Boston, Massachusetts
May 17-19, 1995
Graham Hill, University Librarian
McMaster University Libraries
Carole Moore, Chief Librarian
University of Toronto Libraries
MR. HILL: Ladies and gentlemen, Carole and I are sharing the platform to tell you about The CAN-LINKED Initiative, and we are also sharing the time that has been allocated to us. I will talk to you about the document, its origins and the collaborative process we used to write it, and then Carole will review the prospects and potential for future work and development.
Just as our culture is concerned with the health of the forests rather than with the growth of individual trees and shrubs, The CAN-LINKED Initiative is an effort in what might be called digiculture, by which is meant attention to the form and direction of the digital library in the context of universal issues, such as governance, membership and financial issues, rather than a focus on the branches and roots of specific technologies or intellectual resources. The document had its genesis at a meeting of the presidents of ten universities in November of 1994, and the process of its birth was unusual. It is a self-selected group of the ten research universities that receive the highest amount of federal research funding each year, making its membership, therefore, fluid and subject to annual change.
It maintains a unique and often uneasy relationship with the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC), an organization equivalent to the Association of American Universities (AAU). Although there is little argument about the overarching issues facing research universities in Canada, there are distinct voices in the group, and there are sometimes divergent opinions about how, when, or even whether those issues should be prioritized and addressed.
Carole and I were asked to address these presidents on the current issues facing our research libraries. As a result of the discussion which followed, they challenged us, together with our colleagues, to develop, as a matter of urgency, a document that would enable our research libraries and their parent institutions to persuade the federal government to take a leadership role in ensuring a strong research infrastructure by, among other things, advancing the development of a digital library. The universities feared that the national budget would deal a crippling blow to the country’s research enterprise through significant reductions to the budgets of the federal granting councils, cutbacks in departmental funding for university research, and the withdrawal of indirect federal support for research infrastructures, resulting from a restructuring of social transfer payments to the provinces.
The universities’ immediate need for such a document was in order to get such a proposal into the pre-budget consultations that were then underway among the universities, industry, and federal government. We organized a full-day meeting in Toronto the week before Christmas, brainstormed a response to the challenge that had been given to us, and extended an invitation to the national library system and the Canadian Association of Research Libraries. By the end of a very intensive day’s work, a provisional structure and content for the document had been set out. I then undertook to develop a draft for discussion at the second and final meeting, to be held in the third week of January. Needless to say, when that meeting took place, the draft was cast aside and we started again from scratch. About the only element that survived the second meeting was the title, The CAN-LINKED Initiative, an acronym for the Canadian Libraries Information Network Knowledge and Education through Digitization, and its French equivalent, le projet canadien LIBRIS.
A stronger framework for the document emerged from the second meeting, and almost every participant agreed to write one or more of the sections. Carole and I agreed to edit the contributions, to supply bridging paragraphs, and to write those sections for which nobody could volunteer. It proved to be an interesting way to generate a document. The 13 librarians who wrote the document did not formally approve it. There wasn’t time available for reflection and revision, but there was evident enthusiasm. The collaborative writing process and the product was truly the work of many hands. Also, it was important from our perspective, in that it generated real involvement and pooled the talents and knowledge of many.
For those who are unfamiliar with the document, it runs to about 40 pages, and in five sections it articulates a vision, describes a context, states the potential contribution of the research libraries in terms of both digital library content and the infrastructure for organization and communication of research, and, finally, estimates an investment cost of some $80 million to make substantial progress over the next two to four years. The full document is available at the following site: http://www.lib.uwaterloo.ca/documents/CAN-LINKED.
The document is properly called an initiative. It is not a proposal for any specific project, nor to any specific organization or level of government beyond the evident encouragement of a strong federal involvement in the digital information future. Its primary purpose is to draw broad attention to and encourage support for the many opportunities made possible through evolving information technology. These opportunities need to be realized and structured in the interests of our society, in which research libraries must play a significant part.
The estimated multi-year price tag of $80 million, which, of course, is only $60 million U.S., might seem an enormous amount of money at any time, but particularly so in these stringent times. The costs are there, and the costs will not diminish. A broad and inclusive approach both to the funding and the work is the only possibility for progress.
At this point Carole will elaborate on the prospects for future work and development.
MS. MOORE: Thank you. In Graham’s overview of the rapid origin and very rapid development of this proposal, one of our major challenges was: who are we writing this for; who is our audience? We were ostensibly writing for a group of presidents who in turn wanted guidance, recommendations on actions, and solutions that could attract funding and support in the current slim economic environment.
This is a fairly vague agenda. There were many concerns about how anything we might say could affect an already shaky individual library funding base or individual interests. However, we had no great difficulty in coming to the conclusion that, in spite of the risks, it was clearly in everyone’s best interest to articulate positively and realistically how research libraries can contribute effectively to the research university of the future. Our discussions included the very difficult questions that we face: could we spend our own resources better in collaboration, and what would be needed to transform ourselves in a useful direction?
What happened as a result was that, first, in February we finished the document, and then, in March, the original ten presidents looked at the document, reviewed it, and expressed very strong support. Of course, they then asked us to get more support. By that point the federal budget situation had deteriorated and clarified, and not only was the federal research infrastructure funding eliminated, but an entirely new model had been adopted, which would make all of these research efforts and infrastructure funds the responsibility of provinces through a transfer payment, which is a much smaller global amount. Fortunately, and as could be expected, the presidents and universities have not entirely accepted this conclusion and have increased their lobbying efforts. So the third outcome is that they have asked us to continue to provide a document that can be used in the lobbying effort. It is clear, from my point of view, that it is in all of our interests to contribute to the research infrastructure lobbying effort within Canada. To the extent that our document can do that, it is to everyone’s benefit.
The fourth outcome is a bit farther afield. The Information Highway Advisory Committee, which is a federal committee of industry Canada, is in the process of making recommendations, and two of its recommendations suggest tasks that can be assigned to this consortium effort of digital libraries. Specifically, they relate to pilot projects which would encourage electronic publishing of scholarly material and suggest that funding be made available in order to accelerate the spread of new ideas, making Canada competitive, particularly in the scientific areas. So this may not mean actual funds, but it is definitely an opening for the future.
Fifth, we are exploring broader participation as quickly as possible, first of all with our fellow libraries, the Canadian Association of Research Libraries. The Board has endorsed it in principle, but, of course, the members would like to know more about what’s involved before we proceed. The Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada is also interested in endorsing it and making it part of their lobbying effort. What we expect to come out of this is an administrative and organizational framework that will allow members to collaborate without being involved in an overly complex bureaucratic structure.
Sixth: the next step is to pursue broader partnerships with the public and private sectors.
Finally, as a first step in a descriptive effort at what the digital library environment might look like, The CAN-LINKED Initiative has already proved useful. For us, in our local development activities, it provides a context for pursuing individual initiatives, which have already been, on a very modest level, successful. In addition, in rapidly educating our own library community about digital library potentials, benefits, requirements, and costs, it also serves as a framework. Perhaps most importantly, in exploring with our administrations how a digital library might realistically operate, it has been quite useful as a starting point.
I would like to conclude with Graham’s forest analogy. This is obviously just a multipurpose initial seed document. Rather than looking on these initial plans as a comprehensive package answering the many complex challenges which face our libraries, I believe we should be prepared to encourage any sprout which shows promise of becoming a shrub or a tree in our own developing digiculture. Thank you.