 Well good afternoon everyone or hello everyone for those of you joining elsewhere in the world. My name is Matt Greenhall and I'm the Deputy Executive Director of Research Libraries UK and it gives me a real pleasure to welcome you all here to today's webinar which will see the launch of our UK's manifesto for the digital shift in research libraries. We've been really delighted by the response from the community both to the manifesto and to today's event itself. So thank you all for joining us and wherever you are in the world we hope that you, your friends, colleagues and families are safe and well during these most uncertain of times. As you will have seen today's webinar is convened by Research Libraries UK. Our UK is a consortium of 37 of the UK and Ireland's most significant research libraries. Our membership is really diverse and of our 37 members three of our members are the UK's national libraries the British Library, the National Library of Wales and the National Library of Scotland. 33 of our members are university libraries throughout the UK and also one member in the Republic of Ireland Trinity College Dublin. The welcome collection in London is also one of our members. For our members our UK has four key purposes we're here to convene our members around some of the core issues that they face as organisations through our events our conferences and our member networks. We're here to represent our members to provide them with a collective voice. We're here to support them around some of the key issues that they face as research libraries through our research through our training and through our strategic programmes and we're also here to advocate on their behalf to publishers, to funders, to government and policymakers. Our UK is a champion for our members and their interests run through everything that we do and this is best represented by the contents of our strategy reshaping scholarship. The digital shift in research library collections, audiences, operations and services has a really prominent place within our strategy reflecting the interest that all of our members have in this area. As a result of this since 2017 our UK has been working to support our members as they navigate the digital shift and its implications for their organisations. We've worked with our members by conducting surveys through research and events to try and capture their current experiences. What does this mean for them now? Yet in the last year we've also turned our attention to the future and we've begun asking the question what will the research library of the future look like and what impact is the digital shift likely to have upon this? We've done this first and foremost by convening a working group formed of nine colleagues drawn from across our UK's member libraries and our member networks. This working group has worked with the our UK community to create a vision for the future of the research library in relation to the digital shift and the manifesto that we're launching today is the product of this work. You'll be hearing from many members of our digital shift working group throughout today's webinar. So today's event will provide an overview of the origins of the contents and of the ambitions of our UK's digital shift manifesto. As you will have already seen today's agenda is divided into two parts. So in the first part of today we'll be hearing from three speakers, two of which are from our digital shift working group, Misuu Kaka, director of university libraries and archives at the University of York and our UK board member and Thorsten Reimer, head of research services at the British Library and chair of our digital shift working group. We'll then hear a recorded presentation from James Hetherington, director of digital research infrastructure at UK Research and Innovation, UK's funding agency for research and science. Now unfortunately due to unforeseen events James can't be with us today but has very kindly recorded his presentation and is also happy to receive questions via social media. At the end of these three presentations we'll have time for a short comfort break. Then in the second part of today's webinar we'll be hearing from other members of our UK's digital shift working group, Sarah Thompson, Michelle Blake, Lorraine Beard and William Nixon. This second half of the webinar will involve hearing from you as a community about your experiences of the digital shift and in particular how COVID-19 has impacted upon your operations and your work in relation to the digital shift. And today's webinar will finish with a call to action and an invitation for all of you to work with our UK and its members in the realisation of the ambitions within the digital shift manifesto. So thank you once again for joining us today and this is really what you can expect and what we hope to achieve during the webinar. Now before I hand over to our first speakers there are a few bits of housekeeping. Firstly you will have noticed that microphones and videos have been turned off during this webinar but we would still love to hear from you. If you have any questions for our panel please do submit these via the Q&A function at the bottom of the Zoom interface. You can see this on the bottom of the Zoom panel. These questions will then be posed directly to our panellists and we'll respond to these during the Q&A session in the second part of today's webinar. Please do not post questions in the chat, please do use the Q&A function. We'll also like to hear from you via a Mentimeter survey and I'll say a little bit more about this in a moment. The hashtag for today's session is RAUK DigiShift and please do share any thoughts or opinions that you have by the hashtag by Twitter. And then finally we will be recording today's session and we'll make this freely available on the RAUK website shortly after. We are really grateful to have so many of you joining us today from such a wide variety of organisations and from around the world and we would love to hear your thoughts and your experiences. In the email that you will have received regarding joining today's webinar, whether towards the end of last week or today, you will have also received a link to a short Mentimeter survey and a link is here on screen. This Mentimeter survey consists of six very short questions in regards to your experiences of the digital shift and also how these have changed during the COVID-19 crisis. If you haven't already done so, please do take the time to complete this survey. It only takes a few moments and we'll be using the results from this during some of the discussion in the second part of today's webinar. So please, if you can spare a moment, complete the survey. So thank you very much. So now it gives me great pleasure having walked through the itinerary and the housekeeping to introduce our first speaker. Masud Koko, his director of university libraries and archives at the University of York and he's also an REUK board member. Masud is also the champion of the digital shift strand of REUK's strategy and he'll be providing an overview of the digital shift from his perspective as a board member and from his institution. So over to you Masud. Thank you very much Matt and thank you for the introduction as well. I'm just going to share my screen so bear with me. Right, so I'm hoping that everyone can see my screen now and I just wanted to start by saying thank you for being on the webinar and for showing your interest in the manifesto for the digital shift in research libraries. As Matt mentioned, I'm the REUK board champion for the digital shift and today I'll be taking you through some of my own thoughts, some of my own perceptions of where we need to be as a research library or as a consortium of research libraries in the future and with a 10-year vision but hopefully with some building blocks in the middle and then toast and later on will further build on that as part of the manifesto description. So first of all I want to start by saying that digital shift is an important strand of our REUK strategy and broadly speaking, digital cuts across all portfolios of the work of research library including collections with a particular focus on born digital collections, digitized collections, data including research data, educational data, other data including open educational resources, open research data but increasingly analytics as well including learner and analytics and other aspects of that. It cuts across operations particularly in terms of delivery of remote services and we've seen no bigger evidence of that than during the COVID-19 crisis where we all have to shift our services completely in a digital fashion in a very short span of time but it also encompasses the physical premises such as introduction of labs, maker spaces and any other physical manifestations that support mixed reality slash analog to digital conversion. In terms of connections particularly using digital to harness the connections within your own collections but also across collections and things that were simply not possible before the advent of digital tools and technologies and there's huge potential there for us to do more and for us to invest in more and in terms of audiences particularly diversification of audiences particularly growth in our audiences, the reach that our audiences can have when you embrace digital properly but also the multifaceted purposes in which they will use our collections and looking at audiences differently from traditional audiences to audiences of the future and who they would be what they would do with our collections and that could look very very different to what our collections serve their purposes at this time and at this time you might be wondering okay that's great but libraries and other cultural organizations have been doing or working with digital for a very long time so we've already embraced this change what's different now and from my perspective I think we have more opportunities than ever before this time particularly because we are and we will continue to live in a digital world and I appreciate that there are huge elements of research libraries, cultural organizations that are physical but increasingly the emphasis would move further into the digital side of things and instead of us now always questioning that I think we have really have an opportunity to embrace it and to really push the boundaries of what digital can do to propel us in a leadership capacity in the global knowledge environment and if you're really thinking about 2030 I think that is one goal that I would really want research libraries to push for. We also have an opportunity to proactively develop digital leadership it's not that long in this transformation that we can't do this now we can really push that we can really focus on digital leadership and I do mean at the very top and one really interesting trend that's happening in private industries at the moment is that instead of CTOs CEOs are directly involved in digital leadership now and that shows the emphasis that it has to be something that every part of the organization embraces and we know we have a long way to go there but we can proactively develop that champion that and push that but also skills and services which are fit for the future and that requires a different mindset a different way of thinking about digital particularly moving away from a physical translation of a service into a digital to developing services which are digital by design. We also have opportunity to reach global audiences and build on their collective knowledge of our collections I really want to encourage more crowdsourcing projects more wisdom of the crowds elements into what we do. We also have an opportunity and in my opinion a very strong responsibility to challenge data misuse and algorithmic biases we know that the world is digital we know how things are translating in the future and we've seen evidence of that again and again through what Cambridge Analytica crisis through the kind of news we get all the time the personalized feeds which limit your your options of what's really happening and unfortunately a lot of people even in our search community but particularly in the libraries and archives and special collections and museums community don't really understand the ins and outs of that we'd all know there's a problem we don't know what we can do about it fully yet and we have an opportunity here to start challenging that we also have an opportunity here to identify and collaborate with new stakeholders this is something that will be covered more in the manifesto but I think we need to get rid of the boundaries that we've created in our mindsets that we work in higher education we work in academia we work in research libraries and we really need to think beyond that we really need to look at industry partnerships we really need to look at non-research library partnerships areas where there are fantastic exemplars of digital transformations and start building our collaborations and partnerships with those organizations if we really want to move forward at a high pace in digital transformation and we really do have an opportunity to push the envelope here of what is possible and I think one of the key messages that I would really want you to take from what I'm saying is don't limit with what we have now but think beyond that think of what's possible and what role can we play in achieving that possibility and I think that would be a really crucial thing in terms of change of mindset I also want to share something that I really believe in particularly in terms of what approach we can take so there's there was a fantastic article in Harvard business review early in May which talked about digital transformation in higher education in the form of punctuated equilibrium and I can see that I've worked in higher education for about 12 to 15 years now and I can see that this is fairly true in all the different organizations that I've worked in there are long periods of slow change long periods of banging your head on the table trying to move things forward but then there are occasional moments of rapid adaptations response to COVID-19 is one of those rapid adaptations this sounds a bit unfortunate that COVID-19 is a crisis like none other but we also need to make the most of the opportunity that comes with this crisis and this is a great opportunity for us to really start thinking about what the future looks like what investments we would need in terms of digital in terms of leadership vision skills partnerships and staffing and one thing that I would really highlight is the vision element which is where do we see ourselves what is it that we need to do why do we need to do it and what can enable us to achieve that and I think there are lots of things that the digital manifesto will cover as part of that as well I also believe we need to invest in technologies and take risks digital transformation is actually now the new risk mitigation without this digital transformation we are exposing our organizations and ourselves to far bigger risks than ever before and again COVID-19 has highlighted which organizations were ready for this transformation which organizations were already in this transformation and who's been able to mitigate against that risk far more efficiently than many other competitors of them but it's also about getting away from a completely evidence driven approach here and I know that sounds contrary to many beliefs that we have which is we will always work with evidence driven approaches but a consequence of that often is the very digital transitions it comes with research it comes with experimentation it moves into industry and the industry to higher education to libraries transition often takes 10 plus years and I think now is the time for us to flip that and say if that research is being conducted primarily in higher education organizations but also in many many other commercial and other organizations we are in that higher education environment why are we waiting for the whole transition to come back to us and we are not investing in this we're not working with our research community at an early stage and I think that's a mindset shift that also comes with some risk taking opportunities with it I also believe we need to invest in developing an understanding of digital ethics privacy security and well-being not just at leadership level but across everyone and I think this is going to be in a really important part of what it means to be a librarian to be a key worker to be to be a staff member in a cultural organization in the future particularly as I've previously mentioned algorithmic biasness other issues etc these topics will become really crucial and it also bridges the gap between what science or hard sciences do versus what arts and humanities and social sciences would be doing and as a library as a research library we are here to support all of those elements in the future we also need to advocate for open algorithms we need to minimize bias and training data we need to acknowledge that we can't eliminate it but we can definitely minimize it and we need to develop technology insights across all staff in research libraries and I think that's really crucial because without those technology insights without that level of knowledge we can't really question why the ethical parts are really important why the privacy parts are really important and why it's really important to often be disconnected from all these technologies as well and to take a broader viewpoint of where the world is moving and last but not least from my perspective this is a great opportunity for us to work together with each other to support each other in this transformation Max previously mentioned this that we need to work closely with each other but also with new kind of stakeholders new parties and think global rather than local and RLUK has taken bold steps here with its digital manifesto and I hope you also come on board with this you also look at this and you also see the opportunities that come with this and you take an approach and come and work with us together to realize this manifesto thank you again as I said these are some of my views on this I'll hand over back to Matt and I hope you you stay and enjoy the rest of today's webinar as well thank you very much thank you so much Missou that's a great way to frame what's about to come throughout the rest of the webinar and please do keep your questions coming we're receiving these through the Q&A function so please do use the Q&A function at the bottom of the zoom portal platform to to ask your questions as they come to you and the the hashtag on Twitter is also receiving traffic so please do continue to post your thoughts there so I'll now hand over to our second speaker who is Torsten Rimer who is head of research services at the British Library Torsten is also the chair of the RLUK digital shift working group and will provide an overview of the manifesto the work of the working group and our plans for delivery and what the future may bring in terms of manifesto's contents so over to you Torsten thank you very much for the introduction both to Matt and Massoud and indeed thank you very much for all of you to be here as some of you will know we originally had planned to launch this manifesto at the RLUK conference in March and I think we were all as members of the working group really disappointed when that had to be cancelled because we were really looking forward to having a discussion with our community about this in some ways though arguably it's often been said that in crisis there are also opportunities and that's something I'm really pleased that we can do this as a webinar today with such broad attendance from way beyond the RLUK community in a way that we couldn't have done this in person so I'm really looking forward to this discussion now as it's been said what I'm going to do is go in a bit more detail building on what was to this outline about the manifesto and about the work of the digital shift working group this is a relatively information rich presentation as far as the slides are concerned we've put them together deliberately in that way so that it's easy to share the slides and have key information at hand I'm not in about 20 minutes or so going to talk about all elements of the manifesto I'll give you a general overview and I'll then pick up some of the elements I think also from my personal perspective I regard as particularly important and hope that we can then dig a bit further into those and other elements too in the discussion and in the work that's going to happen after this so that's the general idea I think like Masoud I want to very briefly say a few words about the why why has RLUK been doing this and in many ways I think for those of you who have joined it will be quite obvious but it's probably useful to put some of the changes that we currently see in historical perspective I mean after all libraries have always changed with the needs of their users this is a common theme and there's sometimes maybe a bit too much hyperbole about how digital changes everything and we have to ask if that's always true and we have to question these narratives to be clear that we understand where real change is happening and where we maybe just see gradual shift we have now already seen a very significant way in which our users are working which technology is evolving and which society and indeed our organizations are changing but the argument behind the digital shift is that we are already quite a bit in what's going to be much more qualitative than just the context of change that maybe a research library of the 1980s or 1990s would probably broadly still have been recognizable to say a monk librarian from the 11th century but the library services that we see now in some areas that are uncompletely digital and the direction that we are moving into may not necessarily be so libraries are increasingly quite different in the way how they look even though our underlying mission hasn't really changed in the world. There will be lots of good examples to pick up in terms of how technology has changed us I'm not going to go into that much detail here but there is obviously one point to raise that Matsuda also mentioned that we didn't really think about when we wrote this which is the novel coronavirus and the impact that it's already had and one question that I think we would really like to discuss and dig into a bit further is is this just accelerating the transformation that we already seen or is it maybe giving a totally new quality in some elements and it would be good to later on get you experiences on this. I think that it's going to accelerate some of those changes and it's going to test us in various ways not just over the next two years but it's also going to even if in itself it's not really shifting what's in the manifesto it's changing the environments in which we work. So there's a lot of potential change there's a 10-year horizon this is a really difficult thing to get right and if there's one thing I'm convinced is that we haven't gotten all of this right but we were trying to do the best that we could in setting us on the journey and setting us up in the way that we can adjust. What do you do if you have a very complicated challenge which you know you probably fail in some areas but you still can't afford not to tackle it. If like me you're a child of the 80s then you think if you have a problem and if no one else can help you then maybe if you can fight them and if you can hire them you can bring together a working group. So this is what our UK have done and here's a team photo that has most of the members of our working group and the others who couldn't be there are listed in here. We sort of came together not because I think we are a really good crack team of librarian commanders but because we also represent working groups and a particular membership networks from across our UK. Our UK has a broad range of organisations still involved and also networks so we were on this group not just because of the personal experience that we have but because of the links that we bring into those networks. So therefore the way of the working group was very collaborative. We've met over a few months, autumn into the new year, usually in virtual form but we also involve the RUK community in this. For example we use Jamboards, they are sort of online tools that you can use to collect ideas, think of this like a virtual post-it session, to get sort of questions, inputs, concerns from across the membership. There was a face-to-face workshop then at the RUK members meeting in November last year and throughout that development process we had regular input from the RUK networks. For example there was a session of the Digital Scholarship Network which I remember of that met in January and gave us really good feedback. That was then presented to the RUK board and so we've incorporated some of their feedback. We plan to launch it and then have an ongoing discussion from there in March but now we have the virtual launch of the manifesto. In developing the manifesto I think we started from assessing where are we now and in particular what are we missing, what are the opportunities and what's become really clear from this is that yes this is driven by technology but as you can see from some of the bullet points that I've listed here even at a high level it's not per se a technology challenge. I think it's like I always find with technology the question of how do you use it and that comes from having strategic direction. We felt that currently isn't perhaps as much clear vision and strategic direction across the sector that would really enable us to sort of with confidence in this decade long transformation and that's really hard. So we have done quite a few things that we felt were needed such as having better foresight and horizon scanning, in particular having the skills I think of all levels and other organizations ranging from some very advanced or relatively advanced things like artificial intelligence but also to some challenges that you've maybe had for a while such as good business analysis skills, service design or like. We also found that generally there's a challenge I think in our structures, processes and organizational cultures. Why reason and why are sort of set up to sometimes deliberately not move so fast because amongst other tasks we have to preserve something that's hard-coded into our DNA by at least to a degree that's something that we need to change, not ending the preserving part but becoming more agile and adaptable. So there's a challenge in terms of having spaces that were designed and built at a time when needs are very different and difficult to adopt. There are also challenges that I think other organizations face from how can we make this digital transformation environmentally sustainable and there's a set of challenges that bring us closer into your technology realm and the suit has mentioned them so I just want to build on one of them. We are increasingly dependent on external suppliers because the challenges of building increasingly complex library systems using a set of technologies that are generally focused on artificial intelligence are such that very few libraries can afford to play in that field and even those who can can only use limited areas. The problem that we are facing is not that there are commercial entities providing us those services, the challenges are that we see like in many digital areas an increasing marketplace concentration. You can also see this by the way in publishing where the open access transformation arguably has even led to more market concentration but it's market concentration to a few players that increasingly have systems and ecosystem of tools that are so good they are hard to ignore but they are closed and that means our ability to serve our users in an open and transparent way is increasingly hampered by more understanding of technology that we use and that brings us to another key theme which is trust. We have to maintain the trust of our users and we have to have the trust within our organisations to work sometimes outside of traditional boundaries of libraries because these boundaries are shifting and we need to build the confidence in our organisations and our partners that we can contribute something beyond what they might consider as traditional librarian tasks. So based on our assessment we come to manifesto and obviously a manifesto wants to have some radical change but if you read our manifesto and perhaps looking back a bit a sort of critical about our own work the language that we've used is maybe quite always as radical as some of the challenges that are hiding behind. We do say in a way ultimately that what we want to do is in some ways retain the place that we have which is being an integral part of the local but also the global knowledge environment. Arguably though there are some elements in there that are quite challenging and that are somewhat revolutionary for example going back to the point about artificial intelligence which we use as a shorthand for a range of technologies here. A key thing and I'm really convinced of this if we want to be successful if we want to retain the position that we have in fact if we want to become more relevant and helpful to users across the world from different backgrounds we need to agree most of these technologies not necessarily to be able to develop them but to understand how they can be deployed and making the world a better and more open and more knowledge driven place and this is crucial for libraries in general and we need to find the place because what we can't forget is there are lots more information resources out there that are open but there's also lots more control through the key elements of the internet that isn't as open as it always appears and I think what's really dear to me is that as libraries we're here to increase access to information to be open and inclusive and that's an ability that we need to maintain and we have to be a critical force for this throughout and this in a way is perhaps the somewhat more radical message that if you will that's at the heart of the manifesto. What is also at the heart of the manifesto is in the end it's all about adaptability. We have some reasonably good ideas of how the future may look like some of these may even be true but broadly speaking the only thing that can be certain of is that we'll have to change course there will be things that we haven't seen coming or maybe we've still come but didn't quite expect it wouldn't be so challenging or so important so we've tried to organize the manifesto around what can we do to make libraries, library services more adaptable and we sort of broken this roughly into four areas of the four S skills, scholarship, spaces and stakeholders it's a bit more complicated than just these warm words but we thought it would be good to sort of concentrate minds and have a few key themes and I'll now quickly speak about those four things. So first of all skills and I've added in Brecken's leadership I would argue leadership in a way is the most crucial part in here. We are changing our libraries are changing this will only be fully successful if we cannot enable our staff to make the best of these challenges and opportunities and that means we need leadership that empowers staff we have to give people confidence to take risks and to work in digital ways that's absolutely critical we need to look at the model in which we operate and it can't just be digital bolted on it needs to be digital at the heart of what we do amongst other themes for sure but as an important theme and that will also mean that with something that's a group we work quite clear on we will have to wind down services that no longer add in value and this is arguably one of the points that's become probably even more crucial with COVID-19 as our resources across the library sector will not be as plentiful as there were and I know many of us would argue there were never that plentiful to start with if we want to master digital transformation we have to put more resource in digital skills and digital leadership and that will cost us more at the time when our budgets are even more pressure and this is really challenging but the only way to do this is chase resources where they are most needed and another thing that's also really important there is really think about what in particular artificial intelligence again we'll do it will take away some jobs that are still valuable in libraries at the moments from automation but it will open up the opportunity for more creative work in libraries and our structures aren't always set up to do this nor do we necessarily always have the right recruitment and training to fight and retain an adaptable and diverse workforce and a few other themes in that are also quite important such as digital ethics that was mentioned before the second theme is scholarship um scholarship very clearly linked to collections as a core part of the library's work and a key idea behind this here is that our collections need to be more networked than before because the answers that our users are looking for may sometimes be in our collections but to truly get them to their potential we need to link our collections to other collections and support new ways of working with them but it's much easier to do if there's more collaborative management of collections and that should also be cheaper so I think a key point is manage both physical and digital collections together with others this will be a key thing taking collective approaches that will help us be better but all of this needs to be open and inclusive I think Masuda already spoke about getting our collections more out into the world arguably we also need to get more to the types of people who don't currently use them and there will be losers in this change and I think as far as society goes it would be fantastic if we could play a role to help people who are cut off from some of these digital opportunities to at least experience them in our libraries and another point that I want to mention in one of these here is special collections those libraries will have them are really blessed in many ways because you might say special collections will always be there that's true but we have to make sure that they stay visible in the digital world because increasingly we see that users will make do with what's available in digital form because traveling is too challenging spaces also very important we need spaces building on a key theme that are flexible and adaptable and enable experimentation spaces that are maybe somewhat less gear and print collections and more on bringing people in and allowing them to generate knowledge in other ways and I think that's something that we can dig in a bit more later in the discussion stakeholders then was a theme that's also been mentioned by Masut and it's just based on a simple realization we can't do this on our we need to make sure that we remain visible as organizations that it's worthwhile talking to we need to do work in the areas where we can help shift the overall global knowledge environment and that will be particular around issues like copyright and data protections and the ethics of information and we have to develop more links speed to industry researchers in the wider education sector to tackle some of these challenges jointly I think we should find partners that are willing to work with us but we also should find our partners that play along well with the ethical principles that we hold dear now how are we going to put this into practice at least what's the idea within the RLUK community broadly speaking we've broken this down into three areas short medium and long term the information under long term is relatively short at the moment we focused more effort on short and in particular medium term because we think we'll need to adjust and adopt you can see this is built around the range of themes that I'll talk about a bit more on the following slides but broadly speaking the short term the next few months year year and a half will be on consolidating the information that we have and better understand where organizations are currently and what we need to do the second phase will then put some of these things into action and help us sort of move forward and then having set up the stage some more better we're going to hope that we are well set up to tackle some of the bigger challenges in the following years taking our stores 2030 I'll now talk about and a few examples on what's in the implementation plan I'll keep this relatively short it's also high level in the plan but you can follow this all up in more detail in my manifesto the key theme I think in terms of understanding where we are is that we want to undertake a digital skills audit across our UK members to identify gaps I think that's quite important but as you will see there's also in the same section mentioned in mapping exercise of key external stakeholders I think such a skills audit would be much more valuable if we can do this in conjunction with other libraries organizations will work in this space so that we can see what kind of skills we can mobilize across the sector because training and working with training providers to help us fill those skills gap is much more effective if it doesn't come just from the subset of libraries the intention is also to make some tools and resources available that are rather package up tools and resources that are ready out there because that is interesting material we can't and don't want to reinvent the wheel but we want to bring helpful information together so that's part of the work that needs to happen in the short term and another key element in all of this is setting up a sustainable channel or forum for libraries to continue to collaborate and have these discussions have more activities like today others and make this really is part of sort of our institutional infrastructure along the lines also investing more in digital leadership skills and this is something that's very much on the plan for the short term medium term then we'll be building all the work that we've done I'd like to pick up I think three key elements from this is moreness develop a sustainability action plan for carbon neutral digital research library services obviously library services overall need to be sustainable but we need to contribute in particular timers will need more and more compute resource and we have a broad responsibility to do this in a sustainable way another key element then is creating a strategic workforce plan for the RUK libraries and again I think this is something that while it's done for the RUK members could be much richer experience if we broaden it but it's helping libraries to plan how they can support and develop their workforce and then finally and this is really close to my heart is develop co-op manifesto has had a requirements but I would love it if there was a consensus whereas library community we could define these are the principles that all informational resources that we are going to license and by need to meet in terms of people and transparent something that would help us for procurement something that we could use to argue in our institution a shiniest provider isn't always the best and having an open discussion about this also involving suppliers would be a great and fantastic thing that if we do this globally across the libraries would really help us I think. What's done in the long term I think will need a bit more development but broadly it's building and expanding on what we've done having a constant review of the landscape of technologies and in particular being very actively engaged in this strategic workforce planning I think this will be a key thing we need the leadership and we need the staff skills to master this and that's in a way at the heart of the manifesto and I'd now like to conclude by saying or picking up on I think what I hope was a key theme in what I said but also what Massoud has said is we've undertaken this on behalf of our UK membership organisation but this can only really work if we take this on as a global challenge for the library sector and so there's an invitation to work with us whether it's under the RUK umbrella some other umbrella or just some interested parties getting together to join in in terms of these challenges and opportunities and that's the in some cases relatively swift more through through digital manifesto thank you thank you so much Torsten for that comprehensive overview I think that's really fantastic to have that all all laid out and as Torsten said for further details they are available on the the RUK website please keep your questions coming in they are coming in thick and fast by the Q&A function and please place any comments that you may have in the chat function or by using the hashtag as well on Twitter so I'm going to introduce our third and final speaker which is James Hedrington who is the director of digital research infrastructure at UK research and innovation UK's funding agency for research and science now unfortunately due to unforeseen events James can't be with us today but he's been really kind in recording a presentation for us that he will share. Hi everyone I'm really sorry I can't be with you in person today but I'm going to try and do the talk there's a recorded talk anyway and we'll see how this goes normally when I give talks I really rely on being able to see see the audience and tell whether people are nodding or shaking their head as to whether or not what I'm going what I'm saying is going down really well or really badly unfortunately I haven't got that feedback today which makes this a little bit challenging but do send me an email with any feedback you might have on the talk block capitals are always welcome I'd far rather than not know. All right good so this is going to be a talk about work towards a national digital research infrastructure and with an emphasis on the importance of what that will unlock in terms of the use of digital research methods in a wide variety of domains that have perhaps made much use of digital research methods in the past as others which I think is sort of particularly relevant to the manifesto that is being watched today so let me move on to the next slide let me see if my technology is working yeah good all right so I just started this new job at the beginning of the year spent the first couple of months meeting and saying hello to everyone and then the lockdown started which has been entertaining but what I'm supposed to be doing is leading on strategy delivery for supercomputers cloud security facilities networks software and skills that underpin computational science and digital scholarship in the UK and those in this community will will note that we got the worst digital scholarship in there as a key thing I wanted to make sure that that was said or to make it less of a mouthful um digital computers and coding people and when we talk about infrastructure for me it's really important that we emphasise that the uh the infrastructure we we are building is not just made of the parts that were made of metal and plastic um but the the the the people part and the software part is um uh you know is a really key part of that infrastructure as well and that's um uh that's one of the things that I want to emphasise um when we think about the the people that are involved in this work and this has been sort of a key principle for for a lot of the work I've done um it's been the balance and out between um what we do to support other people's work and what we do as we consider the development of infrastructure for digital scholarship as a research domain in its own right and getting that right within our research communities is a really interesting challenge um and one so this slide illustrates an example of this prior to starting at at UKRI and I worked with the un-turing institute uh national institute for um data science and artificial intelligence and this slide illustrates that balance between the craftsperson and the scholar with the two images from Turing's story um the one on the right is the I'm not quite sure how to pronounce this correctly but the Balmor Bombi the the computer that we used to to to to crack the German carriers and win the war and the one on the left is a sketch of the concept of the universal Turing machine fundamental uh theory of advanced computer science and that that balance of the really practical and the really uh uh you know thoughtful and the really and and and the really theoretical and its attention that's always with us when we're when we're working in these spaces to create the the the underpinning capability that enables that digital scholarship I'm going to um I always like to put in a slide to explain who I am and why I'm telling this story and it's a little bit egotistical but hopefully you'll bear with me um and in particular I think it's important when people get invited to give these talks and go oh look somebody's giving a talk about being in charge of an important big thing and be seen to talk about the career explosions the red stars on this on this figure as well as the you know you're always annoyed me in research talks when when every every piece of research is presented as a uniform trajectory of success um so originally long once long ago you'll see top left worked in particle physics um uh the switch on date for the LHC was receding at one year per year and I wanted to work with some real data so I went to work in mathematical physiology doing modeling of disease with computers in a diabetes glucus and estates modeling and a long fellowship in that and wrote too much code and not enough papers um and this is going to be another piece that to spread that hopefully comes through and what I'm talking about um we who work in uh the infrastructure that underpins scholarship um often get uh I would rather live in a world where being useful in service and support of research was the thing that was successful in terms of advancing a career sometimes it's not um and let's try to build a world where where where where where where being useful to work to others is uh and that and that service within within research domain is is more value anyway and so uh didn't get elected for the end of that went to industry for a while and some of that lab uh is my fault sorry um and then went to a start up doing climate modeling this wasn't the logo of company but um uh I think it tells the story quite nicely the sort of the matrix and the and extinction symbol but anyway doing climate modeling uh in a in a startup um the idea was to um if somebody was going to pass carbon tax then we would be able to um uh use you know then complex uh model uh mathematical modeling of complex environmental systems would be part of the financial services loop and I would be on a beach instead of giving this presentation um obviously that didn't happen um so I came back to academia and did a bit more physiological computing and then found the research software very at UCL working with researchers across the university to ensure that the software that comes out of research um is usable by somebody other than the PhD student who wrote it with the standard of correctness better than oh the graph looks about right um that's uh so that's what I did there and then went to the Turing Institute and now UKRI so that's the end of the egotistical slide just people who know who I am and where I'm coming from so I've already talked about the uh the crash person and the scholar but there's another Turing story I want to tell to illustrate this which is um uh interdisciplinarity aspect of of that of that example um Turing took some time off from inventing computer science to also invent mathematical biology um in particular a a model that we was suggested would explain how the stripes form on a zebra um didn't explain how the stripes form on a zebra but does explain how the stripes form on a zebra fish um hence that that picture and um the power that comes from bringing um methods between disciplines and in in that case you know the use of um uh the use of uh you know mathematical models of complex systems to understand the life sciences uh an area that that that you know until very recently didn't have much uh digital research it didn't have as much digital research units as other areas um is incredibly powerful and I think at the core of um the digital shift story we're telling today where every domain of science and scholarship is being transformed by the use of digital methods and I hope transformed for the better that's a controversy we we would discuss over questions if I were here in person um the uh um and uh within the context of um the the work you know so another project that I'm I'm involved with with my during research at still um is this living with machines project uh that's a project jointly between Turing and the British Library and using uh um uh AI and and super computing to understand um the history of uh the change in our relationship with technology that took place in the 19th century um and that's uh you know using the the technologies that are emerging from our current change in our relationship with machines to understand the previous one um and we've got all the books all the newspapers the census uh the ordinary survey maps and very directories from the 19th century in uh in the computer um uh we're we're we're we're learning with that um that's very exciting um another example of uh an area that's emerging um that where the use of digital research methods uh is transforming another area um is in understanding the the infrastructure that that underpins our sort of physical infrastructure that underpins our society um uh models of trains models of uh buildings models of transport systems but the quintessential example for this this work which I'm involved with which we we call the national digital twin um is imagine so step one imagine if you could ask the computer okay tell me all the towers have built the same cladding as Grenfell um and we could use that to order the uh and prioritize the work to retrofit those buildings to make them safe that's the first level that's just the query level we can do more we can link that to models of how fire propagates through a building to uh individual based models of how people move around in emergencies to models of transport systems and of the road network to help us understand how quickly uh fire trucks will arrive um at the scene and add all of that to our understanding of um of that problem so and that's just one example of how powerful the use of uh digital research methods in that complex interaction space between social data because to do this correctly we need to understand who is who is uh there and um physical modeling and again so many opportunities for for discipline boundaries to to cross through the use of a shared digital infrastructure and I'll come back to to that because that call us what we're trying to do in how we build the national digital research infrastructure going forward and the the the next area and just to touch on is uh work on them uh and COVID-19 of course um where we've all seen just how big a role um uh digital scholarship is uh is playing within our um our understanding of how to react uh to the virus and and uh in my work within uh UKRI's urgent R&D response to uh to CV19 um which is the activity that uh keeps me away from being with you today um we're you know we're really keen that this is not just about um uh the health sciences uh but a holistic uh understanding across the disciplines to enable us to uh to to understand um the impact on on who we are um and how that informs the response the response as well um and digital methods can can pay apart uh in all of that and I'm also strongly aware of course that the work in the virtual realm um can more easily continue while we're unable to to to physically go into our labs and libraries um which is another interesting part of that as well um so uh yes coming back to this this question of the nature then of balancing and the scholarship and and the service and I want to um come to one of my favorites um uh exemplars uh which is the power of infrastructure not just to respond to need but to change the way people work this this slide illustrates uh perhaps a cliche now in explaining and affordance theory and design thinking and we've all many times pushed the push door and pulled the pull door uh but we've all so many times sorry I said we've all many times and pulled the push door and pushed the pull door and that's made much harder if you make the handles like this so the way you interact with the technology in this case it's the technology of the door um the interface stimulates the correct behavior um this means that there are powerful cultural shifts and nudges that we can do with the way we design the technology and to help uh um people use these technologies in effective and responsible ways um and uh you know a key um principle for me in this is um how do we make sure that the uh conclusions that emerge from digitally based research are robust and reliable and particularly if we're going to be making um uh important decisions perhaps politically sensitive decisions on the basis of a digitally a digital research um it's important that that work is auditable and trustworthy and verifiable and um the design of the technology can help us to achieve that um so uh one of the um so in um considering work within UKRI in uh in this domain then um um I've already spoken about the importance of balancing uh utility the service to apply for search and curiosity digital infrastructure is a research domain in its own right but I've also emphasized um uh the importance of how that infrastructure can help to build community and that by working through uh those capabilities um we'll uh we'll build those links in communities um I spoke in slightly out of order this is what you get for trying to do a recording um this slide is the slide that illustrates science being a political football um and hence the importance of auditability uh in unreliability in digital research conclusions um the next thing I want to talk about is uh the importance of um infrastructures that are fit for purpose for working with sensitive confidential or personally identifiable data which I think is really critical when we're uh in the story of going forward um and in particular one of my big concerns is you know many of us use trusted research environments that are a problem to use and my argument to community is this you are just as morally responsible if there is a data breach because your system is unusable and so the research community route around it what I call work around risk or work around breach as if there is a breach from your system now people are go no no no no if people violate policy that's their own lookout yes you may be legally safer but you are morally responsible and we need to maintain social consent for the use of uh uh data intensive research that can save lives um but if we don't mean if we if you know if the breaches will will will put that social consent at risk um so I think working on uh mechanism you know the mechanisms by which we make productive playful curiosity driven research at scale uh responsibly with sensitive data it's going to be a really important part of what we do in digital research infrastructures going forward um I uh that's a further slide that that shows the same thing I'm going to move on um another area that I want to focus on I spoke at the beginning of how important it is that people are a part of this infrastructure um we've had in the past supercomputers that very few people have used I once knew one where I knew the user was checked called Dave um because uh we haven't invested properly in the support capability and issues around um uh capital versus resource funding have been really problematic in creating that and so this community you know I wanted to say that one of the goals that I really have within this role is um building the importance of understanding all the different kinds of research technology professionals we have in this space I've also done a lot of work on research software engineering but all the data stewards um that that that that work to make the data um uh manageable well cataloged uh discoverable and so on is another really critical uh uh part of this of this story and I am I am determined that and you know willing to um to to make myself uh unpopular perhaps sometimes to to to say how important it is that in order to generate value from this we must invest properly in all of the research technology professionals that make uh different scholarship possible um and I want to get away from the frankly um sometimes down to nabbyish uh relationship between uh members of the research team um on some of this and parity of steams parity of esteem for research technology professionals is a is a critical goal here um making data FAIR fair findable accessible interoperable and reusable an acronym that will be familiar to many of you is uh you know quite labor intensive and our data stewards um and related roles will be a critical part of that um so uh to um edge towards a conclusion then we've seen that the national digital research infrastructure includes uh not just computers and data facilities and networks and data centers but also software and people um I also want to emphasize that in this goal it's important to recognize that this is a distributed and diverse infrastructure with a number of different facilities uh supported for the long term on the coherent plan to reduce precarity and make people feel safe so they can work properly together um around the country rather than a big one-size-fits-all giant uh you know giant style in this project um uh but one where interoperability and accessibility um it's a critical part of that design as well and the bottom line is nitty gritty stuff like making sure we have a coherent um identity and access management infrastructure so that you know a researcher can a research workflow can work through many different facilities um without the research you're needing to have in about 50 different passwords and so on but I think I've talked also about how those uh underpinning technologies uh create the affordances that that that will will stimulate uh responsible use of these technologies um to conclude and I'll come back to my nice uh data and computers and code and people quest slide um and uh yeah that that ends the talk um thanks very much so obviously this will be the point where I'd thank James but um have to do so in absentia so um that's really been an overview of where the manifesto has come from it's a role in place within the work of our uk some of the contents in the manifesto and our plans for delivery and then that wider context within the discussions of uk research uh digital research infrastructure as um as James provided so we're now going to take a short break we are running a few minutes hi everybody and good afternoon thank you for joining us again I'd just like to um welcome you all back and introduce the myself in the next session so my name is Sarah Thompson and I'm the head of content and open research at the university of York and I'm also a member of the digital shift working group I hope um that you found the sessions so far really informative judging by the questions that have been coming in there's been quite a few of them that's certainly the case um I'd also just like to um clarify that the slides are going to be shared and will be available on the our uk website after the session as will a recording of this event so without further ado I suggest we get started um James and Tor- sorry James is um as you will be aware not available to join us and has said that he can take questions on twitter but answering your questions live today we have received and Torston so I'd like to open things up with a question from Andy which is what is so different about the digital shift libraries have been using it for a long time and content's becoming more digital over time so is the real difference the users who are now digital enabled and skilled in ways they went in the past and does this affect how we think of the digital shift so I could throw that open to Missus and Torston I don't know who wants to take that first if I may be uh take a start just sort of building on something that I've said I think it's a really valuable question um because enough arguably very briefly already touched upon this it's sometimes easy to fall into this oh my god everything is new uh how make uh and it's changing everything um so we have to question that very carefully it's certainly true that libraries have been engaged in digital for decades what I would argue is we are now at the point where libraries have already changed a lot and we'll see more rapidly accelerating change ahead when you can now think about and not just think about there are no libraries uh that say support higher education institutions that are on the completely digital so there are different models in how we operate and in particular I think when it comes to the changes around artificial intelligence and big data we're seeing a way where commercial entities can in certain ways offer something that looks at least at first glance much more appealing than many libraries can do and that brings that question that keeps popping up again do we still need libraries or what I think into into sharp focus um but it's also I think linked into this that we now reached a point where while previously digital came into the organization gradually it's now underpowering everything but the structures in which we work still haven't quite followed and I think there's a bit of tension there that comes from working in a structure in a model that isn't fully digital in an environment where the expectation is that we are competing against informational resources where the free close commercial work doesn't really matter will have been from the ground up set as digital and that poses special opportunity but also a risk to be increasingly not seen as relevant and to lose I think that part that in some ways is uniquely to us about opening up knowledge and making it more broadly accessible and not in the first instance only being driven by uh commercial considerations and if I may very quickly add a brief point on that which is uh to reference to the scornal commission report called the future of academic libraries where they are looking at the role of a library in a multifaceted fashion i.e. library as a service provider, library as a partner and library as a leader I think this would be an opportunistic time for us to consider whether we want to always stay in that service provider mode or to some degree some partnership mode and actually move into a considerable partnership mode and I would argue a leadership role in this situation and I think there's some food for thought there about where do we see the future of the libraries and what role should we be playing in achieving that that future yeah thanks misude um we've had more than one question about um future professionals and how how can we attract them into the profession given the huge changes that we're talking about um so we've had questions there from both Paul and Pascal I'll just read out Pascal's question what are the implications for the professionals that we need working in research libraries and how do you best acculturate colleagues from other disciplines into our future work um shall I take this one first Torsten if that's all right and I'll I'll give a very personal example here so I'm I'm not a librarian by by education by any means I'm a computer scientist I had all my degrees in computer science and it was very random that I fell into the library profession and realized that it's not what people would usually think about what libraries are supposed to do and my view on this would be first of all let's well continue the perception of what libraries are there for and that we are not just about space or collections particularly physical collections we are much bigger than that and we provide value to everything that we touch basically now the the the amount of that value can differ I think first of all we need to really change the perceptional element of what does what does it mean to be part of a library in today's world the second element I would add is um also change the way information schools work and how what they teach and I've seen a quite a considerable difference and improvement in that already but also how we advertise positions and what kind of positions do we advertise and this is where Torsten's point about we've embraced digital in some ways but we've not changed the structures or the roles around that and to James's point in his slides about what kind of roles should we look at the data analyst roles the data support roles the infrastructure people the data visualization roles there is so much more that we can play a role in if if we just broaden that horizon a bit more so I think we need to advertise it differently we need to look at different jobs different structures different curriculum and information schools and fundamentally change the perception of what does it mean to work in a library yeah I would I would second all of this strongly also from personal experience I came into the library world through history and digital humanities so different time but maybe some similar experiences too in the suits and I would like to add one point into this I think an area is often mentioned as money and you often hear these discussions where we lost our developers because they've been paid twice as much in the industry and I mean that is true but the answer isn't always straightforward so I've spoken to a few people who left the library sector to go into industry and yes they own twice as much or 50 percent more but if you hear more closely these are often people who love libraries they love what we do they love working with the collection of the people but they get immensely frustrated by feeling being stuck in an environment that doesn't support them doesn't necessarily give them the career progression or that sometimes resists what their best effort are to make the organization more digital and more agile that's at least the perception and I think not only do we need to make it clear to people who have it it's a digital mindset as a shorthand for way more things the libraries are an exciting place but we also have to have an environment where we support people who push the envelope and to help us change the organization and that comes back to leadership the organizational culture and how open are we to change and how do we give people who have the skills and want to make changes an opportunity to do this in a reflective way I'm not always knowing that just because you know digital you know everything better but in a way that recognizes that contribution and gives them a chance to grow in our organizations with a career path with a chance to push things through and we'll then find that some of them will say no to the higher paycheck because they get a better satisfaction and better work life balance than they get in industry. Thank you both I'd like to pick up on the question next from Regina who's asked what is our responsibility for those audiences who are lost in the digital divide for example due to internet poverty which I think is a really important question yeah I mean I sort of take the liberty to come in first in the way that working for an organization that is open to everyone that allows everyone to come in this is obviously very close to our heart so we do work with say local communities particularly in St Pancras when we are based but we're also looking in how we can be more active outside of London or some of the other areas where we've been active I don't have a simple answer that we can just flip a switch but I think the first part is be mindful that there are people for whom we speak a somewhat foreign language that they're people who are cut off they're just assuming everyone has a smartphone isn't quite as straightforward and open dialogue with these communities they are in a way not that difficult to find it's just having the dialogue in the right way is challenging for us inviting them in making it clear that they are welcome I think that's the key part some of these people are quite well able to tell us what they need but we may be not talking to them enough and this has also to do with the way how our buildings are designed how we present ourselves to the outside world and about really making people feel welcome and having an environment that's not just built around a relatively small subset of people who are already privileged with their information access and the only thing I would add on that is to put inclusivity as a design principle in everything you do regardless of whether that's digital or physical and particularly when it does come to digital make it as explicit as possible which is what I have definitely done here at York really highlighting that inclusivity sits at the same level as user experience as cloud first as open source etc so it can't be regarded as an afterthought but as a design principle thank you both I had a couple of questions on a similar topic about algorithms and misuse of data so I thought that might be something just worth the quick discussion about so particularly around why this is the responsibility for research libraries and wires I mean I can get the point but we are here to help people get access to information if we use black box machines that we don't understand and we can't have a trust in how that thing works where big publisher x shows data in one end and answer to your search query falls out at the other end or recommendation engines or all of that there will be buyers in those that we can be absolutely sure of but if we understand that bias then we can help our users to make the best of it there's already enough bias of all these digital information systems not enough awareness and I would argue as librarians we should have the ethical principles to recognize that that bias isn't helpful and we should have the sort of tools in terms of how we work with our users to help people work around these biases and recognize them and that requires us to have a basic level of understanding of how these technologies work if we don't have it we basically just pass through the black box with some form of bias and leave our users on some will be able to figure this out there are already users who research library discovery systems and come back to you with interesting answers on how your system is biased and it's good to talk to them but we need to be able to do this ourselves and no one can do this for us I don't have anything else to add to that toast and summed it perfectly that's great as we've got a lot of questions then I'll I'll swiftly move on to the next one we had quite a few because Torsten you mentioned something around how can we identify things which are not adding in a value so that we can stop doing them and rediver staffing and resources to other areas so I wondered whether either of you has any ideas on how that might be done how do you go about identifying what things don't have value anymore which had less value so do you want to go first with that one just maybe briefly I think it's not quite straightforward to say add value and no value because you would have everything that we do add some value but I think we have limited resource and we have to see where we can make most impact so more is you might run a service that's okay but another library might run this service really well could you reach out to that library and say if you provide this thing to us we maybe can provide something else in exchange so first of all I think it's not as simple as saying it doesn't add value anymore because it may not be that straightforward how do we find out I think there's a key part in looking at our own systems and what they tell us how our users use our digital infrastructure that has to be done with some care because it's personal data but we could probably be better in some ways doing this another part I think is asking our users and more user research and engagement that needs to be balanced also within a strategic view from say our host organizations in terms of where they are going and being involved in these strategic discussions to understand what does our host organization want us to achieve and is our strategy aligned and what do our users need and that means we need to have that discussion and we can't always just insularly sit there and say all the usage data internally looks quite good we have to compare this to external services into what our users and funders want and sometimes they be challenged and if we think they may think they want something but we could perhaps help them in better ways I also think it's about upskilling and reskilling as well and a good example of that or at least an example of that that I can think of is how physical resource acquisition and electronic resource acquisition used to be completely different processes in the past and how over time they have become increasingly together in a single package and that required staff to upskill themselves and to use that and in a similar way I mean just picking one random example we ought to be considering how we do physical services for example and does that physical services really just mean physical on-premises services or do the same stuff also need to consider how they look at digital public services for example so there will be an element of upskilling as we move forward there will also be elements of reskilling and as Thorsten said this is not about value diminishing it's about change of behaviors and change of approaches and some of this is theoretical for for example one thing that I generally believe in about 10 years time we will be looking at is the shifting role of catalogers and particularly moving away from either original cataloging to more custom cataloging but also investing in how systems are being trained through training data and other services and I can imagine a reskilling shift of some of those staff moving in that direction not saying that what they're doing is not important but understanding that the environment is shifting and responding to that shifting needs at the same point so it's a transition rather than a sudden stop and start. Great thank you we had a number of questions about collaborations and working with other organizations and stakeholders but I'm not proposing that we touch on that now because I think that will be poured into our final session so I'd like to just ask one more question which is a bridge into the next session on the Mentimeter which Lorraine and Michelle will be leading but we had a question from Tracy and a couple of other people along similar lines which is wondering whether given the major change that we've all had to make really recently due to the pandemic do you do you think that the current priorities and timescales for the digital this digital shift manifesto could be more agile in other words you know the phasing that we've got and things the timings of things that we've got in there maybe need a bit of a rethink but as I say I think that does like you need us on to the next session but if either of you have any comments on that you have a one one minute. Well I don't want to commit our UK resources to something but in clearly we now have a scenario where there's much more working from home and working in a distributed way and I would imagine that will continue partly because it may be a while until we have a vaccine at scale in society but also because some colleagues may not want to come back and there are some other advantages so there may well be something in there that we could look at now in terms of how are you how are you sort of develop an organisational model that's much less physical building based and works more along those ways at least that's one I think probably to everyone right now very obvious thought but so Eddie Massoud want to close on this before I commit our UK to anything else. To be fair I'm also not in a position to commit our UK resources for this but I want to highlight the fact that this is why we are having this launch to gather your thoughts to gather your insights to gain where you think priority should lie and as Matt and everyone else have mentioned from the very beginning this is a global endeavour while our UK is passionate about it and we do everything to support our member organisations in this shift this can only be done if it remains a global endeavour and therefore we are all years I'm all years anything that we need to shift more rapidly please let us know anything that would be delayed or have you have concerns about or should have anything any more insights on let us know this is fantastic it's lovely to get your feedback and it will only allow us to do it better so please do provide that feedback and we look forward to working with you in the future on this. Excellent well thank you both very much Massoud and Torsten and also a big thank you to everybody who submitted questions I'm really sorry that we haven't had a chance to get through them all but I'm sure some of them can be answered within the Q&A by typing hopefully so I'm sure some of us can leap in and answer those if it's a factual answer but we do have some interactive exercises and sessions coming up next so I think also a lot of questions will be will be covered and explored in more detail during those so we'll move swiftly on to our first interactive session so I'll now hand over to Michelle Blake and to Lorraine Beard who are going to talk you through this. Thanks very much Sarah so I'm Michelle Blake and I'm the Deputy Director of Library Services at the University of York I'm also the co-convener for our UK's Associate Director's Network and a member of this digital shift working group as kind of others have already said we created this manifesto before COVID-19 and we'd really like to take a moment to reflect on our current environment and how that might impact us in terms of what we need to prioritize and how we have reacted in our organizations to the kind of volatile environment we found ourselves in. I know many of you have filled the form and already the questionnaire if you haven't you should have a link and by all means feel free to fill that in now so the aim of the short questionnaire was to capture these reflections and experiences and I'm going to take us through the responses for the first three questions and then I'm going to hand over to my colleague Lorraine Beard from University of Manchester and she'll take us through the second set of three questions so you can see our first question up there already and it's I think unsurprising that most of you are based in the UK and Ireland but it's really great that we've got a representation from across the world and obviously as we've said that's one of the things we're really keen to do is explore how we can collaborate so it's great to have a real mix here. I'm just going to move on to the next slide which is understanding the current library background of the people that are here today and I think again unsurprisingly most people that have attended today from higher education however what's really really great is that there's representation from across so many different sectors and also there's a lot of people in that other category so it would be really good for us to explore who else is represented here today so that would be great for us to do and finally I'm just going to move on to the third question which obviously COVID-19 has had a huge impact on us and our ability to provide services and I think for me anyway it's really heartening to see that perhaps it's a silver lining kind of that it's proving to be maybe a catalyst for change for us and encouraging or embedding the pre-existing ways of working at a faster pace and I think it's really interesting that for some it's been a revolution as well so completely changing the way we work and thinking about our services and processes and I think one of the areas that might be useful to explore after this is what those things look like and how we can find out more about those and share those across so those are the first three questions I'm going to hand over to Lorraine who's going to take us through the final three questions thank you Michelle I'm going to take these three questions four to five and so the first question is around areas in which COVID-19 has exposed the greatest need for change in libraries and not surprisingly large numbers are voted for creation of flexible and agile structures and ways of working within libraries which I think reflects the pace at which we've had to respond to the crisis and the way that we've had to move staff around in order to be able to respond to change ways of working I think there's a question around how we retain that agility in the longer term and then the next sets of votes were all around access to digital content so around discoverable discoverable and digitized content freely access to free freely accessible resources and copyright and licensing to content as well the next grouping is around digital skills and digital leadership so there's a large number of votes for digital skills and leadership in libraries and there's fewer votes for digital skills and leadership for researchers well that probably reflects that most of us are working in the library domain and then down the other end of the spectrum there's there are fewer votes for investment in national digital infrastructure okay next slide and the one before and so any other areas where COVID-19 has exposed the greatest need for change and I think these and there's a number of themes that emerged here and so there's a big number of responses around access to digital resources particularly around e-textbooks and the need for more spend on e-textbooks and better licensing models and then looking at access to digital resources so more efficient metadata and workflows and to enable better discoverability and increased digitization of content one comment with that the the crisis has exposed that actually only a fraction of our collections are actually digital and there's a need for more agile responses from our vendors the next big grouping of responses was around staff so there are a lot of comments around long-term how do we enable a lot at home working more flexible structures and roles enabling staff to respond to new technologies there are a lot of responses around skills how do we work less formally than we've been used to previously and there was a really interesting comment that actually the the COVID-19 crisis has exposed the digital divide among staff in terms of the ability to work at home and the technology that they have at home and also their comfort with using technology so I think that that summed up the staffing responses quite nicely and then there was a whole lot of responses around digital infrastructure so investment in things like storage data preservation platforms those kind of things and there are also a few questions about configuration of space okay can we move on to the next slide so the word cloud really summarizes the responses that we had to the previous question so obviously digital staff and need there's a view in interesting ones there around metadata models discoverability licensing okay next slide please and the last question asked about how RLUK should prioritize what we do now in response to COVID-19 um and so the the largest numbers of votes was around um sustainability a sustainable channel of forum for libraries to collaborate and share and also around developing a set of requirements for open information resources that will inform licensing and procurement research libraries and there was also a lot around skills as well so there are a lot of votes for us doing a digital skills audit that Torsten mentioned in his introduction and perhaps fewer votes on a strategic workforce plan and there's a lot around support for digital leadership skills okay I'll move on to the next one okay that I think that's the the last slide on the responses to the Mentimeter so we will be using this within the working group to inform the implementation of the manifesto okay so if I can hand over now to William Nixon who's going to be doing the closing remarks thanks very much Lorraine so my name is William Nixon and I'm the assistant director at the University of Glasgow library so I'm a member of this working group and I'm delighted to have the opportunity to infuse and engage you further so that you help us realize the manifesto and accelerate and support the digital transformation that we're all experiencing I'm passionate about the digital shift and this manifesto and it's really fantastic to see the interest in today's today's webinar and also to see the breadth of engagement and interest across that ROUK is a member's organization but the digital shift to manifesto is about catalyzing and engaging not only the wider library community but beyond the library community and I also wanted to reflect a couple of comments from Torsten and Massoud from their earlier sections first of all that this is a global challenge and we invite you to join us okay so this is more than just research libraries UK more than the UK and also I think to think about as Massoud was saying think of what is possible what we can do what does that future look like help us to create that vision and to make those changes to work in partnership with us to support each other and working with new stakeholders so that we look beyond our own our own community the manifesto is it's anchored in the the needs of of the community and we can see you know the the exciting implementation plan over the coming 18 months but really what I wanted to do was to encourage all of you who are in other organizations who are in other countries to look at the the form that we have here we're really interested in who would like to partner and work with us we're interested in where people can partnership around the different areas the skills and the leadership elements the scholarship and collections around space around stakeholders and advocacy to really think about all of those areas which which of those do you really want to bring to the party what can you what can you provide and are there any particular initiatives that you want to be interested in working with us around so again there's a number that are identified here again we encourage you to take all that apply and while I'm infusing and engaging with you you know as we come up the next screen we'll give you the we'll give you the address so that you can have a look at that um thinking about other support around some of the audit work that we are looking at some of the things that have been highlighted by torsted and misud already preparing us a report summarizing our digital shift work sustainable channels this is going to be really important for us you know collaboratively collectively working together supporting the development of those leadership skills across the library sector the program of knowledge exchange activities contributing to sustainability action plans for carbon neutral digital research it's already been commented that how valuable that has you know as identifying that has been in some of the q and a and some of the chat strategic workforce planning and developing a set of requirements for open information resources now what is also incredibly valuable is we don't know everything so there's a there's an other box listed there so we actively encourage you please to give us your own suggestions your own ideas of other ways anything that we have missed that can help feed into the manifesto and some of that broader engagement so if you are interested and I hope you are I would expect you to be you've already taken the first step on that really valuable journey with us is go to rlukac.uk slash ds form and really we look forward to engaging with you and that opportunity to have that feedback so I am just going to hand over now to misud for some closing remarks thank you very much so we've had a fantastic webinar where we've heard from different people we've heard different viewpoints we've looked at different comments there's some fantastic questions and we do apologize that we can't answer all of them but we try our best to respond to them as soon as possible or individually we responded to a few of you I just want to highlight that today is the official launch of the digital shift manifesto and this is just the beginning and it's important that we start with that mindset that this is a beginning of a long journey but one where we need to think holistically about what we can achieve but also think more broadly about the impact of digital on everything else including on our print collections on our spaces on our users on our staff and just generally across the sector however that shouldn't let us move away from our ambition and I think this is what I really want to focus on on where's the ambition and that is something that this digital manifesto sets that is something it encourages all of you to come and contribute to and I am really looking forward to what the next stage of this can shape up when we work with you on this we've also heard some excellent presentations from Tostan and James and particularly one thing that stuck with me from James presentation was the intersection of digital with physical particularly the models and the societal interactions and would be fair to say that that's just going to increase further so what roles can we play in supporting that kind of research but also challenging where we see things are not being done in an equitable inclusive fashion and it was really nice to see that in the word cloud words digital needs and users were at the forefront and I think that just highlights the fact that digital has to be done in conjunction with the needs of the community but also in conjunction with the needs of the users as well so don't have much to add I just want to say thank you so much for your time for your patience for your insights for your comments this is as I said just the beginning of the journey please continue on this journey with us Williams shown the form please do take some time and fill that up if you've not added your comments or your thoughts on the mentor meter please do so and we look forward to working with you to collaborating with you and to partnering with you in this journey in the future thank you have a lovely morning afternoon evening wherever in the world you are and please do stay safe and keep well thank you everyone