14. Publish data for LIS research

The publication of library catalogue data for Library & Information Systems (LIS) research purposes.

Description

Activity - The publication of library catalogue data for Library & Information Systems (LIS) research purposes. Whilst the research may take place within the institution and elsewhere in the HE community, it may not be helpful to plan on that assumption. Specific research requests (both one off and recurrent) may specify data elements (e.g. MARC tags, Dublin Core attributes) and format (e.g. MARC, XML, comma delimited). This Use Case however focuses on general supply for open research use, the researcher being responsible for extraction of the required views.

Part of use case: 14. Publish data for LIS research | Share your experience

Actors - Libraries; individual researchers or organisations that wish to study the data (who may be fulfilling contracts for other entities)

Part of use case: 14. Publish data for LIS research | Share your experience

Data involved - Full or partial bibliographic records which may be required to contain holdings data; see also UC8 for transaction level research involving ‘activity data’.

Part of use case: 14. Publish data for LIS research | Share your experience

Data flow - Extract from catalogue and make generally available for download or supply directly to a researcher or organization. This is a one-way process.

Part of use case: 14. Publish data for LIS research | Share your experience

Does this require Open Data - If the records are supplied under an open data license, the scope for exploitation will be unambiguous and may cover use more generally; otherwise different licensing constraints would need to be applied depending on use.

Part of use case: 14. Publish data for LIS research | Share your experience

Current Examples - The British Library offers the British National Bibliography [over 3 million bibliographic records] as open data under a CC0 (Creative Commons Zero) License. CC0 was adopted in response to feedback from researchers that CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike) License was too restrictive.

Part of use case: 14. Publish data for LIS research | Share your experience

Benefits

Institution - None other than the principle of benefiting scholarship

Part of use case: 14. Publish data for LIS research | Share your experience

Library Service - Potential for improving services based on the results

Part of use case: 14. Publish data for LIS research | Share your experience

Researchers - Indirect benefit through library service improvement; LIS and related researchers will however benefit directly

Part of use case: 14. Publish data for LIS research | Share your experience

Students - Indirect benefit through library service improvement; LIS students will however benefit directly

Part of use case: 14. Publish data for LIS research | Share your experience

Replication - A generic standardized and open approach to the packaging, release and licensing of bibliographic data, which includes LIS research use, should be preferable in terms of time, even handedness and serving other Use Cases.

Part of use case: 14. Publish data for LIS research | Share your experience

Case for not doing it - None other than the time wasted if data is packaged, released and licensed on a case by case basis.

Part of use case: 14. Publish data for LIS research | Share your experience

Motivation

Principles - LIS research (increasingly linked to study of user behaviour and broader web activity) is widely accepted as beneficial to library services and to the professional community. It may be increasingly important in a globalised knowledge economy.

Part of use case: 14. Publish data for LIS research | Share your experience

Costs - Cost benefits may be derived from the research results.

Part of use case: 14. Publish data for LIS research | Share your experience

Services - New and improved services may be derived from the results.

Part of use case: 14. Publish data for LIS research | Share your experience

Rationale for not doing it - It is the nature of the library community that there is no generally accepted rationale for not sharing such data for research purposes; however, institutions will be cautious if the research is likely to favour a particular commercial party or a disruptive agenda.

Part of use case: 14. Publish data for LIS research | Share your experience

Consequences of doing it as Open Data

What will happen? - Open standardized publication would enable the library to address demand much more efficiently.

Part of use case: 14. Publish data for LIS research | Share your experience

Potential Risks - (1) Loss of control over institutional data; (2) The nature of research funding and commercial market research is that freeing the data is unlikely to generate a flood of research demands. However there might be a risk that the institution is too readily cited in research without consultation over such as context.

Part of use case: 14. Publish data for LIS research | Share your experience

Potential Opportunities - (1) Development of innovative / compelling third party services based on open data; (2) Research resulting from aggregated library data may be useful to inform future library strategy at a local and national level.

Part of use case: 14. Publish data for LIS research | Share your experience

Consequences of not doing it? - Responding to individual research requests is onerous.

Part of use case: 14. Publish data for LIS research | Share your experience

Rights and Licensing Issues

Rights and licensing issues - In keeping with the principles behind this act, the license should be explicit and as open and unencumbered as possible in order to facilitate genuine reuse. See the general guidance on Licensing Issues for further detail.

Part of use case: 14. Publish data for LIS research | Share your experience

Practicalities

Data exchange formatting - In order to establish a standard release dataset, it may be wise to release full records, including holdings, in both MARC export and MARC XML formats.

Part of use case: 14. Publish data for LIS research | Share your experience

Lifecycle implications - Involves periodic re-releases. Annual publication would suit most research purposes.

Part of use case: 14. Publish data for LIS research | Share your experience

Hosting requirements - The published data will need to be accessible for download.

Part of use case: 14. Publish data for LIS research | Share your experience

Existing systems impact - None

Part of use case: 14. Publish data for LIS research | Share your experience

Skills demands - This will fall within the capabilities of a systems librarian.

Part of use case: 14. Publish data for LIS research | Share your experience

Costs

Setup - MARC export software should be part of the local LMS.

Part of use case: 14. Publish data for LIS research | Share your experience

Ongoing - Low, subject to the regularity of refresh (e.g. Annual)

Part of use case: 14. Publish data for LIS research | Share your experience

Cost of doing nothing - No extra direct costs will be incurred by not doing it. However, doing it on a case-by-case basis will generate an ongoing requirement to address requests (including pressure to customize the release) and to resolve rights issues.

Part of use case: 14. Publish data for LIS research | Share your experience