right in uh it's fine by me if you would like to jump in or I can um I can get started fielding that question for you um and why don't I just go ahead and read that that question straight off the bat and just to introduce everyone um diane goldenberg heart with c and I and welcome to today's webinar so our first question today um is I'd like to hear more about the strategy of looking to the marketplace for example opening a dialogue with vendors rather than a strategy of looking to the community itself is there a sense that a library community created system cannot be created sustained and then only the for-profit market is robust enough to serve these needs in a nutshell why the focus on the market rather than the community in order to meet user needs and she further clarifies she doesn't mean open source necessarily could be a build their own for ohio link that isn't open so we did a little bit of analysis of this as part of the project maybe I should talk a little bit about the analysis shimo and you'd like to talk about yeah yeah I can talk about the culture of the ohio link potentially okay go ahead yeah so so we looked um at the history of library systems development over um the you know previous decades as as some of you know um many if not most of the library um systems in use today have their uh some of them anyway have their history as systems that were created at individual institutions so for those of you who are familiar with marshal breeding's wonderful chart of all of the mergers and acquisitions that took place in the systems marketplace over the course of time many of the origin stories of the library systems was you know this this service at virginia tech and that service said you know cornell and this one I don't have it all at hand but in in every case in every case there was an there was a need at a certain point as there as there was an effort to scale up those systems to capitalize them in a way that even a single higher education institution or you know probably even a medium sized to large consortium wouldn't be able to do itself if we look at some of the efforts around open source systems you know we can see some similar some similar dynamics around you know what has been sustained what will be sustained what what has not been sustained so we were being very pragmatic and although trying not to rule out any possibilities whatsoever I mean I think one of the reasons why we wanted to publish uh the paper in the end was to make sure that the vision would be widely available to anyone who might wish to take it up but I do think that there was a certain basic question about you know who will have the capital resources whose position to have the capital resources even from a philanthropic perspective whose position to have the capital resources necessary to make these kinds of investments shima let me turn things over to you with that yeah in terms of the the potentially kind of imagine the Ohio link build ourselves such the system I have to see perhaps not uh the reason is that you look at the people or the the workforce working in the in the integral library system you look at any of your organization when you are expanded the scope of the digital initiative you actually are not starting from there you usually starting with new sets of the workforce whether it is the digital scholarship center research research data team and they are starting to build some of other sense platform actually relatively independently apart from the IRS team so what I try to say is that not only we may not have that expertise I don't think we have that mindset in our collectively Ohio link IRS system about that user centric I don't blame them they have been working in the years surrounding with this IRS workflow those build surrounding the traditionally connection centric not that they really expanded the scope of the service so I don't see the the the Ohio link will be able to uh collectively build our own next generation of the system thank you thank you shuma thank you roger and uh just by the way that question was from lisa hinch lift so lisa thank you very much for that great question and I just want to remind everyone that we are open for questions now please feel free to type your questions in the q and a box uh or in the chat box we'll be fielding them live we also um just referencing shumos call earlier and rogers as well to make this an open discussion we have the ability to turn your microphones on if you want to make a comment or engage directly with roger shumo please raise your hand your virtual hand and we will move you into um the panelists arena so that you can dialogue directly with them this is um a great platform for being able to do that I want to remind everyone that uh this webinar is part of c and i's ongoing virtual membership meeting spring 2020 virtual membership meeting which is going on until the end of may and i'm just going to share with you the direct link to our um schedule for the rest of the meeting and i ran into this problem last time and i'm going to trouble you again sorry about that there's the direct link to the schedule so please take a look and uh sign up for more webinars we hope to see you back and we have another question now um the question is a congratulations to our speakers for a very good presentation and the question is ohio link is a very diverse organization with over 100 members how do you make sure that the diverse needs are met in this planning process it's a great question okay roger i can go first you can you can join me hi tong thank you for that question i'm glad you're on uh yeah you you were here uh in the ohio link you knew you knew the history indeed uh when we select the task force we we thought about this issue we want all the perspective the the exploration and the the needs exploration in that four category roger talking about actually reflect diverse perspective from the membership it's not only just the arl type of the library's needs uh in in the discussion over the task force we we try to cover the the that diverse perspective we it is our hope whatever the community eventually gather together to come out more robust comprehensive criterias for the future user centric system uh it will be very uh much modularized in the way and uh flexible enough and the uh the the the different libraries different size of the library different the focused mission of the library can adapt them in the very modularized way we we talked about that uh i do understand the the arl library's needs is very different than two years uh the the cottage right uh so that's what we have been discussed roger do you have any preservation over the task force yeah i would i would i would say that one of the things that one of the reasons why i think the vision here is one that really could be widely um shared even beyond ohio link is is a shima was saying that membership of the of the consortium but also the membership of the of the task force and the uh and also um you know focus groups we did and other research we did along the way was very very diverse from an institutional from an institutional type perspective one of the most uh diverse groups in that sense that i've i've ever had a chance to work with um i would you know and i think that we actually intentionally um held aside some ideas that if we had just been doing this you know inside of a group of arl institutions let's say or for that matter just been doing it inside of a group of community colleges we probably would have come up with a vision that had had additional elements either way and we decided to really focus on the things that we felt were shared across all of those organization types so um you know if we had just a group of community colleges it probably would have been much more integrated uh you know there would have been a lot more work to talk about integrations with um testing and wellness and some other issues if we'd been looking at health sciences libraries probably um much more of an integration into clinical care solutions and how to think about that if we if we thought about research universities we you know we talked a little bit during the course of the working group about um uh about research workflow tools and some of the you know some of the ways that the elseviers and clarivates and digital sciences of the world are are really offering workflow that you know in a way needs to connect with the library but we we decided not to emphasize any of those things in this report to try to try to look at something that would be more of a shared or common common vision that's great and of course there's plenty plenty here that crosses all of those spheres um but raise thanks for great raising that great point hyping and um he thanks you for that answer uh we have plenty of time here for more questions and we we would actually really like to hear your comments as well about about the report about some of the um attrition in the marketplace and even some of the new issues that have popped up as a result of the COVID-19 crisis so um the floor is open if anyone would like to raise their hand make a comment ask a question please feel free to do so now and just as a quick reminder again this is part of CNI's virtual membership meeting 2020 we have a couple more sessions coming up later this afternoon we'll be hearing from Jennifer Van Opel and Mary Beth Snap on DevOps is bigger than IT driving digital transformation in libraries and afterwards we'll be hearing from Jamie Wittenberg on empowering data-driven research through an open accessible data infrastructure both of those um very compelling topics and more to come throughout the week um just waiting here to see if we've got any more questions and I see that Lisa Hinchliffe has um got another question for you and Lisa asks how will Ohio link evaluate the impact of this white paper if they find the marketplace responding sufficiently that it is worth issuing an RFP okay that's a very good question Lisa um um yeah uh we are in the in the transition of the Ohio link leadership uh you know the Grand Evans has been moved on um to to another job and we have the uh UNRM director here and the community community about was about working with the state uh the department of higher education talking about succession planning but the the pandemic suddenly shut down everything changing the direction so um I would say um from my point of view Lisa to to evaluate impact is how many people like this kind of a decision we can talk about this report not put them on the shelf um and also certainly I'm very careful very care about the vendor community's reaction uh Roger mentioned that um I already been approached by several vendors uh to talk about this uh again the pandemic had shut down this uh uh opportunity I I'm more think it's looking for the the reaction from the non-traditionally library vendors I would like to see some of the new enters some of the uh uh uh dot com company and even the startup are be interesting to thinking about this space what we're looking for again the criteria is just a starting point for the dialogue we hope the community eventually come out of much more robust comprehensive criterias to express the four pillars we set up over there or even the additionally pillars but at the point is the currently offering does not meet our needs and our needs is continually growing who are the people can follow this route to address our needs now and in the future and we need to keep change not not sell as something designed for the 25 years after our workflow right so that's the one of the sense uh uh we we were trying to evaluate the impact Roger you have anything to to add I think I think that was perfect I think that makes sense yeah yeah thank you that was uh a very interesting answer to a good question thanks Lisa and we have a really interesting question that's just by the way uh Dan one more add about uh RFP we are Ohio link at this moment because of the leadership transition and because of the pandemic even before that we were nowhere near to issue the RFP because we don't believe there is the offering we are interested to buy at this moment excellent point so this is another interesting question I think on a topic that you didn't touch on in your presentation this comes from Robert Hilliker um thinking about what you learned in the process of preparing your report what do you think the implications are for library staffing well that's a very good question um I can go first Roger um sure you can talk about broader I can talk about the using my Cincinnati as the example okay I'm the dean here I'm the vice provost for the digital scholarship uh I'm responsible not only just for the library but for the universal wide of the digital scholarship implementation as well so um implication to the library staff staffing um I would like to see more integration Robert with my truly integration with my library IT team with my digital scholarship center team right they both have the developers they both have the technology workers but their workflow is I would say digital scholarship center is much more forward thinking and outside external user engaged library IT IRS team is still very much internally focused and the library workflow focused I like to see the new system this new future direction of the system bring them truly together there there's hardly a way to to to differentiate what which one is working on the the user engaging the system which one is also working more of the collection centric system so um uh in the many ways if you're talking about the staffing expertise I would see I would like to see library IRS staff member um uh learning more about the what are the digital scholarship center is doing in terms of technology and the vice versa the digital scholarship center people understand more deep about the IRS system and particularly the future direction of the IRS system right so so that's one thing I can think about I'm sure you have any broader observation yeah that's great I I just add one or two things um coming back really to my um laying out of the ideas of impediments and enablers and I think that I think what what certainly what we heard in the course of doing the project was that one of the impediments to making such certain staffing adjustments um you know moving people from more traditional roles towards um roles where they may have more uh contemporary uh or immediate need or value excuse me is that is that the systems themselves were not always making those transitions possible and and so I think that one of the one of the hopes that um that some of the some of the participants anyway in the process have had is that if the systems were served as enablers a lot of the work around just to take one example one traditional example a lot of the work a lot more efficiency could be brought to the work of print collections management um in terms of thinking about that as a networked activity rather than just an institutionally based activity and so one of the things that you'll see a little bit of a thread of in the report itself is you know not so much that the that the Ohio Link uh directors or Ohio Link itself is committed to rethinking print collections management right just to take that as an example but rather a knowledge that it cannot do that so long as the systems are architected the way they currently are and so you know with with the idea of of doing a more fundamental rethinking of an activity like that in a more networked or consortial or collaborative basis of course there could be implications on on staffing of all manner of things and I think that that's you know that's just one one you know in in one sense one traditional example but I think there are there are others if you if you look at the report as well thank you it's a great question yeah we have another another question that's come in uh from an anonymous attendee who thanks you for your excellent talk first off and they ask um the idea of a common vision tends to lead to an expectation that there is a single integrated system how do you reconcile this tendency with the idea of modularity whether you turn to the community or to the marketplace is the answer a single integrated system or something more complex well I might I might jump in there if it's okay um we pushed hard at the term integrated the I and ILS integrated library system and we some of us I don't want to say that this is something that was shared and that necessarily made it into the working into the report but I think there were a number of people around the table who felt very strongly that um that in fact the integrated nature of the library system may have been one of the things that was holding back innovation so in other words the fact that the same system was responsible both for basic managerial tasks around an individual library acquisitions you know budget management collection management etc circulation etc you know from the perspective of an organization and then trying to wrap something that was intensely user centered around that uh that there that there was just some some mismatches there so we actually ended the report it was maybe more of a teaser than some would have liked but we ended the report with a bit of a teaser to ask whether what we really should be looking at in the future is perhaps a disintegrated library system I think that you know I think the idea here is maybe uh you know modularity has a certain um kind of uh kind of uh idea to it and um you know someone someone who's um uh wisdom I respect very very strongly uh you know once once shared with me his insight that to the extent that you try to modularize offerings from different companies you actually force them to go through you force the interactions between the the different providers into a kind of uh least common denominator solution and so you know modularity may not actually be precisely what we may be looking for but the idea that maybe this is just speculation here but maybe the right answer today is not a single system but maybe that there should be two or more systems that are organized differently it's not the ILS versus the repository is is kind of how is one way that many libraries have their systems architected today or the ILS versus discovery as is another way but rather maybe it's um you know library management versus um you know sort of user facing uh uh elements or you know maybe there are other ways to think about different paradigms for what the systems might look like so I think what I really want to emphasize is that to the extent that this is a common vision to come back to the question to the extent that this is a common vision um and I do think it was a common vision of cross Ohio link and I think I think it I do think it shows shows promise of being shared more more widely but I don't think that that by any means that that we think either that that means there should be a single system at a given institution and certainly nor does it mean that we that any of us thought there should be a single provider across across the community I think you know just to make sure to hit that one very very directly um we felt very very strongly that what was needed was more competition uh more more innovation um to to to try to uh you know produce some of the outcomes that that as Shimo was talking about a moment ago the working group was looking at that we're looking for Shimo did you want to add to that yeah I think the the you said very well the the the integration really does not mean the single provider we we don't we don't intend to see any of the vendors grow even bigger and take more of the library workflow under their umbrella we are looking for the opportunity different kinds of the vendors from the courseware from the CRM customer relationship management from an enterprise ERP system all of those are being able to integrate that integration is talking about campus wide technology ecosystem integration right at this moment you think about our IRS you even think about our digital repository it's very silent in the in the university ecosystem right this is one of the barrier we we no matter how hard we sell people still don't recognize us very much right so that's that's very much library set right how how can we do that in the not that's just the library thing this is a really academic system part of an academic system that's what we're talking about the integration in that means thank you so we still have time for more questions if there are any other questions again we invite you to raise your hand if you would like to make a comment about your own experience your own thoughts on this issue or if you would like to engage directly i have a question for the audience to see if people can contribute so you heard from me and Roger we want to create the broader broad dialogue about some people can participate enhance this kind of the vision and the and the criteria is how can we do that what's the venue what is the way in addition to the white paper we can create some of the momentum and the people can join us to talking about this anyone would like to address that question live there's the you can raise your hand in the in the box you can type your comment in the chat you can type your comment in the Q&A we'll read it aloud any comments on that question from shumo maybe people he's typing all right well if uh if folks want to get in touch with um either of you after this session um i think i'm not sure if you made your um contact information available on that last slide roger but i did share the report with everyone through the chat uh so i will do that one last time just to make sure and i i'll be very happy to put my email address and twitter handle into the uh into the chat as well in case in case anyone wants to that would be great thank you so if you just check out the chat box there um roger has shared his contact information with you so please feel free to get in touch with him or shumo i'm sharing my my email too excellent thank you yeah and um i want to thank our presenters for coming to c&i and talking about this really interesting report um and engaging the community in this way i also want to thank our attendees for taking time out of your day to attend this webinar and i hope we'll see you back at others i'm going to end the um the um public part of this presentation and i think roger and shumon i will probably stay behind for a little bit and if others want to sort of approach the podium uh please feel free to do so and with that i will thank you again for your presentation i see i have thank yous coming in through the chat to our presenters and be well everyone have a great day bye